My hour with Windows 11 and gaming performance...

[ZedClampet]

So I got the notification on my gaming laptop that I could upgrade to Win11 this week, and I decided to do that this morning. Download and installation was a breeze, and I was up and running in no time. My first impressions were that I kind of liked it. I moved my taskbar to the left and was content.

But then I started running benchmarks. At 1080p, my performance was anywhere from 10 to 15 percent less than before. I tried a variety of adjustments, but it was pretty obvious that I wasn't getting that performance back. I know that there are some updates coming down the line for Win11 that are supposed to be good for gaming, so this will probably change over time. Also, developers may start optimizing for Win11 a bit more in some way.

But then I tried to go to my mouse settings to change something, and got two errors that files were missing, which from my experience is pretty typical for upgrading Windows. I didn't bother checking anything else. Between that and the big performance hit, I just rolled back to Win10.

 

[Brian Boru]

I just rolled back to Win10

Yeah, that's what I've seen from people whose PC is just a bit over spec. I let Win10 alone for most of a year before upgrading from Win7, and still had trouble with it for 6 months—system disk image saved me a couple of times.

It's a bit like from 7 to 8, where the main draw is more security—a good thing—at the expense of performance and usability. I skipped 8 altogether as I'm careful, and will likely hang with 10 until I build my next machine in a couple of years—I really like my vertical Taskbar, which either MS or Stardock should've fixed in 11 by then.

 

[ZedClampet]

Yeah, that's what I've seen from people whose PC is just a bit over spec.

I don't think mine qualifies as "just a bit over", but I don't know. Got a 6 core i7, and an rtx 2080. Afterwards, I read an article on PC Gamer which said that they lost the same amount of performance in 1080p. I didn't read the rest of it because all my monitors are 1080p.

 

[Sarafan]

You're not the first one who reports worse performance on Windows 11. There was a problem with AMD CPUs, but that was fixed a few days ago. Still, even Intel users report that they're receiving a significantly worse results in benchmarks and games. Win11 is heavier than Win10. Even in idle it consumes around 1 GB RAM more than its predecessor. But it's not a core problem, as 16 GB RAM is still enough for every game and the system optimizes the consumption of memory when you launch games. The issue must lay somewhere else.

I still haven't upgraded mostly due to the fact that my current system was installed in the CSM boot mode and thus I can't activate secure boot without doing a clean install of the system. I'll probably switch to Win11 at some point in the future however. I'm not excited about the performance loss though.

 

[ZedClampet]

You're not the first one who reports worse performance on Windows 11. There was a problem with AMD CPUs, but that was fixed a few days ago. Still, even Intel users report that they're receiving a significantly worse results in benchmarks and games. Win11 is heavier than Win10. Even in idle it consumes around 1 GB RAM more than its predecessor. But it's not a core problem, as 16 GB RAM is still enough for every game and the system optimizes the consumption of memory when you launch games. The issue must lay somewhere else.

I still haven't upgraded mostly due to the fact that my current system was installed in the CSM boot mode and thus I can't activate secure boot without doing a clean install of the system. I'll probably switch to Win11 at some point in the future however. I'm not excited about the performance loss however.

Yeah, they are going to have to fix the performance issue before I'll upgrade. I'm not willing to push my hardware that much closer to needing an upgrade just to install Windows 11.

 

[Sarafan]

Yeah, they are going to have to fix the performance issue before I'll upgrade. I'm not willing to push my hardware that much closer to needing an upgrade just to install Windows 11.

I'm not sure whether they'll do it TBH. A new generation of hardware appears on the market every two years (at most!). Soon no one will be talking about the lower performance...

 

[ZedClampet]

I'm not sure whether they'll do it TBH. A new generation of hardware appears on the market every two years (at most!). Soon no one will be talking about the lower performance...

Yep.

 

[Colif]

WIndows 11 tpm requiremenet likely mean many people get new PC and not notice a drop in performance. I don't know what it did to my pc as I wasn't playing any games before I installed 11. I have one odd latency spike problem but it only happens sometimes so I haven't looked into a solution.

What was the fix for the AMD thing?

 

[Volley]

Performance itself has been the same for on Windows 10 as 11, at least nothing noticeable yet. However...

I spent nearly an entire day on Saturday trying to get Microsoft Flight Simulator to work on Windows 11. The new SimUpdate 6 arrived, and when I fired up the game it, it said I needed to download 94GB. I decided to let it download...

Asobo uses the slowest servers for Flight Simulator updates for some reason, I have a gigabit Internet connection yet it downloads at 100Mbps on average, and only in this game, eventually it got to the "decompressing" stage for the data files, and the update would freeze every time, and everytime I restarted the client it would freeze in a different spot.. My install became corrupted and the program refuse to start completely. Never had issues with FS2020 in Windows 10, only Windows 11.

While it's in the Flight Sim updater, of course, the GPU fans are running fast, the CPU is intensive, task manager shows a load on resources, it's almost as if Asobo uses my computer for BitCoin mining while the game is downloading and doing nothing graphically at all, even in the updating stages with zero hard drive activity.

Anyways it kept failing, so what I did was install Microsoft Flight Simulator on my other computer that still has Windows 10 (and is staying on Windows 10), it worked perfectly, and I transferred the entire installation to my Windows 11 main computer, and that too worked perfectly, well at least until I disabled all NVIDIA HDMI audio and Integrated "Realtek" audio in device manager and set it to use SoundBlasterX AE-5 exclusively. Sheesh. It was literally crashing a few seconds after leaving a runway if I had those other audio devices enabled in device manager.

I was that close to going back to Windows 10, I'll stick with 11 for now, but that was a very long day and it drove me nearly crazy trying to figure out how to get my sim working again.

Now there's a DirectX12 update coming this month for Flight Simulator, and I hope that Microsoft/Asobo patches whatever the heck went wrong with my installation the last time, because so far everything else seems to be working for me in 11.

 

[Brian Boru]

TechGumbo has a 10m video on speeding up Win11:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U-aAolflpc


Watching his succinct instructions reminds me of what a convoluted mess the Windows control UI is.

 

[Colif]

Oh no, its one of those videos... lets deprettify WIn 11 to make it work on a potato

he shows the list of apps & features and acts like they are all running in background. NO, that is what is installed, its not whats running. How to make people uninstall everything they don't know they need...

Also, Win 11 doesn't actually show you if its running now, so how do you know? I hadn't noticed they removed the list of background tasks. so how are we to know what is running? Sounds intentional to me. Keep people in dark and throw rocks at their heads. Suspended programs in task manager is a way to find them.

win 11 isn't any less organized than win 10, it was pretty much same. They moved a few things around but search can normally find what you looking for.
They just moving more from control panel into settings, maybe by win 20 they have it all in there

just run storage sense if drive is full. no need to do it manually and clean windows. It won't turn on for my drive, it thinks 604gb free is more than enough to not need storage sense. (notices he actually mentions it)

sorry, I like picking apart videos like this. Advice on YouTube isn't always good.

hmm, funny how removing background tasks is same instructions as removing programs

run defrag? why? windows will run it once a month (even on ssd if you have system restore turned on) so why double dip?

People have multi tb drives and people still delete programs they aren't using? why? whats point? If you got heaps of blank empty space, who cares?

One day I will learn something from one of these videos. Not today

If your PC is capable of running WIn 11 you shouldn't need to turn any of the features down. Is that a video for people trying to run it on PC that don't match requirements?

 

[Brian Boru]

Is that a video for people trying to run it on PC that don't match requirements?

No, it's for people experiencing lesser performance than Win10, eg the OP's "big performance hit", PCG staff same, and many others I've seen say the same—eg Sarafan's post #4.

Advice on YouTube isn't always good

I've been watching this guy for years, and he's always given solid advice for people not proficient in software.

lets deprettify

That's standard advice many experts have given for decades to combat slower performance.

run defrag? why?

Because it can speed up performance—not everyone will want to wait weeks for Windows to run it, if they have a performance dip. It may help, and can't hurt.

people still delete programs they aren't using? why?

Main reason I do it is security. The smaller list in Apps & Programs doesn't hurt either, plus some people like a minimalist or decluttered machine—experts routinely recommend a clean install of Windows rather than upgrading over an old setup, same for newly bought machines. Gamers routinely do it because their only drive fills up quickly with a few AAA installs.

One day I will learn something from one of these videos. Not today

You're not his target audience, as I said above it's for people not proficient in software.

Is that a video for people trying to run it on PC that don't match requirements?

He explained the purpose at the very beginning: "many users have reported that their computer is slower and suffering lag in many of the programs they use and games that they play".

 

[Sarafan]

What was the fix for the AMD thing?

An official update from AMD and Microsoft. It supposedly fixed the issue, but I can't confirm it because I'm still sitting on Win10.

 

[Colif]

An official update from AMD and Microsoft. It supposedly fixed the issue, but I can't confirm it because I'm still sitting on Win10.

it was part of the latest Cumulative update so I got it earlier in the week.

I haven't tried to play a game since then so no idea if it fixed anything.

 

[Brian Boru]

I really like my vertical Taskbar, which either MS or Stardock should've fixed in 11 by then

Start11 doesn't seem to have vertical Taskbar so far

Start11: The ultimate Start menu replacement for Windows 10 and 11. Restore the classic look and add new functionality.

Start11: The ultimate Start menu replacement for Windows 10 and 11. Restore the classic look and add new functionality.

www.stardock.com

 

[ZedClampet]

Some new thoughts on Windows 11

So I went ahead and did my clean install yesterday with Win11, and after doing a bunch of stuff with it today, I can say the following: Tons of stuff has changed. Nothing has gotten any better. I have not seen a single thing that they changed that made me think, "Well, that's cool. That's better than it was before." It leaves me with the impression that they just changed things to change them.

 

[Colif]

There is no must have feature. Its windows, what do you expect? I get wanting it to be different, or better, or something... but its essentially windows 10 with a new GUI. I spent a while looking for differences, now I only notice I am on 11 when answering posts like this. Sure, I haven't used 10 for a while so there probably are differences I have overlooked. Nothing massive.

I don't see it as worse, just different.
I haven't had to change anything I do to use it compared to 10.

MIcrosoft releasse a new OS every 5 or so years, the gap between 10 & 11 is actually one of the longest. So that is why it exists. 10 is good enough now that there really aren't that many changes that make a difference.
11 includes changes to allow windows to work with Intels new big SMALL architecture, but if you don't have a new Intel CPU you won't notice.

 

[ZedClampet]

There is no must have feature. Its windows, what do you expect? I get wanting it to be different, or better, or something... but its essentially windows 10 with a new GUI. I spent a while looking for differences, now I only notice I am on 11 when answering posts like this. Sure, I haven't used 10 for a while so there probably are differences I have overlooked. Nothing massive.

I don't see it as worse, just different.
I haven't had to change anything I do to use it compared to 10.

MIcrosoft releasse a new OS every 5 or so years, the gap between 10 & 11 is actually one of the longest. So that is why it exists. 10 is good enough now that there really aren't that many changes that make a difference.
11 includes changes to allow windows to work with Intels new big SMALL architecture, but if you don't have a new Intel CPU you won't notice.

But why make all the user changes at all if they aren't going to be improvements? For example, you now can't get to advanced power options by going to power options. You have to go a different way. Another example is spatial sound. You used to be able to select spatial sound by clicking on the sound icon in the bottom right of your screen. Now you have to go into your sound settings, go to a second page and make two selections. They specifically made that worse. Of course, now you can more easily change your screen brightness, but that's just a convenience trade off.

 

[Colif]

afaik they just removed the short cut from options for power options, it always was in control panel. 10 just had a shortcut to it.

I don't know why they did that, unless they plan on integrating that entire screen into Settings at some stage. Many of the things in Control panel before are now in settings.

Windows tools just looks like a newer version of control panel to me. Its not really a forward step.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I love Windows 11 on my laptop and work computers. But I haven't tried gaming with it. Maybe it's a good thing that my gaming PC has a Ryzen 3600 in it, and it's not even eligible for the Win11 upgrade.

afaik they just removed the short cut from options for power options, it always was in control panel. 10 just had a shortcut to it.

I don't know why they did that, unless they plan on integrating that entire screen into Settings at some stage. Many of the things in Control panel before are now in settings.

Windows tools just looks like a newer version of control panel to me. Its not really a forward step.

Yeah, they are doing just that. They're working toward completely getting rid of the Control Panel, and integrating every setting into Windows Settings.