Performance Insights and Optimizations
AMD's unveiling of the Ryzen 9000 series desktop processors at Computex earlier this year was met with considerable excitement, particularly due to the promised 16% increase in instructions per clock (IPC). However, as third-party reviews began to surface, it became evident that the anticipated performance gains were not universally realized. AMD acknowledged the possibility of bugs affecting performance, particularly those related to Windows Account privileges when utilizing the operating system’s hidden Admin account.
In a subsequent clarification, AMD highlighted that essential branch prediction optimizations were absent in Windows 11, which are crucial for maximizing the performance of the Ryzen 9000 series CPUs. This situation may shed light on why Linux appeared to outperform Microsoft’s operating system in various benchmarks.
Following these revelations, a patch from Microsoft significantly enhanced performance, yielding an average improvement of around 10% in gaming scenarios. While this is commendable, it’s worth noting that performance can vary dramatically between installations, even among clean installs of Windows, underscoring the inherent inconsistencies of the platform.
In addition to the branch prediction optimization patch, AMD released firmware that increased the thermal design power (TDP) of the Ryzen 9000 series from 65 watts to 105 watts. MSI indicated that users could expect up to a 13% performance boost due to the additional power headroom and increased clock speeds.
Moreover, AMD is actively addressing latency issues associated with the Zen 5 architecture in the Ryzen 9000 series. The latest AGESA (AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture) PI 1.2.0.1A firmware update has resolved high core-to-core latency on the Windows platform.
Tech outlet Phoronix conducted tests using the new AGESA firmware on Linux, revealing that the Ryzen 9950X exhibited improved performance with the updated BIOS compared to its predecessor. Although the overall performance across a broad range of benchmarks remained relatively stable, individual tests indicated notable differences favoring one operating system over the other. Phoronix noted:
So for a limited number of benchmarks there were changes to find in performance but from all 385 benchmarks in total overall the performance was rather flat for performance and no measurable difference in CPU power consumption. Then again, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X performance under Linux with a wide variety of workloads has been performing great already since launch day.
For those interested in a deeper dive, the complete test data is available on Phoronix’s website.