Windows' hidden Admin Account significantly boosts the performance of the AMD Ryzen 9000 Series

Linux recently outperformed Windows when equipped with AMD Ryzen 9000.

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Published onAugust 16, 2024

published onAugust 16, 2024

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It seems that Windows’ hidden Admin Account might be the secret sauce to boosting the performance of AMD’s latest Ryzen 9000 and 7000 series CPUs.

AMD, known for its fierce competition with Intel, especially in the CPU arena, recently launched its Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series. These chips were already turning heads with a 16% IPC boost announced at Computex 2024. But despite this, comparisons with the previous Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series left some feeling underwhelmed, pointing towards a need for better optimization, particularly on Windows.

The plot thickened when comparative tests between Windows 11 24H2 and Linux suggested thatthe latter outperformed in gaming and other workloads. This hinted at a potential issue with Windows slowing down AMD’s chips.

AMD andYouTube’s Hardware Unboxedfound that a bug related to Account privileges in Windows was indeed impacting the performance of the Ryzen 9000 series desktop CPUs. By switching to the Administrator Account, the Ryzen 7 9700X saw a performance jump of close to 4% in average frame rates and just over 3.5% in percentile lows.

For those curious, accessing this hidden Administrator Account is as easy as executing a simple command:

net user administrator /active:yes.

Interestingly, this performance boost wasn’t exclusive to the Zen 5 chips; the Zen 4-based 7700X also saw improvements, suggesting a broader issue affecting the entire Socket AM5 lineup. AMD even hinted that incorrect driver provisioning on Windows could contribute to the problem, advising reviewers to clean up Windows or reinstall the chipset driver when swapping CPUs.

For some testers an incorrect provisioning might have hurt performance of the Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X.@AMDRyzengave the following advice to tester:pic.twitter.com/wagUlanW9y

If you’re using an AMD Ryzen 9000 or 7000 series CPU and are not getting the performance you expected, this little trick might be worth a try.

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Copilot in Outlook will generate personalized themes for you to customize the app

Microsoft will raise the price of its 365 Suite to include AI capabilities

Death Stranding Director’s Cut is now Xbox X|S at a huge discount

Outlook will let users create custom account icons so they can tell their accounts apart easier

Windows' hidden Admin Account significantly boosts the performance of the AMD Ryzen 9000 Series