Windows 11 performs worse than older Windows versions in nearly every benchmark - But it's okay because new paint has AI features.

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

Why are we not surprised?​

By Kishalaya Kundu January 6, 2026 at 9:21 AM 44 comments

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.

 

[okyt]

I can't really think of a newer operating system that would be faster than previous versions, using the same hardware.

 

[Free Alex Jones]

taking up much more RAM than older versions of the OS

I get the feeling that RAM usage is misunderstood. You want your PC to be using as much as possible. Unused RAM is wasted RAM.

 

[The Dude]

I'm sure that the fact that Windows 11 likely had more Pajeets working on it than any previous version of Windows (and the fewest competent White people) has nothing to do with it's shitty performance. Just a total coincidence, to be sure.

 

[souschef]

Didn't update, lol

Ain't gonna

 

[The Connected Nose]

I get the feeling that RAM usage is misunderstood. You want your PC to be using as much as possible. Unused RAM is wasted RAM.

Always felt like cope to me. There's no reason the OS should be eating up every bit of RAM it can get its hands on. I don't care if you have the latest nvme storage, it takes time to swap shit back to storage when something that actually needs that memory is launched. It will never be as fast as simply launching that new task and letting it go into RAM right away, unless you're a rich bastard that runs everything on a RAM drive.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

Windows 11 has alot of issues, but this isn't the way to highlight them.

The testing methodology wasn't the greatest; running new stuff on the barest minimum hardware won't give good results - and it comes across as the author writing a hit piece against windows 11 than an actual critique. However, Win 11 has glaring issues - especially when it was recently revealed the jeet code for the underlying core functions is so bad the OS sucks worse than ever.

New software should be way the fuck better than old software.

In theory, yes, but each new version of software these days almost always includes new features that result from bloat, scope creep, or stuff that most end users simply don't want. Programmers - especially third world ones - would rather shit out crap AI-generated code ASAP than practice proper software development and take the time to produce something of quality. I just hope this doesn't lead to some sort of Windows-related computer catastrophe.

 

[SCV]

I get the feeling that RAM usage is misunderstood. You want your PC to be using as much as possible. Unused RAM is wasted RAM.

I have to disagree with this pretty strongly. I understand the sentiment - completely unused ram could be used to cache recently read files, do operations completely in memory rather than writing intermediate steps to the disk, etc. The ryzen X3D cpus are so good because they have a lot of cache and what is ram but a cache for disk? I see the cache used on my linux PC and know it is a benefit. I am not constantly dropping the cache so that I have more free ram.

But that's not what this is. The OS (or any time/latency-sensitive application) requires a certain amount of ram to run. Fixed memory structures for the kerenl, various buffers, and so on and so forth. You could not run any of these operating systems directly from disk. Being memory efficient with these hard requirements is important because it allows you to load more programs and have more memory for things like caching in the first place. Usage at idle immediately after start up is a decent way to measure this.

To put it bluntly: If program A does something in 5 seconds while using 1gb of ram and program B does the same thing in 5 seconds while using 10gb of ram then program A is better and trying to defend program B by saying "Unused RAM is wasted RAM" is stupid. And remember win11 is not just the same speed but uses more ram and is slower. It's worse than my hypothetical.

 

[Free Alex Jones]

I have to disagree with this pretty strongly. I understand the sentiment - completely unused ram could be used to cache recently read files, do operations completely in memory rather than writing intermediate steps to the disk, etc. The ryzen X3D cpus are so good because they have a lot of cache and what is ram but a cache for disk? I see the cache used on my linux PC and know it is a benefit. I am not constantly dropping the cache so that I have more free ram.

But that's not what this is. The OS (or any time/latency-sensitive application) requires a certain amount of ram to run. Fixed memory structures for the kerenl, various buffers, and so on and so forth. You could not run any of these operating systems directly from disk. Being memory efficient with these hard requirements is important because it allows you to load more programs and have more memory for things like caching in the first place. Usage at idle immediately after start up is a decent way to measure this.

To put it bluntly: If program A does something in 5 seconds while using 1gb of ram and program B does the same thing in 5 seconds while using 10gb of ram then program A is better and trying to defend program B by saying "Unused RAM is wasted RAM" is stupid. And remember win11 is not just the same speed but uses more ram and is slower. It's worse than my hypothetical.

What benefit do you think you are getting from having 9GB of RAM going unused?

 

[TJT]

Street-shitter in charge did not ruin Windows. About a decade ago he decided Windows and Office were legacy so it all got shipped to india, because cheap.

He stopped caring because growth markets and revenue is all Azure, and today also AI, so ALL of engineering shifted away from windows to focus 100% on Azure and later also AI.
And windows was shipped to India to maintain.

The result you see is "Windows was de-prioritized and handed to jeets about a decade ago".
Guess how shit windows 12 will be.

Before complaining about this decision. Assume you have three business units, they are all about the same size.
BU A (windows) has no growth potential. Best outcome is revenue remains flat for the next decade.
BU B (azure) is mature and expected to grow by 10x in the next decade.
BU C (AI) is new but has potential to 10x - 100x over the next decade.

How would you allocate engineering resources and what should the principal engineers work on?

I always thought this was just retarded. For all of Apple's total gayness they definitely get the User Experience and OS part right. I will always prefer to write code and work (as a software engineer) on a Mac over a Windows machine if given a choice.

Azure is cool and all but the center point for your entire business is the Operating System flagship. If you fuck that up it fucks everything else up too. How retarded do you need to be to not recognize that?

 

[indigoisviolet]

Have they explained why Win11 runs on workplace potato computers, but home users are told to fuck off and buy a new overspecced expensive machine yet?

Do you reckon they'll confess that this was all bullshit and Win10 could have simply upgraded on all of our devices, or are they waiting for the first class action lawsuit to impact them meaningfully before silently upgrading everything anyway?

 

[Vesperus]

What benefit do you think you are getting from having 9GB of RAM going unused?

You get the benefit of having it available for programs without having to fuck around clearing it out.
Counterpoint: What benefit do you think you are getting from having 9GB of Windows cruft that's not doing anything productive?
An OS should have as small a resource footprint as possible. It's not like RAM goes rusty, or processor cycles atrophy, when the machine's idling.

 

[Seething Troon Collector]

What benefit do you think you are getting from having 9GB of RAM going unused?

Are you seriously trying to tell me that an operating system should use as much memory as the machine has?

What does an operating system do? It runs in the background, it executes code, it provides an abstraction layer to integrate hardware and software drivers, it provides an interface to interact with the hardware.

If it’s using all of your resources to run that then it’s poorly optimized and absolute trash. You know, like Windows 11 is now.

 

[Free Alex Jones]

What benefit do you think you are getting

I have that additional 9GB of data available in the fastest storage location available for the CPU to read from and write to. This is more efficient than reading from any other storage location.

Are you seriously trying to tell me that an operating system should use as much memory as the machine has?

Yes. I am sorry that you do not understand basic computing concepts.

Having unused RAM is like having unused bandwidth. You gain nothing.

 

[Vesperus]

I have that additional 9GB of data available in the fastest storage location available for the CPU to read from and write to.

Which data, numbnuts? You haven't even loaded an application yet. We are talking about the operating system. Shit that, if it fills up the RAM, will have to be unloaded so you can then do something useful.

 

[Free Alex Jones]

Holy fuck, this is like explaining per capita to niggers.

You go ahead man, conserve all the RAM you want to, I hope you enjoy looking at your low RAM usage and 102% local storage usage in task manager.

 

[Do Not Touch Me Pls]

If you noticed it nearly all of the websites, especially cloudflare sites are also slower. Also notice how "my computer" is now called "This PC." Shits fucked and will never get better. You can also forget about Apple and Linux because of a lack of support.

As for Windows's OS itself I haven't found too much issues with 23H2 but I tried 24H2 and instantly rolled back to the previous version and never looked back. It DELETED THE ACTIVATION KEY by the way.

 

[Vesperus]

I hope you enjoy looking at your low RAM usage and 102% local storage usage in task manager.

And you enjoy looking at your empty desktop, I guess...

 

[Super-Chevy454]

I'm sure that the fact that Windows 11 likely had more Pajeets working on it than any previous version of Windows (and the fewest competent White people) has nothing to do with it's shitty performance. Just a total coincidence, to be sure.

And they might ask materials made of tofu-dreg as well.

 

[Seething Troon Collector]

Yes. I am sorry that you do not understand basic computing concepts.

You’re either trolling or a fucking retard. You’re not thin-provisioning memory for VMs, you’re trying to run a software stack to run other software. Please donate your computer to a community college because you’re too fucking stupid to own one.

Where is the video about Saint Terry and command lines vs GUIs because it’s pertinent here.

 

[Smar Mijou]

So is this because of too much Rust or not enough Rust?

Yes.

I know this is crazy talk in a world of total surveillance, ads, and Indians, but—

New software should be way the fuck better than old software.

Completely agree. Older OSes, particularly Win3.1 and earlier, were wonders of ingenuity and resource management. That was back when memory was expensive and the software engineers had to work within those constraints. Nowadays with memory being relatively cheap and plentiful, modern-day jeetcoders seemingly add bloat just for the sake of it. Resource hogging and feature-creep are viewed as benefits instead of the cancer thst they are. There's no goddamn reason that Win11 should ever require 4GB minimum of RAM while everything back to Vista could manage with as little as 1GB. Hell, XP and earlier back to Win95 could manage with 64MB at the very low end.

The same things are happening with video games. Multi-GB disk space requirements and oftentimes hundreds of MBs of updates as soon as you buy it. They're coding for the visual autists and gaming magazine journoscum who's only concern is if a blade of grass at 300 virtual yards in a random cutscene looks realistic, and not if it takes a quarter of your disk space to even play the damn thing.

As for the complaints of running everything on a HDD vs SDD, who cares? It's only going to show Win11 in an even more negative light. If your system needs a leg-up by only working half decent on optimized flash memory, that just proves how shit it is. All of the other tested OSes would still blow Win11 out of the water using modern storage technology.