August 17th, 2024

AMD's Ryzen CPUs might be slower in PC games due to a weird Windows 11 bug

AMD's Ryzen CPUs face gaming performance issues linked to a Windows 11 bug, with improvements noted using a hidden admin account. A fix from Microsoft is anticipated, but security risks exist.

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AMD's Ryzen CPUs might be slower in PC games due to a weird Windows 11 bug

AMD's Ryzen CPUs are reportedly experiencing performance issues in PC gaming due to a potential bug in Windows 11. A review by Hardware Unboxed indicated that Ryzen 9000 processors, particularly the Ryzen 9700X, showed lower gaming performance than expected. The discrepancy was linked to the use of a hidden administrator account, which provides elevated privileges and resulted in improved performance during gaming tests. For instance, enabling this account led to a 7% increase in frame rates for games like Cyberpunk 2077. While this issue affects both Ryzen 7000 and 9000 series processors, it is suggested that the problem may be specific to Ryzen CPUs rather than a general Windows 11 issue. AMD has indicated that a fix may come from Microsoft, but users are advised against using the hidden admin account due to security risks. The situation remains unclear, and further testing, including on Intel CPUs, is needed to fully understand the implications of this bug.

- AMD's Ryzen CPUs may be slowed down in gaming due to a Windows 11 bug.

- Performance improvements were noted when using a hidden admin account, but this method is not recommended.

- The issue affects both Ryzen 7000 and 9000 series processors.

- AMD suggests that a fix may be forthcoming from Microsoft.

- Users are cautioned against enabling the hidden admin account due to potential security vulnerabilities.

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By @abhinavk - 5 months
Phoronix’s tests of 9950X on Windows and Linux: https://www.phoronix.com/review/ryzen-9950x-windows11-ubuntu

9950X is 14% faster than 7950X on Ubuntu. And 10% faster on Windows.

Ubuntu is 10% faster than Windows on the same hardware.

By @tedunangst - 5 months
The background for this really puzzles me. AMD said you should be seeing more improvement for zen 5 over zen 4. They go back and forth, AMD says run it as super root. Zen 5 gets faster. But zen 4 gets faster too. The improvement basically disappears again when the "fix" is applied universally. So why was AMD testing with two different setups?
By @ChoGGi - 5 months
The usual consensus I've heard is that UAC is always on even after turning the slider all the way off, while using the admin account doesn't use UAC (changing the EnableLUA in reg also works).
By @ds - 5 months
I believe that disabling core isolation and bitlocker will also give a 2-3% gain as well. Not worth it though for the security loss.
By @Cold_Miserable - 5 months
How is the built-in Administrator account faster than a named account? I wonder if its a bloatware effect. They need to test with all bloatware removed. No control flow guard, defender, firewall, appearance to performance, no sounds, no background, microcode dll's deleted, mitigations disabled in regedit, storport disabled, every service disabled, every app deleted, edge deleted etc.
By @loeg - 5 months
There is absolutely no detail here. Tl;dr maybe Ryzen CPUs are a handful of percent faster when testing under the admin account instead of non-admin. Is it reproducible? Who knows. What does Windows 11 have to do with it? Who knows. We know nothing after reading the article.
By @burnte - 5 months
There was a scheduler bug in the early Ryzen days that got fixed, this will too.