AMD says Microsoft’s next big Windows 11 update will improve Zen 5 CPU performance

AMD says Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 11 version 24H2 update will improve performance for its new Zen 5 CPUs. The Ryzen 9000 series launched earlier this month, and failed to live up to AMD’s performance promises in most reviews. After rumors of a Windows bug, AMD has revealed that AMD-specific branch prediction code will be optimized in Windows 11 version 24H2, which is expected to ship next month.

“Zen 5 will see the biggest boost, but this Windows update will improve performance for Zen 4 and Zen 3 as well,” admits AMD. While the chip maker hasn’t revealed how much better its older CPUs will perform, it’s predicting a 13 percent performance improvement for its 9950X CPU in Far Cry 6 running 24H2 instead of 23H2, and a seven percent jump for Cyberpunk 2077. Both are fairly significant increases for a single Windows update. AMD says it’s “collaborating with Microsoft to roll out this optional update to all Windows 11 users soon.”

Reviewers found that in some cases the previous generation Ryzen 9 7950X looked like better value than AMD’s new flagship Ryzen 9 9950X. Over a 13-game average running at 1080p with an RTX 4090, Hardware Unboxed found that the 9950X was just a single percent faster than the existing 7950X. In productivity tasks, that gap was just 3 percent.

We’ll now have to wait for reviewers to test 24H2 with these latest Ryzen chips to see if AMD’s claims of a bigger boost to these chips are accurate, particularly as Zen 4 and Zen 3 processors will be improved too. Despite the poor initial gaming benchmark results for the 9950X, AMD insists the Ryzen 9000 series “delivers leadership performance across content creation, productivity and AI applications.”