How is the performance of Windows 11 games?

Windows 11 is the talk of the town, as it was released yesterday. Have you upgraded to the new operating system? Players will have a question about it, no, they are not going to ask, can it run Game XYZ? The real concern is, how is the performance of games in Windows 11? Is it worth sticking to Windows 10, or do you get a boost when you upgrade to Windows 11?

Expressed differently: is it worth upgrading to Windows 11 if you use Windows 10 PC for predominantly gaming?

Windows 11 gaming performance

I tried a few graphics-heavy games from my library, and this is how it went. Before I begin, I must tell you how I rate the performance, I prefer a smooth frame rate and playability to the quality of the graphics. That’s the only way to tell if there are lag spikes, micro stutters, or other issues.

Red Dead Redemption 2

The game takes a little while to launch, but this has always been the case with the Rockstar launcher, it really is a horrible program and Windows 11 is not at fault here. Anyway, the game itself works fine. Crazy as it may sound, I actually got better FPS on RDR 2 (Update 1.26 Build 1436.28) on High / Ultra settings than with Medium / High graphics, there was a difference of about 10FPS for some reason. Performance drops in densely populated areas like St. Denis, but that’s to be expected, and I had the same problem with Windows 10.

Horizon zero dawn

Game performance at launch was quite poor, but Guerrilla Games crashed on various fixes and HZD has been running smoothly since the last update. I have no complaints here on Windows 11. Here’s the game’s benchmark, but I’d say don’t judge it by the results.

Note: The game incorrectly detects the operating system as Windows 10 2009, while it is Windows 11 21H2 build 22000.194.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

Valhalla is perhaps the only game on the list that concerns me. I’ve been in for over 125 hours, so I think it’s fair to say that I know the issues in the game. But I’m happy with its performance on Windows 11, it’s good, not great.

Truth be told, it wasn’t the smoothest on Windows 10 either, I was never able to get Assassin’s Creed Valhalla to run at a solid 60 fps regardless of graphics settings, but I’ll take the 50-55 FPS performance with pleasure. Surprisingly, the Photo mode (and the online mode) no longer crashes the game, although I think that has to do with the patches from Ubisoft.

Valhalla also detects the build of the operating system incorrectly.

Far Cry 5

Far Cry 5’s performance really surprised me, it works quite well on Windows 11, even on Ultra graphics settings, which says something for a Ubisoft title. I had no problems with the game, and that 60FPS is really a pleasure.

Forza Horizon 4

Forza Horizon 4 (Xbox Gamepass PC version 1.474.687.2) ran smoothly at high settings and a solid 60FPS. Loading times weren’t too bad either.

How good is Windows 11 for gaming?

Aside from Horizon Zero Dawn, the other games I mentioned above all have some kind of DRM that tax the CPU a bit more. Many games have a frame rate limit, which you can enable to lock the FPS at 30, 45, or 60, depending on the capabilities of your computer’s hardware.

I have a mid-range gaming laptop with an NVidia GTX 1650 graphics card, an i5 9300H CPU, 8GB of RAM, and an m.2 SSD. If you have an Nvidia RTX graphics card or an AMD Radeon RX GPU, and maybe an NVMe SDD, you will have much better gaming performance under Windows 11. Before you test / play the games, you need to update your graphics driver to the latest version . I also had no problem emulating games on RetroArch, melonDS, PPSSPP, and Citra. The Xbox Wireless Controller works in all games as expected.

Recently, there have been reports that Microsoft VBS (Virtualization Based Security) has a negative impact on gaming performance on Windows 11. VBS is used to protect the system against malware attacks, you can learn more about it here and here. I don’t recommend disabling the settings, but if your games are not working properly, you can turn it off at your own risk. If that doesn’t stop it, go to Windows Security> Device Security> Kernel Isolation Details> and change the Memory Integrity option.

Overall, I think Windows 11 offers the same gaming experience as Windows 10, unless you can take advantage of the DirectStorage feature, which increases the loading performance of games that support it. On the other hand, it is not an exclusive feature of Windows 11.

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