Zen 5 CPUs get better: AMD reportedly quashes severe latency plaguing Ryzen 9000 CPUs
We reported late last month that the CCD-to-CCD latency of the Ryzen 9 9950X was considerably more than the Ryzen 9 7950X. Anandtech’s testing revealed the inter-CCD latency for the Zen 5 processors to be 180 ns, more than 2x the 76 ns of the Ryzen 9 7950X. We mentioned at the time that, since the Zen 5 CPUs are identical in terms of the I/O die and Infinity Fabric to their predecessors, the issue seemed to be caused by buggy software.
In line with our reporting, the issue appears to have been fixed through an AGESA 1.2.0.2 update on Asus’ 600-series motherboards, and the Ryzen 9000 inter-CCD latency is now much lower than before.
Ryzen 9000 latency is now on par with Ryzen 7000 chips
According to the testing done by domdtxdissar over at Overclock.net’s forums, the Ryzen 9 9950X shows a CCD latency of ~75 ns on an Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Gene motherboard using BIOS 2401 with the AGESA 1.2.0.2 patch. For reference, the Ryzen 9 9950X returns a latency of ~180 ns with the same settings but on BIOS 2301 (AGESA 1.2.0.1A).
It is important to mention that the user tested the Ryzen 9 9950X with CapFrameX’s core-to-core latency tool. So, a different tool might return a different result.
Moreover, these results have been confirmed by hardwareLUXX, as the publication measured a latency of 95 ns, down from 200 ns before. This is on par with hardwareLUXX’s 80-85 ns numbers for the Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 9 5950X.
AMD products often reach their full potential over time
Many people associate AMD products with software issues, especially at launch. This reputation is justified to some extent. For instance, when the RX 7900 XT and the RX 7900 XTX came out in December 2022. The GPUs had issues, including high idle power consumption. AMD subsequently squashed the bug with a software update.
Sometimes, the problems plaguing AMD chips can also be traced back to lacking support from partners like Microsoft. We saw this with the Ryzen 7000-based systems exhibiting stutters on Windows 11. Similarly, the performance of the Zen 5 CPUs is also measurably better on Windows 11 24H2 than it is on Windows 11 23H2.
So, as time goes by, we hope the Ryzen 9000 processors mature into the products that AMD promised at Computex 2024.
Source(s)
VideoCardz, hardwareLUXX, domdtxdissar on overclock.net, Teaser image: AMD, Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash, edited
