Today we’re talking our first real look at Windows 11 performance with some Intel Core processors. There’s a few reasons why we wanted to test using Intel’s 10th and 11th gen CPUs first — of course, to see how much difference there is when compared to Windows 10 — but also to establish some baseline data that we can come back to in a few weeks with 12th-gen Alder Lake CPUs, which is meant to benefit from scheduling updates made with Windows 11.
As far as we’re aware, Intel 10th and 11th-gen desktop CPUs should deliver comparable performance using either Windows 10 or Windows 11. But as always there seems to be conflicting reports, some claiming Windows 11 is much faster and others suggesting the opposite is true.
A word about VBSThe fourth configuration we’ve included is one with Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) enabled. By default, our Windows 11 install disabled this feature, but it’s been reported that on some desktop and laptop PCs, VBS is enabled by default and can tank gaming performance by up to 25%.
It should be noted that VBS isn’t a new feature and it’s certainly not exclusive to Windows 11. You can enable it on Windows 10, but we’ve never come across a single configuration where it’s enabled by default.
To check if VBS is enabled, use Windows search, type ‘MSInfo32’ and hit Enter. Towards the bottom of the system info you’ll find if Virtualization-Based Security is enabled or not. To toggle it on/off, enter the Windows Security menu, navigate to the Device Security tab and under the header “Core isolation” you’ll find the ability to toggle disable VBS.
Cache and Memory Latency PerformanceBefore we jump into the application benchmarks here’s a quick look at cache and memory latency performance. In short we see no change, or virtually no change in L1, L2 or L3 cache performance with the Intel processors. Where we do see a notable performance difference is when looking at DRAM latency…
Application BenchmarksMoving on to Cinebench R23, we find that the 11900K produced its best result with Windows 10 though the difference is minimal, about a 1% increase over the fresh Windows 11 install. Enabling VBS had a very minor impact on performance at 2%, with the variation between the slowest and fastest configurations, and the same is also true for the Core i3 system.
Gaming BenchmarksTime for a few game benchmarks. Please note we’re not testing dozens upon dozens of games, rather you get the idea with just a few, so we’re going to show the results for four titles, starting with F1 2021.
Storage PerformanceBefore wrapping up testing, here’s a look at storage performance with CrystalDiskMark. Read and write sequential performance is the same regardless of the configuration, so nothing to report here. However, the random queue depth 32 results are interesting.
Windows 11 is offering a massive increase in write performance over Windows 10. To be entirely honest, I’m no longer familiar with SSD testing and I haven’t run CrystalDiskMark in years, but I can tell you after multiple system resets the results were repeatable and I did completely fill the brand new SSD before I began testing.
What We LearnedThere you have it. For the most part there is little to no difference between Windows 11 and Windows 10 using Intel 10th and 11th-gen Core series processors across gaming, application, and storage performance. If you’ve experienced a notable drop in performance since upgrading, it’s well worth checking to see if VBS is enabled and do something about that as we explained in the intro.
It’s also worth noting that for maximum performance you’re better off starting over with a fresh install of Windows 11. Besides the small performance loss that was seen with the upgraded install, we also on occasion randomly suffered blue screen crashes when loading Windows 11, something that never happened with the fresh install.
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