Windows 11 performs worse than older Windows versions in nearly every benchmark

[DragonSlayer101]

Facepalm: Microsoft markets Windows 11 as the fastest and most secure version of the operating system, but users often complain about it being slow, bloated, and buggy. A new speed test now suggests that there may be more truth to those complaints than Microsoft would like to admit.

YouTuber TrigrZolt ran several tests pitting six generations of Windows - from XP to Windows 11 - against one another to see which one can complete a range of tasks the fastest. Surprisingly, Windows 11 came dead last in most of the tests, including boot speed, battery life, app opening speed, and video editing.

Windows 11 also came in last place in terms of memory use, taking up much more RAM than older versions of the OS, even without any apps running on the laptop. The additional memory usage can mostly be attributed to the large suite of background services and telemetry that power users have complained about for years. Windows 11 was also the slowest in the video editing test using OpenShot.

The newest version of Windows also took the longest time to open File Explorer and Paint. While the new Paint app has many additional features that could explain its poor performance on older hardware, File Explorer's sluggishness has been a constant source of frustration for Windows 11 users; it remains painfully slow despite using twice as much RAM as its Windows 10 counterpart.

On the bright side, Windows 11 managed relatively better results in some benchmarks, such as file transfer speed and disk space usage comparison for default apps. The latest OS also came third in one of the page-loading tests but, surprisingly, it was the slowest to load Google's home page, which is optimized to load blazingly fast on just about any device.

In case you're wondering, all six laptops used in the tests were the exact same model: Lenovo ThinkPad X220 equipped with an Intel Core i5-2520M CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB mechanical hard disk. The device does not officially support Windows 11, which likely contributed to its poor showing.

For example, Windows 11 is optimized to boot on SSDs and not legacy mechanical drives, so using the HDD as the boot drive likely resulted in slower boot speed. Similarly, the latest version of Paint includes relatively advanced editing features that require additional memory and fast storage for optimum performance, but the ThinkPad used in the tests offered neither.

Still, the tests indicate that Microsoft is struggling to make Windows 11 the lean and fast operating system that many users want it to be. As such, the gimmicky new features, unnecessary background processes, and resource-heavy services are major impediments to the OS achieving its full performance potential.

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Windows 11 performs worse than older Windows versions in nearly every benchmark

 

[TheBigT42]

No S**T Sherlock.

 

[bviktor]

Good thing I'm on Windows 10 IoT, innit?

 

[Melkor Unlimited]

"Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth."
-- Archimedes

"Give me a lot of CPU power, a lot of RAM, a lot of .... and, may be, I will run fast."
-- Windows

 

[KedsDead]

"Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth."
-- Archimedes

"Give me a lot of CPU power, a lot of RAM, a lot of .... and, may be, I will run fast."
-- Windows

Give me a lot of CPU power, a lot of RAM, a lot of .... and, may be, I'll let you use some of it.

 

[NumberNine]

Its an inferior OS developed by Microsoft to bake additional telemetry directly into the operating system and to implement an extensible framework for integration with and reliance on external services. It is the worst operating system (contextually) that Microsoft has ever created and compared to its peers is the least secure and worst performing. There are people out there who have looked deeper and know way more about this than I can remember, but Windows 11 was never created to help you compute better. Pretending otherwise is willful ignorance.

 

[Nobina]

Considering how much bloat they've added over many years, it's good that it runs at all.

 

[letsgoiowa]

What I really don't understand is why it takes SOOOOOO LONG to boot and be usable when it fundamentally doesn't do anything more *that's useful to the user* than even Windows 7. W7 would boot in like 8 seconds. W11 for my laptop takes no joke 20 times that, but why? What do I gain?

I mean honestly, to the average end user besides security and app compatibility, what did we gain since the XP days?

 

[axiomatic13]

All of this slowness for HDR seems like a waste, Microsoft?

 

[Theinsanegamer]

What I really don't understand is why it takes SOOOOOO LONG to boot and be usable when it fundamentally doesn't do anything more *that's useful to the user* than even Windows 7. W7 would boot in like 8 seconds. W11 for my laptop takes no joke 20 times that, but why? What do I gain?

I mean honestly, to the average end user besides security and app compatibility, what did we gain since the XP days?

There's something wrong with your computer. My windows 11 PCs take no longer to boot then they did on 10. sub 10 seconds from pressing the button to having video streaming on my desktop.

What did we gain? Off the top of my head, we have native support for PCIe busses, native USB boot, native support for USB 3, internet browsers NOT locked into our file explorers like IE6 was, snap windows (which everyone uses now), the ability to install needed drivers over windows update, and the ability to transfer a drive between two totally different PCs without the thing blowing a gasket and blue screening.

Go back and use XP again, it feels like a clunky mess. My retro rigs are always a surprise to use after sitting in storage. Old Windows needed tons of third party programs to function, for things like wireless networking, video playback, temperature monitoring, and so on. Stability wise 11 is also better, remember the good old days where one misbehaving program would lock up Explorer and force you to manually restart the PC via the power button? That is so incredibly rare these days.

Its an inferior OS developed by Microsoft to bake additional telemetry directly into the operating system and to implement an extensible framework for integration with and reliance on external services. It is the worst operating system (contextually) that Microsoft has ever created and compared to its peers is the least secure and worst performing. There are people out there who have looked deeper and know way more about this than I can remember, but Windows 11 was never created to help you compute better. Pretending otherwise is willful ignorance.

Windows being "less secure" is long standing misinformation perpetuated by people quoting malware statistics, never accounting for how tiny alternative's marketshare was and still is. Windows 11 is far more secure then 7 ever was, and if you use their security settings you can easily lock down 11 to prevent people with "click me" syndrome from screwing things up. These people can ruin linux installations, but locked down 11 has so far beaten them.

It's also not the worst MS has ever made. Did you forget ME? The OS so bad it caused everyone to seek out a SERVER OS instead? The only OS MS has ever made that could break itself while turned off?

 

[arrowflash]

Going to share a recent experience I had with Windows 11.

I installed Windows 11 24H2 in a brand new Dell Inspiron 15 3530 laptop, intended for basic use (Core i5 1344U, 16GB DDR4 ram, 512GB NVMe SSD). One of the reasons I chose Windows 11, was the supposedly improved support for P/E cores.

It was a disaster. The laptop was performing terribly slowly, overheating with fans always blown at full speed, presenting stutters in regular desktop use, and intermittent issues with USB ports. Tried everything to fix these issues - debloat and optimization tweaks, re-checking and updating drivers, disabling S0 power mode (which is known to be problematic), and updating to 25H2. Nothing fixed or even mitigated the issues. I was starting to assume it was defective and ready to return it under warranty, or just ask for a refund and purchase a different laptop.

I then installed Windows 10 22H2, and immediately had a completely different laptop. All problems went away, and it's running great now, without any issues.

By the way: This laptop has a SKU that is shipped with Windows 11 pre-installed (mine came with Linux), and if anyone checks online communities like Reddit, Youtube and Dell support forums, you'll notice this model receives lots of similar complaints about the same issues I faced. Most people assume the laptop is just badly designed, or that their unit is defective, but the problem seems to be Windows 11 (of course, if Dell ships it with W11, I still think they should take responsibility for people that paid the OEM W11 license or aren't tech savvy enough to install another OS). It's really ironic that this model officially supports Windows 11, but Windows 10 isn't officially supported.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Going to share a recent experience I had with Windows 11.

I installed Windows 11 24H2 in a brand new Dell Inspiron 15 3530 laptop, intended for basic use (Core i5 1344U, 16GB DDR4 ram, 512GB NVMe SSD). One of the reasons I chose Windows 11, was the supposedly improved support for P/E cores.

It was a disaster. The laptop was performing terribly slowly, overheating with fans always blown at full speed, presenting stutters in regular desktop use, and intermittent issues with USB ports. Tried everything to fix these issues - debloat and optimization tweaks, re-checking and updating drivers, disabling S0 power mode (which is known to be problematic), and updating to 25H2. Nothing fixed or even mitigated the issues. I was starting to assume it was defective and ready to return it under warranty, or just ask for a refund and purchase a different laptop.

I then installed Windows 10 22H2, and immediately had a completely different laptop. All problems went away, and it's running great now, without any issues.

By the way: This laptop has a SKU that is shipped with Windows 11 pre-installed (mine came with Linux), and if anyone checks online communities like Reddit, Youtube and Dell support forums, you'll notice this model receives lots of similar complaints about the same issues I faced. Most people assume the laptop is just badly designed, or that their unit is defective, but the problem seems to be Windows 11 (of course, if Dell ships it with W11, I still think they should take responsibility for people that paid the OEM W11 license or aren't tech savvy enough to install another OS).

An Inspiron? Yeah, those are in fact terrible junk. Defective hinges that break with regular use and system boards that cant handle temperature swings. Inspirons have been junk long before 11.

What part of 11 was consuming so much CPU time to make it "overheat"? Should have been listed in task manager.

 

[NumberNine]

Windows being "less secure" is long standing misinformation perpetuated by people quoting malware statistics, never accounting for how tiny alternative's marketshare was and still is. Windows 11 is far more secure then 7 ever was, and if you use their security settings you can easily lock down 11 to prevent people with "click me" syndrome from screwing things up. These people can ruin linux installations, but locked down 11 has so far beaten them.

It's also not the worst MS has ever made. Did you forget ME? The OS so bad it caused everyone to seek out a SERVER OS instead? The only OS MS has ever made that could break itself while turned off?

Your context and thinking are dated. Windows ME existed an entitely different, tiny world of computing compared to where we are now and Microsoft wasn't pushing the same predatory forced update schemes it does today. Windows ME was entirely skippable and less than a blip on the radar of most computer users, hence Windows 11 is objectively worse than Windows ME. Your security context is also dated as you are thinking about malware as it was during Windows XP days. Today, we live in a world where external service data breaches are the primary threat to your security and if you didn't know before, now you do.

 

[arrowflash]

An Inspiron? Yeah, those are in fact terrible junk. Defective hinges that break with regular use and system boards that cant handle temperature swings. Inspirons have been junk long before 11.

What part of 11 was consuming so much CPU time to make it "overheat"? Should have been listed in task manager.

I'm aware of the Inspiron lineup bad reputation, but I got it really cheap in a sale (purchased directly from Dell's official store) and I used a coupon that gave me an extra discount. Couldn't find anything as cheap with similar specs at the time, except some no-name generic brands. And similar entry-level laptop models from other brands like Acer and Lenovo also appear to have their share of quality and reliability issues.

About the Windows 11 issues, I obviously attempted to find if there was some process or service taking CPU time (also checked for heavy GPU and storage usage) to cause these severe performance and overheating issues on Windows 11, and couldn't find anything. Used not only Windows own task manager, but also Sysinternals Process Explorer and System Informer, which are other go-to third party tools I use.

Anyways, it's been working great for over a month after I switched it to Windows 10.

 

[Athlonite69]

I have no problems with Windows 11 Pro but I'm running it on modern hardware not junk from yesteryear
Boot up: 12seconds
Explorer open: ~1 second
open Paint: 1.5 seconds
open google home page: 1 second
gaming is fast enough that it's smooth running all the time at 1440p

 

[Coisa]

Upgraded a Ryzen 2700x, from Win 10 to Win 11, on the last day of Win 10's official end date - it killed gaming at 1080p. Games played perfectly well before the change. Also, Win 11 slugged my Ryzen 5800x too, its noticeably slower too.

Windows 11 has got to be considered a failed OS. Half the worlds 1 billion Windows 10 installations, 500 million PC's, were still running Win 10 on the day it 'expired'. A chunk of the 500 will never upgrade. MS is forcing itself to loose market-share. Plus, MS is forcing Co-Pilot down our throats. Users hate its intrusion and are doing everything possible to avoid it. MS needs a new CEO. I hope so.

 

[ragreeen2646]

I'm running Win 10 and 11 in my home lab. I personally prefer Win 10.
I have two win 11 machines. One is an Intel (core 5)desktop. I don't see much difference for my workload.
I have a Ryzen 5 desktop (Win 11) and it doesn't perform as good as the Intel box.

 

[brucek]

As always the devil in the details. What performance is lost vs. what features are gained?

If Windows 11 is 0.25% slower at many tasks because it includes BitLocker enabled by default, I'd argue that's a very good trade for most users. Responsible journalism for that case would probably include educating users on the benefits they are getting vs. when if ever it really made sense to forego it.

But if it's 15% slower at many tasks because it is busy preparing ad targeting telemetry, that's a terrible trade for most users. (This is a made up example for illustration purposes - I don't think it's a real scenario.) Here I'd be very interested in journalism that shone a bright light on what Microsoft is doing and even better if it included workable directions on disabling it.

So again, all in the details. I'd love to see a detailed analysis of what is slower and why.

 

[EvilRebar]

Without the percentages, this is a meaningless article. Of course more is happening in Win11 than XP. But will we notice a material impact?

 

[MiqWalsh]

MS needs a new CEO. I hope so.

^^^ Lololol!!!

Heh. Careful what you wish for. Y'all could end up with somebody even MORE "blinkered" and self-absorbed than Nadella..!

Miq.

 

[thewelshbrummie]

In case you're wondering, all six laptops used in the tests were the exact same model: Lenovo ThinkPad X220 equipped with an Intel Core i5-2520M CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB mechanical hard disk. The device does not officially support Windows 11, which likely contributed to its poor showing.

Yet the subheadline :

Why are we not surprised

is considered fair by the author. The clickbait nature of this article is pretty obvious and a poor showing.

--

If we're being objective, this is a mobile Sandy Bridge system that was irrelevant years before Windows 11 launched while also being unsupported.

Storage testing alone shows the weakness of this. SSDs launched 8 years after XP and anything pre Win 7 doesn't support TRIM so it's a disadvantage to 2000s era systems. It's also unfair to test Win 11 on a HDD system when it's expecting to take advantage of an SSD for boot. The tests simply favour older operating systems by default with that methodology.

Still, the tests indicate that Microsoft is struggling to make Windows 11 the lean and fast operating system that many users want it to be.

A bold statement made to fit a narrative, rather than based on sensible evidence, testing and methodology. Compare era appropriate, and supported, hardware on era appropriate OS's, then we would get a more realistic answer for real-world experiences. Otherwise it's simply poor journalism from both the video creator and this website.

 

[BadThad]

Its an inferior OS developed by Microsoft to bake additional telemetry directly into the operating system and to implement an extensible framework for integration with and reliance on external services. It is the worst operating system (contextually) that Microsoft has ever created and compared to its peers is the least secure and worst performing. There are people out there who have looked deeper and know way more about this than I can remember, but Windows 11 was never created to help you compute better. Pretending otherwise is willful ignorance.

HERE HERE! Bloatware built in!

 

[JSabin]

No surprise. All legacy software is bloatware. Just look at the history of Adobe and Norton products to name a few.

Also, have never understood people's obsession with boot time. My aging 12-year old desktop running Windows 7 twith a spinning HDD takes 35 seconds to cold-boot and 2 seconds to awake from Sleep mode. I only restart it once a month to clear out memory, so my normal wait time is 2 seconds. You don't hear me screaming to high-heavens at manufacturers about why it takes so long for Windows to load!

Can only imagine the people that do are laptop owners who take a seat on an airplane, open their laptop and because they didn't put it in Seep or Hybernation mode must power on and wait the insufferable minute for Windows to load. Poor babies. LOL

 

[manowar51]

It's also not the worst MS has ever made. Did you forget ME? The OS so bad it caused everyone to seek out a SERVER OS instead? The only OS MS has ever made that could break itself while turned off?

Dont forget Vista! That was a festering heap of garbage too!

 

[Northy]

Dont forget Vista! That was a festering heap of garbage too!

Yeah, Vista was way worse than 11, great big stinker. Microsoft didn't force everyone to use it though by cutting off security updates for XP.