Windows 11 users with Ryzen 7000 or Ryzen 9000 processors can get some purportedly huge boosts in PC games right now, as work to seriously optimize AMD CPUs has landed in the OS sooner than expected.
As Tom’s Hardware observes, the latest optional update for Windows 11 23H2, which is KB5041587, actually packs the necessary improvements to branch prediction code for modern Ryzen CPUs (from the Ryzen 5000 series onwards, we’ve been told previously) that have been tested in Windows 11 24H2. Those boosts are to the tune of 10% on average, based on extensive tests run by Hardware Unboxed.
The 24H2 update is, of course, still only in preview (with the slight complication that a version is live with Copilot+ PCs only, though it isn’t the fully finished 24H2). It wasn’t expected that we’d get this change until 24H2 arrived for everyone later this year, but we’ve suddenly got it backported and live on Windows 11 23H2 now.
However, there is an obvious caveat, namely that this optional update for 23H2, KB5041587, is also only in preview – so there may still be wrinkles to iron out.
AMD tells us: “We expect the performance uplift to be very similar between 24H2 and 23H2 with KB5041587 installed.”
Analysis: Similar but not identical
So, that’s the other caveat here – the performance boost should be ‘very similar’ meaning PC gamers on 23H2 may not get quite the same uplift as has been observed with testing using the preview of Windows 11 24H2.
However, even slightly slower performance of around a percent or two off the pace will still be excellent – you’ll still be getting an 8% boost or so. Indeed, even half the effect would be a 5% boost to frame rates which is still well worth having.
With that gaming performance carrot dangling in front of them, it’s likely that AMD Ryzen processor owners will leap on this optional update, and we wouldn’t blame them.
You don’t have to risk downloading a preview update on your everyday PC, mind you, as remember that KB5041587 will become the cumulative update for September next month. That finished patch will arrive in less than two weeks, in fact, complete with the gaming boosts for Ryzen 5000 and onwards.
As a reminder, we know – or at least have seen it demonstrated – that Ryzen 7000 and 9000 get major boosts in the area of 10% for gaming frame rates, but Ryzen 5000 should benefit too, it’s just that we’re awaiting testing to determine exactly what impact the optimizations will have in this case.
As has previously been theorized, Intel CPUs apparently won’t benefit from these optimizations – or fixes for broken stuff in Windows 11, perhaps, to look at it another way – as they are specific to AMD Ryzen chips. That said, we’d like to see more testing to that end, but Hardware Unboxed’s limited findings for a Core i5 chip appear to indicate that 24H2 has no effect on gaming performance.
If this is the case, it will of course throw something of a spanner in the works for Intel in terms of the battle of the best CPUs, with all modern Ryzen processors getting a hefty free gaming speed uplift out of nowhere.
We should also note that the 10% average boost that Hardware Unboxed observed did include some regressions – frame rate drops – balanced against some huge leaps of 20% (or even more) to produce that overall average. This is to say that results might vary across different PC games considerably – and different PC configurations too, obviously (plus scenarios where games are GPU bottlenecked, and CPU performance reflects that).
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