Windows 11 has been released and Microsoft is already facing backlash from buyers based on recent reports which show that buyers of new pre-built systems could purportedly lose up to 28% of their gaming performance due to frame-rate-crushing security measures.
This has infuriated the gamers who were planning on using the amazing gaming features which Microsoft had promised them with Windows 11.
However, the latest tests performed using windows 11 reveal that the average impact on an 11th-gen Intel chip is actually in the 5% range. And the OS has an even further small impact on AMD Ryzen systems, with a 4% average for a Ryzen 5000 chip.
In a recent development to this story, both AMD and Microsoft have announced a performance problem with AMD processors which was resulting in up to 15% less performance in some games. Folks at toms hardware had conducted benchmark tests to check the performance drop which Windows 11 was offering and the system was tested on both the Core i7-11700K and i7-10700K.
The OS which was tested was the Windows 11 Pro 23000.194 which is also the version Microsoft provided for review and the Windows 11-compatible Nvidia 472.12 graphics driver. The graphics card which was used was an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 to minimize the graphics bottleneck and the resolution used for gaming was the most commonly used 1920×1080 resolution.
VBS Off – Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) Disabled
- VBS On – Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) Enabled
- VBS On HVCI – Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) and Hypervisor-Protected Code Integrity (HVCI) Enabled
With VBS enabled and running, the Core i7-11700K was 4.9% slower while the i7-10700K was 5.7% slower. So we can pretty much conclude that enabling the VBS causes the newer 11700K to fall below its prior-gen counterpart.
On the other hand, after enabling the HVCI there can be seen a slight decline in performance below the ‘VBS On’ results. Microsoft doesn’t recommend enabling HVCI by default on the 10th-gen processors.
Coming to the effect which the settings have on AMD processors, there was a slightly smaller performance reduction with the AMD processors than what was witnessed with the Intel models. The Ryzen 7 5800X was 4% slower after enabling the VBS. Compared to the ‘VBS On’ configuration, the HVCI result falls within the standard variance meaning that there exists a real noticeable difference between the ‘VBS On’ and ‘VBS+HVCI’ configurations.
Overall VBS Impact on Gaming Performance for AMD and Intel
FPS With VBS Active
| Baseline = VBS Off | i7-11700K | i7-10700K | Ryzen 7 5800X | Ryzen 7 3800X |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider – DX11 | -6.2% | -6.1% | -1.9% | -4.5% |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider – DX12 | -6.1% | -7.2% | -4.3% | -3.7% |
| Project Cars 3 – DX11 | -5.7% | -6.4% | -8.1% | -0.8% |
| Far Cry 5 – DX11 | -4.6% | -4.9% | -1.1% | -6.4% |
| Grand Theft Auto V – DX11 | -0.9% | -1.1% | -1.6% | -0.1% |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 – DX12 | -7.3% | -5.4% | -5.6% | -8.6% |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 – Vulkan | -4.4% | -4.4% | -2.6% | -4.6% |
