Windows update preview: Changes to widgets, performance boost for AMD

Microsoft has published the preview of the upcoming Windows updates. The preview delivers some improvements and reworks the widgets in the EU region. Quietly and secretly, it also brings a speed boost for AMD processors.

In the update preview announcement, Microsoft writes that the update now enables "Windows Share" to work with Android devices, allowing content from the "Share" context menu to be exchanged with a smartphone, for example. However, this requires the "Link to Windows" app to be installed. Another highlight is the now faster responding voice output (Narrator), especially when Microsoft Edge is supposed to read out long documents. Voice control should now understand the dictation of individual letters more quickly and there should be more options for the select, delete and move commands within texts.

Corrections in the file explorer

The developers emphasize that after pressing the Windows key and E, screen readers claimed that a page had the focus, but the focus was not set at all. In addition, screen readers were unable to read out entries under breadcrumbs when opening and browsing in open or save dialogs. Searching with the key combination Ctrl and F sometimes did not start, and the keyboard focus could also be lost after pressing Shift and Tab.

Microsoft has also revised the widgets in the EU region. The widget board is intended to improve security and the APIs for creating widgets. Existing widgets will be removed and others modified, which may temporarily affect their function. As a result, the widgets have been moved to the right-hand side of the taskbar. By right-clicking on the taskbar, selecting "Taskbar settings" and setting the switch next to the "Widgets" entry in the settings that open, the widgets can be switched off if they are too intrusive.

Performance boost for AMD CPUs

Microsoft does not explicitly state this in the announcement, but AMD has confirmed to the media that the branch prediction updates from the Windows 11 24H2 preview have now also been backported to Windows 11 23H2 with the update preview. Wccftech writes that an AMD representative told them: "We wanted to let you know that the branch prediction optimizations from Windows 11 24H2 have now been backported to Windows 11 23H2. Users need to go to 'Windows Update' – 'Advanced Options' – 'Optional Updates' and look for the KB5041587 update. We expect the same performance improvement in 23H2 with the update installed as 24H2 brings."

In particular, the Ryzen 9000 processors with the Zen 5 processor architecture often did not deliver the expected performance. In a blog post, AMD engineers wrote that the Zen 5 architecture will observe the greatest acceleration with the Windows Update (for Windows 11 24H2), but Zen 4 and Zen 3 should also show better performance.

The Windows Update Preview has been given the KB number KB5041587, which raises Windows 11 to build numbers 22621.4112 and 22631.4112 respectively. Microsoft is also taking the opportunity to point out that Windows 11 Home and Pro 22H2 will reach their end-of-service on October 8, meaning that they will no longer receive updates. However, the Enterprise and Edu versions are not affected by this.

(dmk)