AMD has just published a new blog explaining that a new Windows update will boost gaming performance on its Zen 5 processors, and talks about the discrepancy in performance between its internal gaming benchmarks, and reviewers' data.

In the blog post, AMD kinda dodges the entire thing... but it tries to explain why its new Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" CPUs aren't performing as well with tech reviewers and gamers compared to its internal benchmarks.
Some of the reasons that AMD said including the different test configurations of reviewers, which definitely makes sense, but we didn't have these defensive blog posts when Zen 4 launched, or Zen 3, or Zen 2, or Zen 1. AMD also said it's using a specific configuration of hardware for its Intel system that it uses in-house for benchmarking comparison, with DDR5-6000 memory and Intel's new Default Settings (Baseline) which wouldn't align with how most reviewers have their Intel setups configured.
But, AMD does note that it uses Admin mode for its automated testing, inside of the Windows 11 Version 24H2. This is a Windows Insider update to the operating system, which users have to manually enable, reboot, download the update, install the update, reboot again, to get to. Gaming performance will rise with this new update once Microsoft pushes it out to all Windows 11 users.
Why AMD-generated gaming data differs from reviewer data: For our Ryzen 9000 launch, AMD internal labs generated data that showed a 9% average generational uplift in 1080p gaming versus Ryzen 7000 Series, and an average of 6% higher performance across more than 30 games when compared against the competition's best. Not all reviews are seeing these results, and this reflects the complexity of high-performance PC testing today given the number of system and software variables. There are several factors specifically creating these differences in some Ryzen 9000 reviews:
- The AMD gaming test suite includes a broad set of esports, AAA, and popular older games, which are a combination of CPU- and GPU-bound titles. Game performance conclusions can be influenced significantly by the makeup of the test suite.
- AMD tested Intel configurations using comparable DDR5-6000 memory as well as Intel default settings-baseline power profile which can have a small impact on gaming performance.
- AMD also tests with Windows Virtualization-based Security (VBS) enabled. This is the default Windows behavior and Microsoft recommends activating VBS to improve security, however it can affect gaming performance.
- The "Zen 5" architecture incorporates a wider branch prediction capacity than prior "Zen" generations. Our automated test methodology was run in "Admin" mode which produced results that reflect branch prediction code optimizations not present in the version of Windows reviewers used to test Ryzen 9000 Series. We have a further update on accessing this performance for users below.