Windows 11 is apparently slowing down AMD CPUs by up to 15%

If your current setup contains an AMD CPU, you might want to sit down for this, as some disconcerting news is about to come your way. T

The hardware manufacturer has announced that all of its WIndows 11-compatible processors can suffer from reduced performance in some applications when used with the new operating system, with extreme outliers in eSports gaming titles resulting in up to a 10-15% reduction.

For apps, AMD says that the performance impact weighs in at 3–5%. A software update and a Windows Update are in the works to address the issues, with both expected to arrive this month.

UPDATE: Windows 11 patch for AMD Ryzen CPUs rolling out next week

Both AMD and Microsoft stated that patches for the two issues were heading out within this month. According to the giant companies, both the issues have been resolved and the patches will begin rolling out in a week’s time.

The CPPC issue has been resolved. The AMD driver power profile is in the release process and targeted for GA release on 10/21. If it is needed before GA, AMD can share the driver directly with customers upon request

As for the L3 cache latency issue, the status was also changed to resolved. Microsoft plans to release the fix in their 10C Windows Update which is targeted for 10/19.

The AMD driver power profile is currently in the release process & has already been delivered to OEMs but a general rollout of the driver is expected on 21st October.

These updates will fix the majority of the issues encountered in Windows 11 when running AMD’s Ryzen CPUs on desktops and mobile platforms.

AMD processors are taking a serious hit from Windows 11

These major errors impact every Ryzen CPU supported in Windows 11. That means all Zen+, Zen 2, and Zen 3 CPUs that comprise the Ryzen 2000, Ryzen 3000, Ryzen 4000, and Ryzen 5000 processors.

Furthermore, select AMD EPYC processors for data centers, along with some newer Athlon chips, are also impacted. You can see the full list here, just to get a better idea of what’s actually happening.

AMD officials state that the issue boils down into two categories, with the first one being the measured and functional L3 latency can increase by ~3X.

This means you can see the impact with measurement utilities and that it results in real performance degradation in games and applications.

This bug impacts applications that are sensitive to memory subsystem latency, causing a 3–5% reduction in performance.

Due to this, gamers can sense a 10–15% performance reduction outliers in games commonly used for eSports, which isn’t surprising given that games tend to be extremely sensitive to memory and cache latency.

As if the situation wasn’t bad enough, AMD’s major core feature, which directs single-threaded applications to the fastest two cores on the chip, also might not work as expected.

Of course, performance in lightly-threaded applications will be impacted. The company says this reduction may be more noticeable in chips with eight or more cores and a 65W or higher TDP rating.

AMD says it expects a Windows update to resolve the L3 cache issues, while a software update will remediate the problem with the UEFI CPPC2 preferred core technology.

We’re really not surprised to hear about these problems, as the release of Windows 11 wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns.

Internet connections have also been slower, and worse, the operating system upgrade bricked some HP and Dell devices, rendering them unusable.

Have you experienced any sort of issues after upgrading to Windows 11? Share your experience with us in the comments section below.