As usual since its launch, Windows 11 returns to star in another performance issue, this time on a generation of processors AMD Ryzen 7000. However, the origin here may be in processors or firmware and not in the operating system, as changes introduced at the architecture level would cause performance problems in some contexts.

AMD issued a notice confirming that it had received reports of unexpected performance results when running certain games on Windows 11 and its Ryzen 7000 processors. The company responded by saying that it had not noticed anything unusual when comparing the performance obtained with Windows 10. and Windows 11 as you stated:

“We have received reports of unexpected performance differences in certain games with AMD Ryzen desktop processors, as well as performance differences between Windows 11 and Windows 10 in certain game titles. We are currently investigating, but based on testing to date, we have not seen a significant difference in game performance between OS versions in various operating scenarios and game titles.”

“Game performance is affected by many factors, including the game engine, CPU architecture, GPU selection, and memory options. As new architectures come to market, we often encounter performance anomalies that must be addressed by the component manufacturer or game publisher. It is not a new or unexpected phenomenon.’

“As we have done since the introduction of Ryzen, when these performance anomalies come to light, we will use them to encourage our partners to work with game developers and ecosystem hardware partners to implement optimizations that eliminate the anomalies.“.

In a nutshell, AMD blames the problems found in the Ryzen 7000 on software that is not yet ready to properly take advantage of the architecture of the new processors. This scenario is far from unlikely, as Linux faced the same thing a year ago when Intel’s Alder Lake processors were released. However, not everyone is sure about the company’s reaction.

In Tom’s Hardware, one of the media that reported on the regression in performance level compared to the Ryzen 5000, they published the results of the tests they conducted, in which you can see Ryzen models with a single CCD (chip). outperforms some dual CCD models that are equipped with multiple cores.

Tom’s Hardware first ran the tests with the RTX 3090, but then decided to repeat the tests with the RTX 4090 and updated the board’s firmware to end up with the same scenario. Considering that the Ryzen 7000 was recently launched and that recently the firmware of the original motherboards often does not come out well, it is of course not excluded that the solution comes from this front.

At this point we enter a scenario where there are different options. The first thing is that there are games that prefer fewer cores and threads, which might be acceptable considering that software tends to lag behind hardware, with lags that can exceed half a decade in some contexts. It would be affected by that on dual-chip AMD models, the secondary CCD tends to run at slightly lower frequencies. Another scenario could be in the associated latencies in a dual chip design due to the Infinity Fabric interconnect.

Some have argued that this is another issue with Windows 11, but AMD’s statement raised questions. At Tom’s Hardware, they subscribe to the theory of under-optimization of games to account for the aforementioned lag that software usually goes with respect to hardware.

To show an example of how software often lags behind hardware, it’s enough to mention that games compiled for 64-bit x86 began to standardize in 2012, right after Dice and EA announced that Battlefield 3 would require Windows 7 and a 64-bit x86 processor. . If we say that 64bit was already established as a standard for Intel Core 2 Duo and Intel Core 2 Quad a few years earlier, the situation can already be imagined.

We’ll see where this issue of performance issues that some are reporting when using Windows 11 on the AMD Ryzen 7000 pops up, but for now it seems all doors are open.