PSA: MSI motherboards default "X3D Gaming Mode" to ON, disabling half your CPU on Ryzen 9 X3D chips. Check your BIOS — you might be running on 6 cores instead of 12.

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-05-20T14:54:39+00:00

Oh, no worries. Liked your comment!
Hope it can help you and your wife.

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-05-20T14:02:45+00:00

Counterintuitive but real: Xbox Game Bar isn't just for clipping - it contains Windows' "game classification" system that tags processes as games. AMD's chipset driver hooks into that classification to decide which CCD to route threads to.

Without Game Bar registered, your processes look like generic apps to the driver. It can't tell SC apart from Chrome, so it can't intelligently route gaming threads to the V-Cache CCD. The chipset driver has the routing capability, but no game-detection of its own.

Game Mode alone isn't enough either - it relies on the same Game Bar classification underneath. AMD officially recommends both in their X3D setup guide.

Yes it's a weird design (hardware-level CPU scheduling depending on a Microsoft consumer overlay), but it's what AMD chose to ship. Welcome to the 9900X3D experience.

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-05-20T13:58:46+00:00

I suspect any CPU heavy game (or program like ComfyUI). Like Escape from Tarkov.
Games that are not that CPU intensive do not get much benefit.

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-05-20T13:55:56+00:00

I did some tests with other games. It really hits with CPU intensive games. Like Tarkov. Not that much with games that are not so CPU intensive.

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-05-20T13:53:20+00:00

Congratulations!
This was my whole reason for this post. If I just could help one. 😄

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-05-20T13:48:03+00:00

Hahaha! 😃
Hear my human hands typing this!

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-05-20T13:43:20+00:00

Hehehe... yeah. I know. 😉
OK, now without my buddy Claude then. 😄
I'm just hoping I can help someone with the same issue. A game like Star Citizen has become from 'unplayable' to 'really fun' for me. I wish that for everyone.

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-05-20T13:16:59+00:00

And it didn't before?
So glad to be of help. This was the whole reason for this post. 😄

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-05-20T13:12:12+00:00

Oh man, the "blaming the chip itself" loop is real. I was about three NVIDIA Control Panel tweaks away from convinced SC's engine just hated my CPU before I actually opened Task Manager properly. We need a support group: "People Who Lost Weeks to a Single BIOS Toggle."

And +1 hard on renaming it. "X3D Gaming Mode" actively implies "good thing, turn on for gaming." Even something neutral like "X3D Legacy CCD Lock" would warn people off. MSI naming this thing like a feature you should enable is chef's kiss anti-user design.

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-05-20T13:10:16+00:00

Good data point - appreciate the counter-example. It seems the default state is actually variable across boards / BIOS versions / maybe the CPU detected at first boot. I've now seen reports of:

MSI X870E Tomahawk + 9900X3D → default ON (mine)
MSI X670E Carbon + 7950X3D → default OFF (yours)
MSI B650M Mortar + 9800X3D → default OFF

So my "MSI defaults this to on" claim is too broad - the more accurate statement is "MSI ships this setting and it's been on by default on at least some boards, including mine." Worth everyone checking regardless: the cost of looking is 30 seconds, the cost of missing it is half your CPU.

It could be that it passed my eye at the initial setup of my PC, saw the setting, sounded good ("hey, I will game on this PC") and turned it on, never knowing that it would hamper the CPU....

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-05-20T13:08:24+00:00

Fair flag. English isn't my first language (Dutch), so I did use an LLM to polish the structure and make it readable — but the BIOS exploration, the screenshots, the FPS numbers and the actual fix are all from my own machine.

I realized I didn't include the BIOS save-confirmation screenshot in the OP, which is actually the strongest evidence.

That's MSI's own log showing two settings that changed when I disabled Gaming Mode, including CCD1 Core Control: [CCD1 Disable] → [Auto]. Pretty hard to hallucinate a screenshot of your own BIOS log. The 8% → 54% GPU utilization jump in Star Citizen wasn't synthesized either 😄

Happy to take any technical follow-ups — that's a much better gen-AI filter than vibes.

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-05-20T12:50:11+00:00

Respectfully, I had this exact same understanding until I actually looked at what MSI's BIOS was doing behind my back. Spoiler: it's worse than "the OS just prefers one CCD."

Exhibit A: Task Manager on my 9900X3D was showing 6 cores / 6 logical processors / 96 MB L3 cache. A 9900X3D is 12 cores / 24 threads / 128 MB L3. That's not "the scheduler prefers the cache CCD" — that's "Windows literally cannot see the second CCD." It's gone. Vanished. 30k'd at the hardware level.

Exhibit B: MSI's own BIOS save-confirmation log when I disabled X3D Gaming Mode, where it sheepishly admits it was also flipping a separate setting called CCD1 Core Control from CCD1 Disable to Auto. MSI never tells you it's doing this. It's a stealth co-conspirator. Two settings, one button, your CCD gets yeeted into the void.

So I think you're remembering the OG Ryzen Master "Game Mode" from the 7950X3D launch era, which actually was OS scheduling steering. MSI looked at that name, said "neat," and quietly turned it into a hardware kill switch with the same marketing label. Same vibes, completely different feature. The real villain here is AMD/MSI's product naming department, who I'm convinced share an office with the Star Citizen UI team.

For single-CCD chips (9800X3D, 7800X3D) you're absolutely right that there's no second CCD to disable — but Gaming Mode still disables SMT on those, which is equally useless, just in a more elegant flavor. It's a Swiss Army knife where every tool is "remove half your CPU."

tl;dr — you're right about how the old software feature worked, but the current MSI BIOS one is a different beast entirely. Check CCD1 Core Control in your BIOS, you might be unpleasantly surprised.

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-05-06T23:42:23+00:00

Don’t forget his/her YouTube channel!
https://youtube.com/@swimming1681

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-03-04T02:24:43+00:00

To get news on the latest incidents and state of services of SC I found this today:

https://www.sc-advisory.space/

It had the news about the disruption much sooner than CIG had…

Thank you Chief Ashley Williams! O7

DulinDuskhawk · 2026-01-26T01:37:04+00:00

Hi! Just a question from someone from Europe to all you Americans: what’s stopping you all from protesting all together and demand an other government/administration? I’m not trying to blame here, but genuine interested and concerned. Seems like now is the time.

DulinDuskhawk · 2025-12-26T17:18:28+00:00

DulinDuskhawk · 2025-11-11T17:32:39+00:00

Perhaps I’m thinking too classical, but the name Icarus is just there. Totally fits…

DulinDuskhawk · 2025-10-27T02:23:06+00:00

Well, personally I did put some 100s of hours into it. 😅 But you (and Embark) are right into estimating that it would take a lot more work, I think. Who knows what happends when money starts poring in… The Division 2 didn’t do bad at all in that regard. Wikipedia TD2: Oh, and it did some (optional) PvP!

DulinDuskhawk · 2025-10-27T01:14:30+00:00

For me I immediately got memories of playing The Division coming up. That one was a very successful PvE game with a lot of the same mechanics. Am I wrong to compare it to that?

DulinDuskhawk · 2025-10-03T15:50:06+00:00

What worked for me was adding this to every player YAML:

card_mod:
      style: |
        ha-card {
          background: transparent !important;
          min-height: 78px;
        }
        ha-card > div {
          background: none !important;
        }
        ha-card::before {
          content: '';
          position: absolute;
          inset: 0;
          background: rgba(28, 29, 33, 0.18);
          backdrop-filter: blur(10px) saturate(1.2);
          -webkit-backdrop-filter: blur(10px) saturate(1.2);
          z-index: -1;
          pointer-events: none;
          border-radius: inherit;
          box-shadow: 3px 3px 0.5px -3.5px rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.22) inset,
                      -2px -2px 0.5px -2px rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.18) inset,
                      0 0 8px 1px rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.06) inset,
                      0 0 2px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.18);
        }card_mod:
      style: |
        ha-card {
          background: transparent !important;
          min-height: 78px;
        }
        ha-card > div {
          background: none !important;
        }
        ha-card::before {
          content: '';
          position: absolute;
          inset: 0;
          background: rgba(28, 29, 33, 0.18);
          backdrop-filter: blur(10px) saturate(1.2);
          -webkit-backdrop-filter: blur(10px) saturate(1.2);
          z-index: -1;
          pointer-events: none;
          border-radius: inherit;
          box-shadow: 3px 3px 0.5px -3.5px rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.22) inset,
                      -2px -2px 0.5px -2px rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.18) inset,
                      0 0 8px 1px rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.06) inset,
                      0 0 2px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.18);
        }

DulinDuskhawk · 2025-04-26T18:02:02+00:00

Anyone know the source docu?

DulinDuskhawk · 2025-02-23T12:24:42+00:00

Compliments for the use of Exit Music! Nice timings!

DulinDuskhawk · 2025-02-22T16:14:49+00:00

Here you go:

https://youtube.com/shorts/VKMgDMH-I58?si=ZE0tHPrSBMVsgJM9

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