[AMD] asked me if I was testing with an Administrator account [as distinct from a user account with administrator rights]. […] As far as I can tell, if the Ryzen processors aren’t run on an account with these elevated privileges then they don’t function as intended for bursty workloads, so that means gaming in particular. AMD told me this bug – if that’s indeed what it is – won’t impact sustained all-core workloads.

Across our 13 game sample, the 9700X saw a 4% performance improvement when compared to the day 1 review data. Meanwhile, the 7700X saw a 3% improvement. […] So we’ve improved the 9700X’s position [compared to the 7700X] by 1% - that’s it.

This Windows bug – which AMD has told me should be addressed in a future Windows update – seems to be more of a general Ryzen bug, at least based on the testing we’ve been able to do so far. So, it’s not an issue that specifically affects Zen 5 processors - I need to make that clear.

It’s very possible that the Administrator account will also boost the gaming performance of Intel CPUs. [HU chose to publish before doing Intel testing in order to get the information out that it wasn’t a Zen5-specific problem]