As usual since its launch, Windows 11 returns to star in another performance problem, this time on the generation of processors AMD Ryzen 7000. However, the origin here could be in the processors or the firmware and not in the operating system, since the changes introduced at the architecture level would be giving performance problems in some contexts.
AMD has issued a notice acknowledging that it has received reports of unexpected performance results when running certain games on Windows 11 and its Ryzen 7000 processors. In response, the company has said that it has not seen anything unusual when comparing the performance obtained with Windows 10 and Windows 11, this being what you have stated:
“We have received reports of unexpected performance deltas in certain games with AMD Ryzen desktop processors, as well as variations in performance between Windows 11 and Windows 10 in certain game titles. We are currently investigating, but based on testing to date, we have not observed a substantial difference in game performance between OS versions across a variety of operating scenarios and game titles.”
“Many factors affect gaming performance, including game engine, CPU architecture, GPU selection, and memory options. As new architectures enter the market, we often see performance anomalies that need to be addressed by the component vendor or game publisher. This is not a new or unexpected phenomenon.”
“As we have done since the introduction of Ryzen, when these performance anomalies come to light, we will use them to drive our partner engagements with game developers and ecosystem hardware partners to implement optimizations that eliminate variances.”.
In short, AMD blames the problems detected in Ryzen 7000 on software that is not yet ready to properly take advantage of the architecture of the new processors. This scenario is far from implausible, as Linux had to deal with the same thing a year ago, when Intel’s Alder Lake processors were released. However, not everyone is sure about the response given by the company.
In Tom’s Hardware, one of the media that reported the regression at the performance level compared to Ryzen 5000, they have exposed the results of the tests they have carried out, in which you can see the Ryzen models with a single CCD (chiplet) they surpass some models with dual CCD that equip more cores.
Tom’s Hardware initially ran the tests with an RTX 3090, but then decided to repeat the tests with an RTX 4090 and updated board firmware only to end up with the same scenario. Of course, seeing that Ryzen 7000 has recently been released on the market and that lately the firmware of the initial motherboards does not come out fine on many occasions, it is not ruled out that the solution comes from that front.
At this point, we enter a scenario in which there are various possibilities. The first thing is that there are games that prefer fewer cores and threads, which could be plausible if we consider that software tends to lag behind hardware, with delays that in some contexts can exceed half a decade. This would be influenced by the fact that on AMD dual-chiplet processor models, the secondary CCD tends to run at somewhat lower frequencies. Another scenario could be in the associated latencies in dual chip designs due to the Infinity Fabric interconnect.
Some claimed that it was another Windows 11 issue, but AMD’s statement has raised questions. At Tom’s Hardware they have subscribed to the theory of the lack of optimization of the games, which would fit the aforementioned delay with which the software usually goes with respect to the hardware.
To show an example of how often software lags behind hardware, it’s as simple as mentioning that games compiled for 64-bit x86 started standardizing in 2012, right after Dice and EA announced that Battlefield 3 would require Windows 7 and a 64-bit x86 processor. If we say that 64-bit already established itself a few years earlier as the standard with the Intel Core 2 Duo and Intel Core 2 Quad, one can already imagine the situation.
We will see where this topic of performance problems that some are reporting when using Windows 11 on AMD Ryzen 7000 comes out, but for now all doors seem to be open.
