Home - Programming - AMD Ryzen 2990WX: When Upgrading is Downgrading

In 2018 I constructed a machine that was a beast at the time and had an upgrade path that seemed future proof for at least 10 years. The specs:

Since then I've added another 32 GB of RAM, another 7 TB of NVMe storage, and doubled the size of the RAID array. But last week, April of 2026, was finally the time to swap out my cooling system, which was low on coolant and failing, and to upgrade my CPU.

The unfortunate part is that AMD only made two series of chips to fit the TR4 CPU socket, the 19xx series and the 29xx series. Finding the 29xx series chips is getting harder since the stopped being manufactured years ago. I purchased one and waited a couple of weeks for a time when it seemed like I'd have a couple of days to do the upgrade.

One big hiccup: the new cooling system I ordered didn't have the mounting bracket necessary for the TR4 socket. So I had to order another one. That took a week, during which I couldn't use my machine. Note to self: check that the cooling system supports your CPU socket. Very important.

Then came the big day. I put everything together, fired up the machine, and after listening to it auto-reboot itself a few times (the BIOS had to do some sanity checks after seeing a new CPU in the socket), the Linux Mint logo came up and I knew it was going to be okay.

Until....

I use VMWare extensively to get my job done. I recently purchased a license for Windows 11 so I could update my entire toolchain, which includes Visual Studio 2026 and Delphi 13 Florence. That last one cost me $3000. (I know, who actually buys development licenses anymore? I do because I have an enormous legacy code base and a number of people using my products. So I'm stuck with it for a while.)

And here is where things went very wrong. Why? The usual reason. Because Microsoft sucks.

Back when AMD was working on the 2990WX, Microsoft and Intel were *allegedly* colluding on the best way to optimize Windows 11 for Intel chips, which slipping in logic that would cripple Windows on AMD's most powerful workstation chips. The Ryzen architecture for the 2990WX consists of 2 dies on one chip, each with 16 cores and, with Hyperthreading, a total of 64 virtual cores. That's a truck-ton of muscle. These two dies share one NUMA node, which provides direct access to memory. There will be contention for that one node, but nothing that should be noticeable. For instance, Linux runs just fine on it. But the "optimizations" that Microsoft made to utilize that NUMA node actually causes Windows to slow to a near standstill.

And when you need for Windows 11 to work so you can get your job done, this is a really bad thing.

I overclocked my machine from 3.0 GHz boost mode to 3.7 GHz. I fiddled with the clock speed and timings on my RAM. I applied every possible optimization to the VMWare settings and ripped everything out of Windows that I could to get it to run faster, with very little effect.

And then yesterday I found and installed Core Prio and Process Lasso from Bitsum. These are free and open source. In fact, I think I only really ran Core Prio. This runs as a Windows service and has an option labelled "NUMA Dissociator". This is apparently the magic spell needed to get Windows 11 to stop acting stupid with the NUMA node.

Since installing Core Prio my Windows 11 VM still sucks. It runs really slow, stutters noticeably, and just generally performs horribly. But at least it moves enough to get some work done. It's usable, just barely.

I don't know who needs this information anymore. The current Ryzen Threadripper series is the 59xx, and there's a 99xx that exists but hasn't been released yet (as of April 2026) that has 128 cores and runs at 5 GHz. But if you're thinking of getting a Threadripper, and they really are the best damn CPU you can get, I would advise making sure you get a "be quiet" AIO cooler (modular, works great, and made to be refilled), check whatever cooler you get to make sure it will have the mounting brackets you need for your CPU type, and research whether the OS of your choice will run properly on the CPU you get.

Good luck!

Copyright (c)2026 Todd Grigsby, all rights reserved

Todd Grigsby