We reported earlier this month that, per Moore’s Law Is Dead, AMD has possibly rushed out the Zen 5 Ryzen 9000 CPUs before the accompanying software was complete. As a result, the Zen 5 CPUs displayed unimpressive performance gains over their Zen 4 counterparts. One of the issues responsible for this performance degradation seems to have been the faulty Core Parking feature on multi-CCD chips like the Ryzen 9 9900X and the Ryzen 9 9950X.

In its Zen 5 analysis, Anandtech found that the inter-CCD latency in the Ryzen 9 9950X seems to be around 180 ns whereas the latency was just 76 ns on the Ryzen 9 7950X. This increase was explainable only through buggy software as the Ryzen 9 9950X features the same I/O die and Infinity Fabric as the Zen 4 chips.

Additionally, Ryan Smith of Anandtech reported on X that even on Linux with the high-performance mode enabled, there wasn’t a single case where the Ryzen 9 9950X had similar inter-CCD latency to the Ryzen 9 7950X. So, the issue isn’t exclusive to Windows.

AMD is looking to fix the Zen 5 latency issue

According to Geekerwan on bilibili (via @9550pro on X), AMD is going to resolve the Zen 5 CCD-to-CCD latency issue. The fix will not come in the form of new hardware steppings but a BIOS update. This suggests that AMD did indeed launch the Ryzen 9000 before the software was fully baked.

If and when AMD resolves the CCD latency issue, we can hope for a measurable performance gain as Zen 5 isn’t lacking in terms of technical innovation. Sadly, we have no timeframe for the proposed BIOS update. So, stay tuned as we’ll notify you as soon as the update drops.

Buy the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X on Amazon

Geekerwan: AMD will fix Zen 5 C2C latency issue.https://t.co/v1ru4UXQmS pic.twitter.com/3u0pAmBuwV

— HXL (@9550pro) August 27, 2024