AMD Ryzen Branch Prediction Optimizations Now Available to Windows 11 23H2

[Wirko]

If prediction optimisations are to decide what to keep in the cache, it's not going to benefit the X3D series much.

They are not to "decide" but indirectly they have some effect, yes, because a (small) amount of mispredicted code and data will go into the cache. The content of the cache is mostly data, not program code.

 

[Marsil]

I can confirm I got about 11% FPS uplift with Ryzen 3900X

 

[Tomorrow]

View attachment 361022

Also these 2 ^^ seem to be either out of order or the update actually decreased performance.
If they are reversed, then those 0.1% improvements are really nice. You've got 33% raise in Hitman, 39% in Titshima, in SoTR it's above 60%.

Nope these are in order. Time stamps are correct.
The decreased performance could have been run to run variance as each test was only run once.

Ideally for benchmarking it's a good idea do at least 3 runs for each test and then combine the numbers to eliminate outliers.
One test could have been underperforming for god knows what but if 3 tests are underperforming post-patch then that's a pattern.
The post-patch tests also lasted about 18-25 seconds longer.

Here are the frametime for both tests that should give a better idea of smoothness instead of just looking at the framerates:

 

[Chrispy_]

In which way is it a horrible mess? Honest question.

Not my words, but those of Linus Torvalds!

Too many distros. Hundreds too many. There are maybe 20 popular, active distros and even if you boil it down to the most fundamental 3 branches using the Linux kernel, those three branches (SUSE/RH/Debian) don't just use the vanilla kernel. You literally download a precompiled binary application that matches your particular branch of Linux, or compile it yourself for the distro you're using. That's not user-friendly, it's not beginner-friendly, and it sure as hell can't be described as anything other than a fragmented mess.

Individual Linux distros like Arch or Ubuntu are decent, but the whole ecosystem isn't a cohesive, clean, easy-to-understand experience for most people. Torvalds was 100% right when he called it a fragmented mess.

 

[Tropick]

Basically there are 2 major issues with older versions of Windows. The Branch Prediction/ scheduling issues, and then the Virtualisation Based Security performance issues.
Running as sys Admin / Root bypass the VBS issue, this is why there are some gains on 23H2 doing that.

Also some early testing shows that 23H2 is still slower than 24H2 after this patch. At lease for these games the patch did F'k all on 23H2, at least for this guy's set up.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/1f2t9s5/_/lk990xr
Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Could the VBS issues be corrected in standard user accounts by disabling virtualization entirely in the BIOS?

 

[Tomorrow]

Could the VBS issues be corrected in standard user accounts by disabling virtualization entirely in the BIOS?

Yes. Wendell from Level1tech said as much in he's video.

For Gigabyte boards at least it's located in:
Tweaker >Advanced CPU Settings > SVM Mode

Disabling this obviously also disables CPU virtualization so bye-bye trying to run VM's.

 

[ibizpl]

Did you place those times correctly?
It looks like in some games you're doing even worse after applying the update. Makes no sense.

It looks like ALL games are doing worse AFTER update or am I reading it wrong?

 

[Event Horizon]

It's brave to install an update labeled preview by Microsoft. It contains other changes in addition to the branch prediction optimizations. Just FYI.

 

[Tomorrow]

It's brave to install an update labeled preview by Microsoft. It contains other changes in addition to the branch prediction optimizations. Just FYI.

I normally dont, but this sort of a special case. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-preview-9706ea0e-6f72-430e-b08a-878963dafe08

Gradual rollout​

These might not be available to all users because they will roll out gradually.

• [Windows Share] New! You can now share content to your Android device from the Windows Share window. To do this, you must pair your Android device to your Windows PC. Use the Link to Windows app on your Android device and Phone Link on your PC.
• [Narrator] This update makes scan mode respond quicker. This is especially helpful when you use Microsoft Edge and read large documents. To use scan mode, you must turn on Narrator first (Windows logo key + Ctrl + Enter). Then, turn on scan mode by pressing Caps lock + Spacebar during a Narrator session.
• [Voice access] You can now dictate the characters that you spell at a faster speed. You also have more editing options for the commands that select, delete, and move within text.

• [File Explorer]
  
  • When you press Windows logo key + E, a screen reader might say a pane has focus, or the focus might not be set at all.
  • When you press Ctrl + F, sometimes the search does not start.
  • Keyboard focus sometimes might get lost when you press Shift + Tab.
  • Screen readers do not announce when you open or browse items that are in a breadcrumb of the Open or Save dialog.
  • Screen readers do not announce when you open or browse items in the column header.

• [Widgets Board] We are rolling out an update to the Widgets Board to improve security and the APIs for creating widgets and feeds for users in EEA regions. As part of this update, the Microsoft Start Experiences app will power the Microsoft Start widget and feed experiences. Also, as part of this update, some existing widgets will be removed and others will be modified, temporarily affecting their functionality. This update sets the foundation for new widgets and other features in development, set to roll out soon.

This non-security update includes quality improvements. Below is a summary of the key issues that this update addresses when you install this KB. If there are new features, it lists them as well. The bold text within the brackets indicates the item or area of the change we are documenting.

• [Input Method Editor (IME)] When a combo box has input focus, a memory leak might occur when you close that window.
• [Country and Operator Settings Asset] This update brings COSA profiles up to date for certain mobile operators.
• [Bluetooth] External devices lose their connection when you deploy certain Bluetooth policies.
• [Bind Filter Driver] Your system might stop responding when it accesses symbolic links.
• [Unified Write Filter (UWF) and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)] An SCCM task to re-enable UWF fails because of a deadlock in UWF. This stops the device from restarting when you expect it.
• [Hibernate stop error] Your laptop stops responding after you resume it from hibernate. This occurs if you have closed and opened the lid many times.
• [File Explorer] The navigation pane does not update when you browse folders that are in a shell namespace extension.
• [Microsoft Entra single sign-on (SSO)] The SSO notice that the European Digital Markets Act (DMA) requires prompts too often. This occurs when you authenticate using a certificate. To learn more, see Upcoming changes to Windows single sign-on.
• [Windows Hello for Business] PIN reset does not work when you select the “I forgot my PIN’ link on the credentials screen.

Known issues in this update​

Applies to	Symptom	Workaround
All users	After installing this security update, you might face issues with booting Linux if you have enabled the dual-boot setup for Windows and Linux in your device. Resulting from this issue, your device might fail to boot Linux and show the error message “Verifying shim SBAT data failed: Security Policy Violation. Something has gone seriously wrong: SBAT self-check failed: Security Policy Violation.” The August 2024 Windows security update applies a Secure Boot Advanced Targeting (SBAT) setting to devices that run Windows to block old, vulnerable boot managers. This SBAT update will not be applied to devices where dual booting is detected. On some devices, the dual-boot detection did not detect some customized methods of dual-booting and applied the SBAT value when it should not have been applied.	Please refer to the workaround mentioned in Windows release health site for this issue.

 

[bjoyful]

22H2 support has ended. Upgrade to 23H2.

No it has not. Windows 11 22H2 will reach the end of updates on October 8, 2024. Source

 

[bjoyful]

Does this impact only games, or could it also enhance productivity stuff? I work with film music (Cubase, Kontakt, sample libraries streaming, and tons of FX) I haven’t updated Windows 11 in quite some time since my 7950X has been rock solid, but if there's free performance to be gained, it's worth considering.

I just watched this video, and someone in the comments pointed out that CPU and GPU temperatures increased by 5º and 2º, respectively. It seems there's a tradeoff to consider:

 

[Tomorrow]

No it has not. Windows 11 22H2 will reach the end of updates on October 8, 2024. Source

My bad. For some reason i remembered that it had EOL'd in February 2024 already.
Also this update is available for it: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB5041587+x64

 

[csendesmark]

No it hasn't. Your opinion of either OS does NOT reality make. WinME was a very excellent OS that was woefully misunderstood. Windows 11 likewise is very excellent WHEN/AFTER it is debloated and optimized.

Stop making statements about things you know little or nothing about.

Maybe your in your memories, but I don't understand why did you choose this hill to die on...
Win me were objectively one of the worst version of Windows:

And thanks for microsoft recent work, win 11 is also on a good way to get this reputation.

 

[Tomorrow]

Maybe your in your memories, but I don't understand why did you choose this hill to die on...
Win me were objectively one of the worst version of Windows:
View attachment 361066
And thanks for microsoft recent work, win 11 is also on a good way to get this reputation.

Criticism of Windows 10 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

People have forgotten what a mess Win10 was when it released.
The article does not list it but Win10 had one of the worst updates in recent memory where it deleted user data.

it's a bit comical coming from people complaining about Win11, that had a much smoother launch.

 

[csendesmark]

Criticism of Windows 10 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

People have forgotten what a mess Win10 was when it released.
The article does not list it but Win10 had one of the worst updates in recent memory where it deleted user data.

it's a bit comical coming from people complaining about Win11, that had a much smoother launch.

My point was the win me was a disaster (which you did not question), win me been quickly killed by the superior Win XP which is the second best version for all of the Windows.
Win 10 is marginally better than the 11, and personally I waited 5 years before I downgraded my Win 7 to win10, only because of it's EOL.
If M$ did not kill the Win 7, the win 10 +11 base would be smaller than the 7 userbase.
I rest my case.

 

[Tomorrow]

My point was the win me was a disaster (which you did not question), win me been quickly killed by the superior Win XP which is the second best version for all of the Windows.
Win 10 is marginally better than the 11, and personally I waited 5 years before I downgraded my Win 7 to win10, only because of it's EOL.
If M$ did not kill the Win 7, the win 10 +11 base would be smaller than the 7 userbase.
I rest my case.

I agree with you. I waited 4 years before moving from Win7 to Win10 and that was by necessity as getting Zen 2 (3800X) working on Win7 was too much extra work (mostly USB related issues).

 

[phints]

Will still update to 24H2 day 1 but just installed KB5041587. Sure enough even my 4 year old 5800X got a small bump. I tested a few games saw +3-10% fps depending on test. Small gains but it's all good, let's gooooo.

 

[atomsymbol]

Though that doesn't matter since it only seems to use the 8 wide dispatch on zen 5 while running two threads through a core. While it seems a single thread it still uses 4 wide dispatch and a single predictor. Although technically zen 5 should be able go use both on single thread.

The above is misinformation, probably caused by not having access to a Zen5 CPU on which you could test your ideas before posting. A single thread on my Zen5 CPU can execute 2 *taken* branch instructions per cycle, if the outcomes of both branch instructions have been successfully predicted. This can be verified by writing a short program in assembly language. On the other hand, my Zen3 CPU can execute 2 branch instructions in the same clock cycle only in a subset of scenarios. A table comparing Zen3 vs Zen5 looks something like this:

Branch instruction 1	Branch instruction 2	Zen3	Zen5
N (branch wasn't taken)	N	1 clock cycle	1 clock cycle
N	T	1 clock cycle	1 clock cycle
T (branch was taken)	N	2 clock cycles	1 clock cycle
T	T	2 clock cycles	1 clock cycle

 

[lexluthermiester]

It's only saving grace was the addition of System Restore... which was a necessity due to its instability.

Actually that kinda proves you either never used it or knew nothing about how to make it stable. System Restore was responsible for many of the instabilities to begin with. Turn it off and your mostly golden. But whatever oh master of the snug-fit.

that's not How that works.

Sure it is..

I downloaded the update and tested cpu-z single and multi-thread and the results were the same. I believe the gain happens only in games not apps

Very possible.

 

[AnotherReader]

I downloaded the update and tested cpu-z single and multi-thread and the results were the same. I believe the gain happens only in games not apps, not going to bother testing my 5900x in games.

CPU-Z is not a suitable benchmark for testing branch prediction improvements.

 

[wheresmycar]

yay, HW didn't mention Zen 3 or maybe they did but none were tested in their vid. Nice to see ZEN-3 will benefit too. Even better, its only been a few months since i shifted up to a 5800X3D with my first Win 11 install. Some FREE perf gains are always a nice surprise.

 

[lexluthermiester]

CPU-Z is not a suitable benchmark for testing branch prediction improvements.

That's interesting. Not sure I would agree with those conclusions but it is possible.

 

[Imouto]

Not my words, but those of Linus Torvalds!

Too many distros. Hundreds too many. There are maybe 20 popular, active distros and even if you boil it down to the most fundamental 3 branches using the Linux kernel, those three branches (SUSE/RH/Debian) don't just use the vanilla kernel. You literally download a precompiled binary application that matches your particular branch of Linux, or compile it yourself for the distro you're using. That's not user-friendly, it's not beginner-friendly, and it sure as hell can't be described as anything other than a fragmented mess.

Individual Linux distros like Arch or Ubuntu are decent, but the whole ecosystem isn't a cohesive, clean, easy-to-understand experience for most people. Torvalds was 100% right when he called it a fragmented mess.

Oh, you mean the Linux "desktop" is a horrible "fragmented" mess. Nothing to worry about then because Linus also said that Valve would save it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/xkwvqt

 

[Chrispy_]

Oh, you mean the Linux "desktop" is a horrible "fragmented" mess. Nothing to worry about then because Linus also said that Valve would save it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/xkwvqt

Well my Steam Deck is a wonderful plug and play experience, but it doesn't solve the fact that I can't do a bunch of stuff on it

Do I love it? Yes.
Is the Arch desktop mode a familiar, cohesive, compatible, and unified experience? Not even a little bit.

 

[Imouto]

Well my Steam Deck is a wonderful plug and play experience, but it doesn't solve the fact that I can't do a bunch of stuff on it

Maybe because it's an immutable system? Is it because it's Linux?

Do I love it? Yes.
Is the Arch desktop mode a familiar, cohesive, compatible, and unified experience? Not even a little bit.

What Arch desktop mode? Do you mean KDE? KDE the desktop environment?

Do you really have any difficulties with it? Because I think that totally disqualifies you for any serious discussion about the matter. Also the fact that you seem to be googling the stuff we are talking about with each post.