AMD’s latest CPUs – its Ryzen 9000-series – launch in August 2024, and have been heavily criticized for their lack of performance.
Now, AMD has responded to the problems associated with its under-performing flagship CPU line with a new update that will deliver a few extra frames per second.
AMD Releases New BIOS Update to Boost 9000-Series Speeds
AMD has released a new BIOS version in direct response to the performance issues that surfaced during the Ryzen 9000-series launch and subsequent reviews.
Update for AMD AMD 600 socket motherboards with AMD Ryzen 870 or 5X chipsets can now upgrade to AMD’s new BIOS version, which provides a performance boost to the Ryzen 9600X and 9700X CPUs and core-to-core latency improvements for all other Ryzen 9 9000-series CPUs.
AMD’s official blog claims that its new BIOS can increase the TDP (thermal design power) of its chips by up to ten percent, going from a stock TDP of 65W to 105W.
The extra power boost brings what all Ryzen 9000-series users want: more performance.
Interestingly, the update also improves core-to-core latency, where information is shared between CPU cores to increase processing speed. Previously, AMD found that this process required two interactions to read and write data.
But now, the AMD 1.2.02 BIOS update has halved the number of transactions, drastically reducing the latency between these data handoffs.
AMD’s BIOS update brings PCIe 5.0 support
Now, those of you who are new to this BIOS upgrade may have already seen the other news: AMD’s Ryzen 9000-series CPUs will support PCIe 5.0.
Why is this important
Well, it’s rumoured that Nvidia’s next-generation 5000-series GPUs will use PCIe 5.0. This means that if you want to use what will likely become the most powerful consumer GPU, you’ll need a motherboard and CPU with PCIe 5.0 support.
Update your AMD motherboard BIOS now
Anyone with an AMD Ryzen 9000-series CPU should update their BIOS to the latest version right now. Updating your BIOS is a relatively simple process, plus updating the BIOS can have a number of benefits, not least the performance boost mentioned above.