Windows 11 24H2 is expected to deliver a considerable boost to AMD’s Ryzen 9000, 7000, and 5000 processors when it comes to gaming, and some fresh testing gives us a good idea of what kind of frame rate gains we’re looking at – huge ones, frankly.
According to some extensive testing (over a suite of 43 popular PC games at 1080p resolution) conducted by Hardware Unboxed – a YouTube channel that’s been making some major efforts in terms of evaluating Zen 5 performance – the new Ryzen 9700X is 11% faster in Windows 11 24H2 compared to the current version 23H2.
Now, that’s a massive boost as mentioned, when considered in isolation, but the twist here is that the Ryzen 7700X was also put through its paces – and was found to be 10% faster in 24H2 versus 23H2.
So, in other words, yes, the 9700X is a lot faster when 24H2 is applied to the benchmarking mix (and the update isn’t even fully finished yet, remember), but the 7700X gets the same boost really.
As Hardware Unboxed makes clear, this is an unprecedented situation, in that what are now last-gen processors from AMD are getting a 10% boost, on average, thanks to Windows 11 24H2, and some games at the top-end of the scale are 20% to 30% faster.
Think about that for a moment – that kind of 10% average increase is equivalent to a generational uplift (if admittedly a modest one), provided by a simple Windows update.
What’s driving these gains (which will also, to some extent, apparently apply to some apps, too)? As Team Red has explained before, it’s down to “optimized AMD-specific branch prediction code” and it’s not necessary to know the ins and outs of what that means. Essentially, it’s tinkering under the hood and fine-tuning said code for some evidently major gains (or, as others have theorized, Microsoft fixing a major spanner in the works somewhere with that code).
Analysis: Amazing boosts – but also something of a disappointment for current-gen buyers
So, this is amazing, right? Well, yes and no. Yes, it is, certainly for Ryzen 7000 CPU owners, who are getting major – almost generational – gains from out of nowhere, something that hasn’t happened before thanks to a software update (not that we can recall, anyway). Ryzen 5000 CPUs should benefit too, but those aren’t tested here, so we don’t know to what extent.
The disappointing aspect is for Ryzen 9000 processor owners, who do still get a big boost – it’s just not any better than that delivered with Ryzen 7000. A percentage point of difference is neither really here nor there, let’s be honest, and the apparent reality is that the Ryzen 9700X is only 2% faster for gaming (with the 24H2 update) than the 7700X, which is underwhelming and rather embarrassing for AMD, even.
Particularly when AMD has promised bigger gains for Zen 5 than other Zen processors with this 24H2 optimization, to the tune of approaching 10% in terms of the difference between Ryzen 9000 and 7000 – 2% is a long way off that.
As for Intel CPUs, Hardware Unboxed tested the Core i5-14600K in a small sample of games and found no difference in performance with the 24H2 update (save for one outlier, Gears 5). So, the conclusion is that this really is a set of AMD-specific performance improvements as Team Red has previously insisted.
In short, Windows 11 24H2 is going to be a superb update for PC gamers with Ryzen 9000 and 7000 chips (and possibly 5000 series CPUs too) – even if the overall gaming gains for Ryzen 9000 over the previous generation fall very flat still.
The obvious caveat is that this is just a single set of testing – albeit an extensive batch of benchmarks. Even Hardware Unboxed admits that it’s nervous that these results might be somehow awry, given that there is such a big performance difference delivered here by the 24H2 update. Partly because it is a bit of a head-scratcher as to how AMD has presented these 24H2 boosts – trying to frame Ryzen 9000 as having substantially bigger gains from the Windows 11 update, which apparently isn’t really true. (Technically, it is – but as we’ve seen, the difference is so minor it’s pretty much negligible).
We really need to wait for other third-party tests to verify the kind of boosts apparently on offer here, before we jump to any conclusions – but it seems for now that 24H2 will be pretty revolutionary for gamers with modern AMD CPUs.
The other obvious matter that remains here is Windows 10. Is Windows 10 affected by whatever’s currently dragging down Ryzen performance in Windows 11 23H2? It may be that it isn’t, and this whole set of optimization measures is meaningless for Windows 10. However, if not, the follow-up question is whether the work will be done to patch things up in the next big Windows 10 update, or are we too close to End of Life for Microsoft to bother?
