Finally, the long-awaited fixes for performance issues by Microsoft and AMD to resolve issues that occurred in Ryzen processors while running Windows 11 are now available to the general public. This is very good news, because the drop in performance has been so significant that the manufacturer itself recommended not to update to the new Redmond operating system.
AMD Ryzen performance issues on Windows 11 are actually two different issues, the first of them is the known third level cache latency and the second is to do process allocation to preferred cores. So we are talking about two different issues that were fixed from two different points of view and so there is a fix from AMD and another from Microsoft.
Why has AMD Ryzen lost in performance?
The first of the reasons is the fault of AMD itself, in particular the drivers of its chipsets which made that the processes are not distributed on the good cores. It must be taken into account that despite the fact that the Zen architectures are homogeneous, since the cores are symmetrical, there are always one or two cores which are faster because they have a higher clock speed and so it is where the most processes are affected. heavy by the operating system.
The other issue is the performance of the L3 cache, where latency – the time it takes for threads to communicate with that L3 – had tripled in all generations of AMD Ryzen. Keep in mind that CPUs will search the cache hierarchy for data and instructions first, because finding them sooner means resolving the instruction in less time.
The two issues combined have led the hardware maker not to recommend its users to upgrade to Windows 11 so far, and it took them and Microsoft employees extra hours of work to fix this issue. Mainly due to the fact that in the OEM market these are lost sales compared to Intel processors.
Where to download the patches?
The first of these is the October 21, 2021 update for Windows 11, which if you are an operating system user, it must be installed if you have enabled automatic installations. If you manually check for the update, this is the KB5006746 (OS version 22000.282) and this serves to solve the third level cache problem. To install it, you just need to go to settings → update and security → Windows Update. You will see it in the section optional upgrades available, there you will find the link to download and install the patch.
The second patch comes from AMD itself and serves to solve the problem of the preferred core, it comes in the update of the AMD chipset drivers, version 3.10.08.506, which you can download from the following link. Both fixes will allow you to use Microsoft’s new operating system with the full power of AMD’s Ryzen processors.
