AMD just announced that some of its best processors are about to become even better. The company unveiled a number of Ryzen 9000 improvements, ranging from a much higher TDP for some of the CPUs to the core-to-core latency improvements we’ve already heard about. AMD is also now supporting higher-clocked DDR5 RAM, and that’s not even all of today’s announcements.
The latest BIOS update, named AGESA PI 1.2.0.2, brings a few things, but if you ask me, the biggest change is that AMD is increasing the thermal design power (TDP) of two of its CPUs.
The Ryzen 7 9700X and the Ryzen 5 9600X were initially both locked at a TDP of 65 watts, which many found quite limiting when compared to the 120-watt TDP of the Ryzen 9 9900X, not to mention the 170-watt Ryzen 9 9950X. AMD’s explanation for that design choice is that it envisioned the lower-end CPUs as options for efficient performance. To make them more viable for enthusiasts, AMD has now given the 9700X and the 9600X a new TDP of 105 watts.
Raising the TDP by over 60% through a firmware update sounds dangerous, but AMD clarifies that the CPUs have been validated at 105W. What’s more, the 105-watt limit is warrantied — so you can safely unlock it without worrying about voiding the warranty. AMD does note, however, that you’ll need a better CPU cooler to keep all that extra heat at bay.
AMD hasn’t specified how the higher TDP might affect things like clock speeds or performance, and reviewers will likely have to re-test these two CPUs to check what’s going on in that department. Still, given the minimal generational gains from Zen 4 to Zen 5, this TDP change sounds like a good move.
Next is the aforementioned core-to-core latency boost. Early adopters and reviewers alike noticed that the inter-CCD (core complex die) latency on the Ryzen 9000 was about 50% higher than on the Ryzen 7000. Those who already got the new firmware and tested it last week have already confirmed that AMD has addressed the issue, meaning a 50% lower latency on the Zen 5 — as it should be.
Now, for some hardware improvements: AMD has enabled EXPO support for DDR5-8000 memory. RAM clocked that high is among some of the best RAM currently out there, and most gamers don’t currently need these kinds of frequencies. AMD notes that switching from DDR5-6000 to DDR5-8000 boosts the latency by around 1 to 2ns.
AMD also talked about the new X870 and X870E motherboards that are here, offering the most out of what the AM5 socket can supply right now. These motherboards will include support for full-speed PCIe Gen 5.0, both graphics and storage — just in time for the RTX 50-series, which is said to use that interface.
Benchmarks of the new Ryzen 9000 CPUs usually show that they’re great for productivity but they fail to offer any significant improvements in gaming. It also turns out that the CPUs were about 10% slower than they should have been, but all of that should now be fixed with the mandatory Windows Updates that offer branch prediction optimizations. Once all the new updates have been taken into account, we’ll know whether they make a dent in CPU performance or not.
