AMD Says It's Looking Into Gaming Performance Issues On Ryzen 7000

AMD is investigating reports of "unexpected" variations in performance across the company's new Ryzen 7000 processors for certain games.

In a recently published advisory, the Ryzen designer said it will work with game developers and other component vendors to iron out the issues, which revolve around some games running slower on Ryzen 7000 chips that have two core-complex dies (CCDs) versus those with one.

Twitter user CapFrameX, for instance, found that the Ryzen 9 7950X could run Metro Exodus faster with one CCD disabled compared to when its two CCDs are enabled, like they are out of the box.

Ok AMD, this is serious. R9 7950X stock vs single CCD. Windows 11 22H2. Huge difference between 1 and 2 CCDs. pic.twitter.com/XenZuxaknV

— CapFrameX (@CapFrameX) October 15, 2022

While the issues may come as a surprise to users, AMD said they are not extraordinary and explained that there are many factors, both in the hardware and software, that could be the culprit.

"Many factors affect gaming performance, including the game engine, CPU architecture, GPU selection and memory choices. As new architectures enter the market, we often observe performance anomalies which must be addressed by the component vendor or the game publisher."

AMD said it's been customary for the company to address performance anomalies as reports come in since the introduction of the Ryzen processors in 2017.

But AMD may not always agree that there is an issue.

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In the same advisory, the semiconductor firm said it has also seen reports of differences in performance between Windows 11 and Windows 10 for some games. Based on recent testing, the company said it has not found a "material difference" in performance between operating systems.

You may remember that AMD's Zen-based processors had performance issues when Windows 11 was still fresh a year ago and that it had fixed these with a firmware update earlier this year.

AMD launched the Ryzen 7000 series in late August, making them the first 5nm CPUs for desktop PCs. Like previous generations, these processors use a chiplet architecture that consists of one or two CCDs, each of which come with six or eight CPU cores. This allows the new chips to pack up to 16 cores, which, in this case, would be the Ryzen 9 7950X.

While these performance issues may be considered run-of-the-mill by AMD, the company needs to do all it can to prop up its plummeting PC business, which saw revenue decline by 40 percent in the third quarter in the face of a weakening market. ®