Retesting AMD Ryzen Threadripper’s Game Mode: Halving Cores for More Performance

For the launch of AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper processors, one of the features being advertised was Game Mode. This was a special profile under the updated Ryzen Master software that was designed to give the Threadripper CPU more performance in gaming, at the expense of peak performance in hard CPU tasks. AMD’s goal, as described to us, was to enable the user to have a choice: a CPU that can be fit for both CPU tasks and for gaming at the flick of a switch (and a reboot) by disabling half of the chip.

Initially we interpreted this via one of AMD’s slides as half of the threads (simultaneous multi-threading off), as per the exact wording. However, in other places AMD had stated that it actually disables half the cores: AMD returned to us and said it was actually disabling one of the two active dies in the Threadripper processor. We swallowed our pride and set about retesting the effect of Game Mode.