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.

 

[big pauper]

You either understand the flow of data from the CPU through to the swap file or you don't. Unused RAM is wasted RAM, and if you disagree, you're a nigger.

why is there 400mb just sitting idle waiting to be written to disk, when the disks aren't in use? why is it paging 400mb on my hard disk when there's 55 gigabytes of avaliable ram? why it it keeping 4gb of file system cache when windirstat takes like 200mb of memory to map every single file on your computer in 30 seconds? at a certain point even if you have more than enough system resources for this to not really be an issue you stop lampshading the complexity of it and start to ask 'why is my computer using 8gb of ram to run a single firefox window, steam, and discord?"

 

[Pure Soap]

I made beautiful fanart of Slopya Nadella.
Ver archivo adjunto 8446033

YOU MUST REDEEM COPILOT SAAR

 

[Seymour Duncan]

I was cursed. My DNS servers decided to eat all of the memory I gave them. Took my whole network down. It was definitely using all of the RAM, which is close to the SRAM cache, didn’t help, made it worse. Then it spilled over into the swap file and all of the sudden, no more DNS.

Surprisingly, when all of the memory is used up and the thrashing starts, it breaks things.

No idea why it did it, memory leak? It just decided it didn’t want to work today, idk.

The little weather/news widget in the bottom right corner of the taskbar? If you roll snake eyes, it can and will puke itself and start taking up all your memory, then all your swap space, then crash in a spectacularly violent manner when it tried to consume 120GB of memory and the memory manager finally gave up after force closing basically everything aside from winlogon and that gay little widget, leaving the entire system in an unstable state. Fun!

 

[Fellen]

It's got a bunch of bloatware packaged in it's ridiculous. No wonder why people want an alternative.

 

[Free Alex Jones]

why is there 400mb just sitting idle waiting to be written to disk

There isn't. You are conflating data that may be written to local storage with data that requires to be written to local storage.

there's 55 gigabytes of avaliable ram

There isn't. Look at the top right hand side of your image.

windirstat takes like 200mb of memory to map every single file on your computer

A batch file will do it in far less.

why is my computer using 8gb of ram to run a single firefox window, steam,

Are you not also running an OS kernel, a compositing desktop window manager, Windows update, literally hundreds of services and dozens of drivers etc.? None of these things exist in isolation. On the subject of Windows 'bloat', I doubt any of the RAMtards ITT have ever looked up a Quality or Feature Update KB to see what had been added or depracated. Comparison between an OS that demanded you set IRQs manually and one which can tell if the steam_api.dll on your PC is different to the steam_api.dll on millions of other PCs via real time telemetry are frankly ludicrous, and only the very middest of midwits would fall for such uninformed twaddle and bunk.

and discord?

OK groomer

 

[big pauper]

Are you not also running an OS kernel, a compositing desktop window manager, Windows update, literally hundreds of services and dozens of drivers etc.? None of these things exist in isolation. On the subject of Windows 'bloat', I doubt any of the RAMtards ITT have ever looked up a Quality or Feature Update KB to see what had been added or depracated. Comparison between an OS that demanded you set IRQs manually and one which can tell if the steam_api.dll on your PC is different to the steam_api.dll on millions of other PCs via real time telemetry are frankly ludicrous, and only the very middest of midwits would fall for such uninformed twaddle and bunk.

im pretty sure windows 7 did all of that too and it would run firefox, steam, and skype at the same time on 2gb of ram

who's the midwit and who's the bootlicker

 

[Tram Fan]

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.

excuse me what the fuck

yeah I always fill my backpack to the brim until I can't close it no more. And when I need no stuff apart from the wallet and keys I just put random rocks in it cuz otherwise I'd be wasting precious backpack space.

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.

I hope hospitals and what not use like specialized linux and not windows. But still there'd be some hopefully not too important spots with windows machines because you don't need to train people for windows so it's easier. Not gonna powerlevel but Poland had problems with education during wuflu because teams was a piece of shit even when using its basic functions. But yeah I can imagine a scenario in which a small enterprise gets fucked because its computers got yeeted on its own.

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.

Stop posting stupid

If you noticed it nearly all of the websites, especially cloudflare sites are also slower.

Yeah cloudflare is a shitfuckery lately but I think it's because they got fucked some time ago and it's not just a windows problem.

This is the real crux of the issue. For the vast majority of users out there, the real threat posed by these attack vectors is….slim to none. It’s just not realistic for your average person to be affected by attacks of this nature.

The problem is that companies are targeted, and they’re all using the same operating system, hardware, firmware, all of that. So the most secure option is used for everybody because it’s cheaper (credential guard, as I referenced earlier is not, but secure boot is).

I dunno shit but there are separate windowses for enterprise and the common folk it's laziness to put the same shit in both.

This is the total amount of memory being consumed on my PC right now, and I'm actively only running a web browser. Approximately 48GB of RAM is being taken up by a cache of recently and frequently accessed data, which can be instantly overwritten.

You're a retard who can't use the file explorer or what?

 

[Snekposter]

Try hundreds of GB disk space requirements and dozens (sometimes hundreds) of GB of updates weekly from first week to 6 months out.

No reason why they need to be so big either. A lot of that space is taken up by 4k uncompressed video in 18 different languages, 4k textures in 18 different languages, etc, which nobody needs. If you could select only the ones you need during installation you could easily lop off a large portion of what you need to download but because everyone is expected to have massive hard drives and Gigabit internet the expectation is that everyone can just download it.

Uncompressed video, uncompressed audio, and uncompressed textures. Turns out consoles don't have the computing power to do on-the-fly decompression like PC's do, and those bad habits have carried over.

 

[Seething Troon Collector]

I dunno shit but there are separate windowses for enterprise and the common folk it's laziness to put the same shit in both.

Drink verification can to turn off telemetry or even edit group policies….or use the local user management snap-in…

Or you could just crack the enterprise SKU with whatever people are using to do that these days like a normal person.

Basically Windows 11 is absolute dogshit, 10 was only marginally better, but when the bar is on the ground 2cm doesn’t matter. Microsoft lost the plot years ago. Enjoy vibe-coded pajeet slop because it’s not getting any better.

 

[Seymour Duncan]

I dunno shit but there are separate windowses for enterprise and the common folk it's laziness to put the same shit in both.

It's the exact same operating system image, you just set a configuration flag in the install media to tell the installer what it's supposed to install. The end product does vary because installing the pleb editions will omit and permanently disable the features included in the better editions, unless you're one of those insane people who actually pay for a cross-edition upgrade.

 

[Gap Hag]

Just fucking use W10 LTSC or linux mint, it's literally that simple.

 

[Tram Fan]

Just fucking use W10 LTSC or linux mint, it's literally that simple.

for you problems arise when you're 50+ yo faggot who struggled with win already like yeah I can do but my elders not really

 

[Free Alex Jones]

You're a retard who can't use the file explorer or what?

Would you like another go at making a point, this time without the crack pipe?

 

[debristar]

for you problems arise when you're 50+ yo faggot who struggled with win already like yeah I can do but my elders not really

and that's why retirement age will be lowered not raised. we need these people out of the way. Raus!

 

[Gap Hag]

for you problems arise when you're 50+ yo faggot who struggled with win already like yeah I can do but my elders not really

You have to use stuff like openshell to make it so win10 doesn't look like shit too.

 

[MadStan]

It staggers me a company can put out products as bad as Microsoft. Since I was forced to migrate to Windows 11, everything is worse. EVERYTHING. But don't you believe it, he can fix world hunger but can't release a software package that doesn't fuck productivity.

 

[Gap Hag]

It staggers me a company can put out products as bad as Microsoft. Since I was forced to migrate to Windows 11, everything is worse. EVERYTHING. But don't you believe it, he can fix world hunger but can't release a software package that doesn't fuck productivity.

Unfortunately besides the super simple distros like mint linux is just fucked six ways from sunday in how non user friendly they are too.

 

[Jump]

Unfortunately besides the super simple distros like mint linux is just fucked six ways from sunday in how non user friendly they are too.

I use Debian and can't really tell the difference between 11,12, and 13. I run all 3 on diff machines and have to manually check the debian_version file all the time to see where I'm at. The differences are basically nothing between those major versions compared to the differences between Win7->8 and Win10->11. You have to get in to the weeds to notice stuff like changes with ifconfig/ip, sudo/su, etc. Nothing really changes with the main GUI stuff so you only have to learn it once. Where as Windows just does major UI changes every other release just so a bunch of jeets at MS can justify their jobs. One of my company owned laptops is Windows on a domain so I can't turn off updates. Every other week I get a surprise with something new broken or I have to figure out some new UI or changes with how a thing works. For no fucking reason at all.
While Debian is very boring and updates are uneventful.

I am not one of those guys that say everyone should just switch to Linux/OSX. Windows is still the only real option in corporate because of the centralized Domain Controller/GP stuff.

 

[Gap Hag]

I use Debian and can't really tell the difference between 11,12, and 13. I run all 3 on diff machines and have to manually check the debian_version file all the time to see where I'm at. The differences are basically nothing between those major versions compared to the differences between Win7->8 and Win10->11. You have to get in to the weeds to notice stuff like changes with ifconfig/ip, sudo/su, etc. Nothing really changes with the main GUI stuff so you only have to learn it once. Where as Windows just does major UI changes every other release just so a bunch of jeets at MS can justify their jobs. Where as Debian is very boring and updates are uneventful.

I am not one of those guys that say everyone should just switch to Linux/OSX. Windows still the only real option in corprate because of the centralized Domain Controller/GP stuff.

Yeah debian is great for .deb files, and you can even run mint off debian as a base instead of ubuntu

 

[Made In Wales]

Pajeets to blame.