AMD: Ryzen CPU owners should avoid Windows 11

Microsoft’s newly released Windows 11 operating system may significantly decrease the performance of Ryzen CPUs, AMD said on Wednesday, as it advised users to stick to Windows 10.

The semiconductor manufacturer has also warned that Windows 11 may cause “measured and functional L3 cache latency” to “increase by ~3X”, according to an article on its support page.

This means that access to apps that are “sensitive to memory subsystem” might be slowed down by 3% to 5%, while “games commonly used for eSports”, such as Counter-Strike, Fortnite, or League of Legends, might see performance drops of between 10% and 15%.

This isn’t the only issue affecting Ryzen users who have recently upgraded to Windows 11. The operating system has also been found to disregard AMD’s “preferred cores” feature, which tracks which CPU cores are capable of achieving the highest boost frequencies at a given time, making it possible to “preferentially schedule threads on a processor’s fastest core”.

This issue results in a drop in performance across apps that are “sensitive to the performance of one or a few CPU threads”.

AMD said that it is investigating the issues alongside Microsoft, with both companies working on a fix to be delivered through a software update by the end of the month.

Until a fix is available, customers have been advised to continue to use Windows 10.

The news comes just days after Microsoft confirmed that Windows 11 has compatibility issues with Oracle’s virtualisation software VirtualBox. Users were recommended not to manually upgrade using the “update now” button or the Media Creation Tool until this issue has been resolved. Oracle has announced plans to release a fix in October 2021, and users can check on its progress here.

Microsoft is also working on a resolution of compatibility issues with Intel, with a fix scheduled for the October 12 security update. Prior to that, Windows 11 was also criticised for causing problems for users of the Cốc Cốc browser, which last year was named Vietnam’s second most popular browser.