AMD’s just-launched Ryzen 9000 CPUs, as well as some older Ryzen CPUs, are affected by a Windows user account bug that causes the chips to run slower than they should in games, depending on what type of user account you are using. The AMD Ryzen Windows Errors reduces performance by an average of 4% on the latest Zen 5 Ryzen 9700X, but a fix is on the way and there are some workarounds for the issue.
The new AMD CPU bug affects some of the otherwise best gaming CPUs you can buy, but is enough to dampen the performance – and therefore the adoption – of AMD’s latest chips.
The bug was discovered by several testers, including Hardware Unboxed and Antony Leather (Forbes), with the former reporting that the average frame rate increased from 155 frames per second when using the 9700X with a standard user account to 161 frames per second when using an administrator account.
Hardware Unboxed also confirmed that the issue affects Ryzen 7000 Zen 4 chips, albeit with less severe performance impacts. The issue could potentially affect older Ryzen chips as well, but neither this site nor we have had a chance to test that scenario yet.
While the performance difference is relatively small in the grand scheme of things, it’s still a major misstep on AMD’s part. Thankfully, not only can you get around the speed reduction by simply using an administrator account, but AMD has also announced that the issue will be fixed with a future Windows update.
There is no concrete information on whether older versions of Windows are also affected by this problem, as all tests so far have been carried out on Windows 11 systems.
To fix Ryzen 9000 Windows error and enable the administrator user account with elevated privileges, follow these instructions:
- Open the command prompt by typing “cmd” in the start menu.
- Type net.exe user administrator /active:yes and press Enter
- Log out of your current Windows session
- You should now have the option to log in as an administrator (note that you will need to reinstall or set up all your apps/files, just like when setting up any other new account).
For more information on the overall performance of the new Ryzen 9000 chips, check out our coverage of the Ryzen 9950X and 9900X launch.
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