Ryzen 7000 vs Windows 11 22H2 Update – AVOID THIS UPDATE!

You might have seen headlines saying that the newest version of Windows 11, the 22H2 update, is hurting AMD’s new Ryzen 7000 series CPU performance. Well, now I have my hands on some of these bad boys, let’s test that and see what’s going on here! I’ll be using both the 7900X and 7600X for my testing here, in this killer system from Cyberpower, complete with 5600MT/s DDR5 and a monster RTX 4090. Let’s jump in.

Starting with the gaming results, I’m testing at 1440p here on generally high settings, save for CSGO which I’ve swapped to low. Speaking of CSGO, let’s start with that. There was some talk of Windows 11 not carrying over the CCX-aware scheduler patch we saw in Windows 10, and it somewhat looks like that’s the case here. The 7600X on the older 21H2 patch ran a little faster on average, and sported by far the best 1% and 0.1% lows. Compare that to the 7900X on the same OS version, which while slightly slower on average performed a little better in the 1% lows than the newer patch, but both are less than the 7600X. Interestingly though, there appears to be other issues at play, as even the 7600X suffers both lower average, and importantly lower 1% and 0.1% low numbers than its older patch run.

To be able to test a range of factors, I opted to have Cyberpunk run with its Ray Tracing Medium setting, although with DLSS disabled. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the performance of all four runs here were almost identical across the board. That’s great news for anyone with a 4090! Even the 1% and 0.1% lows weren’t affected much more than standard variance.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider tends to be pretty reliable and repeatable, and here, rather strangely, on the 7900X the average performance is a bit of an improvement – only 4 FPS but still – but the 1% and 0.1% low numbers drop by about 4 FPS. Compare that to the 7600X which actively loses performance on the newer patch, both on average and in the 1% lows, by 5 or 6 FPS. That’s not exactly a significant drop here though.

Next up is Microsoft Flight Simulator – a rather ironic title to find a bigger difference on. Both chips performed better on the older 21H2 patch, with the 7900X running 10% faster, or 9 FPS on average. It did also see slightly higher 1% and 0.1% low numbers, although it’s not exactly a big deal there. The 7600X also ran faster on the older patch, although with a smaller 4FPS difference. Interestingly the 1% lows were actually better on the newer patch, while the 0.1% lows were higher on the old version. There isn’t a massive delta here though, so I wouldn’t put as much stock into this result as the 7900X.

As for Fortnite, forgetting the abysmal 0.1% low figures on the 7900X as that’s a bit of stuttering Fortnite likes to do sometimes, both chips ran faster on the old patch, with the 7600X running over 10FPS faster, and netting 12FPS higher 1% lows. Compare that to the 7900X which ran more like 8FPS faster on average, but 1FPS slower in the 1% lows, that’s less of an issue.

I think it’s safe to say that something doesn’t seem right here. Some results show the 7900X with its 2 CCDs struggle more, whereas others show a bigger difference with just the 7600X. I thought it’d also be wise to look at the productivity performance, considering those tests are literally CPU exclusive, and I think they might explain some things.

I’ll start with Cinebench R23 single threaded, where you can see both chips perform better on the old patch. It’s not that much better, we are talking about 15 points out of 1900, or 25 points out of 1950, but both chips ran faster on the older patch, slightly. Now let’s look at the multi threaded results… Yeah, you are seeing that right. The 7900X runs FASTER on the newer patch. by 1000 points, whereas the 7600X runs SLOWER, by around 300 points. That’s 4% faster for the 7900X and 2% for the 7600X. What’s going on here?

Even more interestingly, in Blender and the BMW scene both chips ran faster on the older patch, albeit only by a second each – but in Gooseberry… Oh man. The 7900X ran 9 seconds slower on the new patch, and the 7600X was nearly 30 seconds slower! That’s a substantial difference – ok it’s still 2% and 4%, but still that’s a lot to be dropping by updating Windows…

So what’s going on here? Well honestly, I’m not sure. I thought having a single CCD active might explain things, you know Microsoft just forgot to add the CCX-aware scheduler code back in after spending all their time making Intel’s new hybrid CPUs work well enough, but it doesn’t seem that simple. In some operations the 7600X is affected MORE then the 7900X. The good news is that the difference doesn’t seem incredibly substantial. It’s not like you are getting half the performance you should have or anything, but if you do have a Ryzen 7000 CPU… you should probably steer clear of the new 22H2 patch for the time being anyway.