News JVTech Is Windows 11 too slow for video games? Performance measurements finally give us a clear and surprising answer
Published on September 12, 2023 at 7:10 p.m
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Windows 11 is an operating system that doesn’t necessarily have a good reputation among gamers. But is there a good reason for that? A series of tests conducted by German media tends to provide a fairly concrete answer to this delicate question.
Although Windows 11 has been available since October 5, 2021 and is freely accessible to anyone with a PC running Windows 10, the observation is still very clear: A large majority of people still prefer Windows 10 over Windows 11. StatCounter’s November data still underscores this More than 68% of Windows PCs in circulation are running Windows 10, compared to just over 26% for Windows 11.
This can be explained by the hardware requirements of Windows 11, which require a motherboard equipped with a TMP 2.0 chip. But that’s not the only reason to throw away Microsoft’s latest operating system. As a matter of fact, Since its launch, Windows 11 has been highlighted by gamers.
Windows 11 really bad for video games?
Nevertheless, Microsoft presents it as an operating system designed for gaming. Windows 11 has made numerous mistakes in this regard since its introduction. Compatibility problems with certain graphics cards, software that starts at the same time as games and slows them down, problems with SSDs that are supposed to speed up the gaming experience… Unpleasant problems, often accompanied by an observation: Microsoft is not always in a hurry to apply a patch to fix these problems.
Results, Gamers often have to take the bull by the horns to find solutions on their own to improve their gaming experience on Windows 11. We can also see that some are not affected by all these difficulties, which is all the better for them. But in general the experience seems worse compared to Windows 10, as some tests have already shown.
Windows 11 sometimes worse than Linux
Recently the German site ComputerBase installed a part back into the machine, Comparing the performance of current games on Windows 11 and three different Linux distributions : Arch Linux, which serves as the basis for SteamOS 3, Pop!_OS and Nobara. The choice of these three distributions is not a coincidence: they are optimized for video games. In any case, The test machine was equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X processor, an AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card and 32 GB of DDR4-3600 RAM.
Finally, the games used in the test were all current titles that were primarily optimized to work with Windows 11, but were compatible with Linux thanks to Proton, the system developed by Valve within Steam: Cyberpunk 2077, Forspoken, Starfield, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and The Talos Principle 2.
The results of the tests, which can be found here in German, are a real eye-catcher in terms of the average FPS for each of the games. If Windows 11 positions itself just above the fray in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Compared to the other titles, it performs significantly worse and is even positioned behind the three Linux distributions.
On the other hand, When it comes to measuring frame time, i.e. the time it takes the operating system to display an image on the screen, Windows 11 is fundamentally more efficientwithout managing to surpass Arch Linux.
Enough to confirm gamers’ theories about Windows 11. Will Microsoft react? What is certain is that the Redmond company is already working on Windows 12. We may therefore have to wait a long time for real corrections to arrive.