More Zen 5 Thoughts, Poor AMD Communication, Ryzen Windows Issues

Episode 41: Now that all the main Zen 5 processors (for now) have been released, we discuss more elements of the launch, including the weird Ryzen bug with Windows and AMD's communication issues at launch

CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
00:38 - More Zen 5 Thoughts After the 9950X Review
14:52 - Impacts on the AM5 Platform
24:19 - What Role Did Leakers Play?
36:39 - The Ryzen Windows "Bug"
53:34 - AMD's Poor Launch Communication
1:22:07 - Updates From Our Boring Lives

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST

SUPPORT US DIRECTLY

LINKS

[MrGrzegorzD]

About this administrator account, I tried it with 5800x3d and my Warhammer 3 battle benchmark went from 137fps to 158 average. Lows went up 25fps....

[bart_fox_hero]

I used to watch some “leaker” channels on here, but you guys nailed it. The first time one of them spent a full minute emphasizing that he leaked a thing first, not some other guy, and don’t you dare get it wrong. This was HIS leak. It’s a bizarre ego-centric corner of tech for sure

[markcentral]

For cases including AMD and Intel - Why are we branding outright provable lies public presentations "poor communication"? I mean, it is.... but it's actually a pretty clear cut case of false advertising.

[erdelito]

Can you test the intel CPUs with the administrator account and see if they also see an uplift in fps?

[MarioCRO]

"Windows Bug" thing was already seen for first Intel's P/E core configuration CPUs with Windows scheduling. Nothing new, Microsoft will and should do something about it as it was in Intel's case.

[traversharty]

ZEN 5% for gamers and a more impressive uplift in productivity. Nothing wrong with that but their marketing team should be beaten with their own shoes.

[alistairblaire]

People keep saying that the admin account performance is expected because background security tasks aren’t running. But my understanding is that Windows Defender runs even when in the admin account. Admin mode isn’t Safe mode, the only difference should be that you have full unrestricted system level access to everything. Protected memory, core isolation, and Windows Defender should all be functional in administrator mode.

[PineyJustice]

It's not irrelevant that it's running that much better in linux, it shows that the problem is in windows and needs to be fixed in windows, regardless of if it's on microsofts side or AMDs side.

[beachslap]

They better extend am5 support to 2077+ if that's the level of performance uplifts we are getting each gen from now on.

[KiltedCritic]

What's incredible as well is the faff involved now installing the 9900/9950Xs, that you need to treat it as a dual CCD X3D CPU and do a fresh Windows install. Instead of install CPU and go, that's before even getting into the admin account thing, this is stuff an average user isn't going to ever do or be bothered with, so it makes the pre-release marketing all the more deceptive. AMD have got to find a better with round these issues.

[marktackman]

Like Hardware Unboxed I will wait for the X3D series to launch before I call Zen5 an official failure.

[vorpled]

It was really interesting watching your 9600x/9700x review, and then watching Wendell's review, and just seeing the wide gap between one that's negative, and one that's excited - because what they are looking for in the chip is totally different.

[israellewis]

Any performance increase on another operating system is relevant.
Because it means there is more performance to leverage.

Microsoft sucks. Windows 11 sucks.

[bassben]

L1Techs and Phoronix show exactly where Zen5 was focused: Linux and Linux Servers. 15-20% Linux browser performance improvements, 15-20% compile time improvements on the linux kernel, 40-50% improvements in Numpy, 35% improvements in PyTorch. These things are made to be AM5 Epyc. As a linux user with regular Python and maths work on my desktop, I'm very excited for these. As a gamer, I couldn't care less. I'm super frustrated that AMD was so misleading with the gaming numbers they threw around though. Why can't they just say "3-5% gaming performance improvements at the same power or equal performance at 30% reduced power. Productivity performance is 15-30% better"

[alrecks]

definitely a big oof on AMD's marketing dept, which seems to be bleeding from Radeon.

[georgepetrakis]

You should try talk with an AMD representative ON THE RECORD for this clusterfuck. AMD should either fix the performance somehow, or apologize to everybody for their misleading marketing/advertising. I can't believe big corporations are not accountable for this kind of false advertising.

[markldevine]

It appears that AMD's stance is, "If gaming is your priority, buy an X3D". When my employer passes out desktops/laptops, I'll be elated when they're Zen 5 -- business use. I love what AMD delivered here.

Gaming = X3D (best-of-breed)
General = the rest of the Zen 5 catalog with "good-to-very good" gaming

I'll be running Llama & Flux & all subsequent FOSS AI. I'm gonna love the 9950X. I'll play a AAA once in a while, and I'll be very satisfied.

[SandyWhitmore]

12:20 PC World's issue, IIRC, was not that the results were simply low, but low in comparison to the numbers shown on the review guide by around 10%

[alentanor]

I doubt that was a bug, it's probably just Windows doing some background tasks for security in normal mode, while the admin account lacks those tasks.

[epi]

AM4 went from 14 nm to 7 nm with 3D V-Cache, that kind of performance uplift in games within a socket will never be seen again. And ZEN 6 on AM6 seems unlikely because I don't expect DDR6 to be ready yet (maybe for servers). And AM6 with DDR5 would be pure insanity.