Old and new Ryzen CPUs get speed boost with optional Windows update

Among AMD’s explanations for the somewhat disappointing Ryzen 9000 performance reports from reviewers earlier this month: that the upcoming Windows 11 24H2 update should bring some improvements to CPU scheduling that should boost the performance of the new CPUs and their Zen 5-based architecture.

But rather than make Ryzen owners wait for the 24H2 update to come out later this fall (or have them install a beta version of a major OS update), AMD and Microsoft have pushed the schedule improvements to Windows 11 23H2. Ryzen 5000, 7000, and 9000 CPU users can install Update KB5041587 By going to Windows Update in Settings, selecting Advanced options, then Optional updates.

“We expect the performance boost to be very similar between the 24H2 and 23H2 with KB5041587 installed,” an AMD representative told Ars.com.

In current builds of Windows 11 23H2, CPU scheduling improvements are only available using the Windows built-in administrator account. The update enables these improvements for typical user accounts as well.

Older AMD CPUs also benefit.

AMD’s messaging has focused primarily on how the 24H2 update (and 23H2 with KB5041587 installed) improves Ryzen 9000 performance; across a handful of benchmarks provided, the company says speeds can improve by anywhere between zero and 13 percent compared to Windows 11 23H2. There are also benefits for users of CPUs running older Zen 4 (Ryzen 7000/8000G) and Zen 3 (Ryzen 5000) architectures, but AMD wasn’t specific about how much of an improvement either of those older architectures might bring.

the Hardware Unboxed YouTube Channel I ran some early gaming tests with current versions of the 24H2 update, and there’s good news for Ryzen 7000 CPU owners and less good news for AMD. The channel found that, on average, across dozens of games, average frame rates increased by about 10 percent for the Zen 4-based Ryzen 7 7700X. The Ryzen 7 9700X improved even more, AMD said, but only by 11 percent. At default settings, the 9700X is only 2 or 3 percent faster than the nearly two-year-old 7700X in these games, whether you’re running the 24H2 update or not.

This early data suggests that Ryzen 7000 and Ryzen 5000 owners will see at least a marginal benefit from upgrading to Windows 11 24H2, which is a good thing you can get for free with a software update. But there are caveats. Hardware Unboxed tested CPU performance strictly in games running at 1080p on a high-end Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 — one of the few scenarios in any modern gaming PC where the CPU might limit your performance before your GPU does. If you’re playing at higher resolutions like 1440p or 4K, your GPU will typically revert to being the bottleneck, and the CPU performance improvements won’t be noticeable.

The update also bumps up already high frame rates; one game went from an average frame rate of 142 fps to 158 fps on the 7700X, and from 167 to 181 fps on the 9700X, for example. Even side-by-side, it’s an increase that most people will be hard-pressed to see. Other types of workloads may benefit as well — AMD says that Procyon office standard It ran about 6 percent faster on Windows 11 24H2 — but we don’t have definitive data on real-world workloads yet.

We don’t expect performance to improve much, if at all, in either heavily multi-threaded workloads where all CPU cores are actively working at once or exclusively single-threaded workloads where a single core is constantly running. AMD’s numbers for both the single-threaded and multi-threaded versions of the Cinebench benchmark, which simulates these types of workloads, were exactly the same on Windows 11 23H2 and 24H2 for the Ryzen 9000.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the Ryzen 7 9700X is held back significantly by its new lower 65W TDP in our testing, compared to the Ryzen 7 7700X’s 105W TDP. Both CPUs performed similarly in the games tested by Hardware Unboxed, both before and after the 24H2 update. But the 9700X is still the cooler, more efficient chip, and is capable of higher clock speeds if you either manually set its TDP to 105W or use features like Precision Boost Overdrive to adjust its power limits. Performance is important for both CPUs, but comparing the 9700X to the 7700X at stock settings is the worst-case scenario for a generational increase in Ryzen 9000 performance.

Windows 11 24H2: Coming Soon but Available Now

Microsoft has revealed some details about the basics of the 24H2 update, which looks like older Windows 11 builds but includes a new compiler, a new kernel, and a new schedule under the hood. Microsoft specifically talked about these in the context of improving Arm CPU performance and the speed of compiled x86 apps as it prepares to push Microsoft Surface devices and other Copilot+ PCs with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon chips in them. However, we hope to see some subtle benefits for other CPU architectures as well.

The 24H2 update is still technically a preview, and is available through Microsoft’s Windows Insider Release Preview channel. Users can download it from Windows Update Or as an ISO file If they want to create a USB installer for upgrading multiple systems, Microsoft and PC makers have been shipping the 24H2 update to Surface devices and other PCs for weeks, and you shouldn’t have many issues with it in daily use at this point. For those who prefer to wait, the update should start rolling out to the public this fall.