- Windows 10’s Playbar has allegedly been hit by an ugly error
- The play bar goes down when trying to access your options
- For those with Ryzen 3D V-cache CPUs, that means they can’t configure them correctly for the best game performance
Players running Windows 10 with an advanced AMD Ryzen 3D V-cache processor suffer in the hands of a seemingly bug rooted with the play bar, and inhibits these chips as a result.
German Tech Site PC Games Hardware (PCGH) reports (via Neowin) that there is a problem with Windows 10, giving the Game Bar – an overlay that carries a lot of useful game -related settings – goes down when you access the settings to configure the said Ryzen CPUs correctly with a given game.
Top-end Ryzen X3D chips with 12 or 16 cores (like Ryzen 9900x3D or 9950x3d) have two chiplets, of which only one has 3D V-cache on top (which increases game performance). So to make sure these ran PC games with the fastest possible image speeds, it is necessary to manually mark them as a game (crosses ‘Remember this is a game’) in that options.
Of course, if the game beam goes down when you try to access the settings, you can’t do this of course, and therefore those who encounter this mistake get their game running suboptimally on these particular chips.
Note that it is only the 12 and 16-core X3D models-8-core versions of the 3D V-cache CPUs are fine as they do not have two chiplets and cache applies to all their cores (and apparently other Ryzen processors have none of this game-boosting cache). Note also that the play bar itself works fine; It just clicks on the possibilities that make a crash happen.
An editor at PCGH claims they were hit by this error – even reinstalling Windows 10 did not help as a possible (drastic) cure – and other players on the site’s forum also reported the same experience.
It was noteworthy that people did not run Windows 10 Home, but Windows 10 Pro or an Enterprise version (which some PC enthusiasts use for the longer support time frame).
However, Neowin, who picked up this report, also says it could reproduce the problem, though it does not 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 probably).
Analysis: Whispers about ‘Sabotage’
Okay, so this is just scattered reports at the moment and it seems, though we can’t confirm that Windows 10 homes are not affected. This is a niche problem, so – specifically for heavyweight Ryzen X3D CPUs and Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise versions – but there are enough reports that it is worrying.
Is this just a temporary error that has sneaked in with a recent version of Game Bar, one that Microsoft will iron out? Possibly, but we haven’t even had confirmation of the error yet, so we go ahead of ourselves.
Whatever is the case, it is more fuel for the fire for those who suggest, with no proof that Microsoft somehow is quietly sabotaging Windows 10 when its ending comes near, in an effort to throw these Diehards, who keep up with the elderly OS to upgrade to Windows 11 (this will be at the top of the recent accusations of technical extension, as you may also remember).
I don’t think any kind of ‘sabotage’ is on foot here, but at the same time, with Windows 10 sliding into Irrelevans, October 2025 is definitely coming to fewer reasons why Microsoft should worry about keeping us fully in the form of all users – and less driving force in general to investigate more niche problems like this apparent game problems.
For the time being, we just have to see this space – and of course this is not a problem on Windows 11, in case you don’t already guess it.
