- Windows 10’s Game Bar has reportedly been hit with a nasty bug
- The Game Bar crashes when trying to access its options
- For those with Ryzen 3D V-Cache CPUs, this means they can’t properly configure them for the best gaming performance
Gamers running Windows 10 with a high-end AMD Ryzen 3D V-Cache processor are suffering at the hands of an apparent bug that messes with the Game Bar, and hampers these chips as a result.
German tech site PC Games Hardware (PCGH) reports (via Neowin) that there’s a problem with Windows 10 whereby the Game Bar – an overlay that carries a bunch of useful game-related settings – is crashing when you access the options to configure the mentioned Ryzen CPUs properly with any given game.
Top-end Ryzen X3D chips with 12 or 16 cores (like the Ryzen 9900X3D or 9950X3D) have two chiplets, only one of which has the 3D V-Cache on top (that boosts gaming performance). So, to ensure these run PC games with the fastest possible frame rates, it’s necessary to manually flag them as a game (ticking ‘Remember this is a game’) in said options.
If the Game Bar crashes when trying to access the options, obviously, you can’t do this, and therefore, those encountering this bug are having their games run sub-optimally on these particular chips.
Note that it is only 12 and 16-core X3D models – the 8-core versions of 3D V-Cache CPUs are fine, as they don’t have two chiplets, and the cache applies to all their cores (and obviously other Ryzen processors don’t have any of this game-boosting cache, anyway). Further note that the Game Bar itself works fine; it’s just clicking on the options that causes a crash to happen.
An editor at PCGH claims that they were hit by this bug – even reinstalling Windows 10 didn’t help as a possible (drastic) cure – and other gamers on the website’s forum also reported the same experience.
Notably, these were people not running Windows 10 Home, but Windows 10 Pro or an enterprise version (which some PC enthusiasts are using for the longer support timeframe).
However, Neowin, which picked up on this report, also says it could reproduce the problem, though it doesn’t specify which version of Windows 10 was running in this case. (And given that, I imagine it’s not Home – as they would have said – but Windows 10 Pro most likely).
Analysis: Whispers about ‘sabotage’
Okay, so these are just scattered reports at the moment, and it seems, though we can’t confirm, that Windows 10 Home isn’t affected. This is a niche problem, then – specific to heavyweight Ryzen X3D CPUs and Windows 10 Pro or enterprise versions – but there are enough reports for it to be worrying.
Is this just a temporary glitch that’s crept in with a recent version of the Game Bar, one that Microsoft will iron out? Possibly, but we’ve not even had confirmation of the bug yet, so we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Whatever the case, it’s more fuel to the fire for those suggesting, without proof, that Microsoft is somehow quietly sabotaging Windows 10 as its End of Life comes near, in an effort to cajole those diehards sticking with the older OS to upgrade to Windows 11 (this comes on top of those recent accusations of tech extortion you may recall, too).
I don’t think that any kind of ‘sabotage’ is afoot here, but at the same time, with Windows 10 about to slide into irrelevance come October 2025, there are certainly fewer reasons for Microsoft to worry about keeping the OS fully in shape for all users – and less impetus in general to investigate more niche issues like this apparent Game Bar-breaking bug.
For now, we’ll just have to watch this space – and, obviously, this isn’t a problem on Windows 11, in case you didn’t guess already that.
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