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.

 

[SCV]

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

Actually this makes sense. After all I do constantly download things I don't need (then delete them immediately) over and over so as not to have any unused bandwidth. Unused bandwidth is wasted bandwidth, after all.

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

lol, lmao.

Also notice how "my computer" is now called "This PC."

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?

The non-schizo answer would probably be that corpo laptops usually have TPMs while home computers didn't until recently and (iirc) win11 requires a TPM for entirely legitimate security reasons like secure boot and bitlocker.

My schizo take on this is that these "security" features (mostly secure boot) are just an attempt to lock down all computing devices exactly how phones are with locked boot loaders. This benefits both microshit by forcing more sales / making linux,BSD,etc. harder to run and the government by increasing the amount PCs they get to spy on.

 

[Free Alex Jones]

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

Why would it be empty?
This is simply a case of the majority of users being uninformed retards that do not understand that RAM, local storage, and CPU registers are all contigous extensions of the same thing, and best efficiency demands the bulk of the most frequently accessed data being stored as close to the CPU registers as possible.
This level of technological incompetence should be restricted to the Apple containment thread.

 

[The Dude]

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

Curry Dreg coding? Curry Slop coding?

 

[Seething Troon Collector]

Actually this makes sense. After all I do constantly download things I don't need (then delete them immediately) over and over so as not to have any unused bandwidth. Unused bandwidth is wasted bandwidth, after all.

I just let the operating system use all of the available RAM so the applications page out to my hard disk. Why would I ever want the applications I want to actually run operate over ephemeral memory that’s faster, that should be reserved for the OS because it’s obviously the most important thing ever.

Only the most based gigachads use all of their memory so when you try to start vim or brave it gets to go sit in the swap file cuck chair.

My schizo take on this is that these "security" features (mostly secure boot) are just an attempt to lock down all computing devices exactly how phones are with locked boot loaders

I’m torn on this. On the one hand, I don’t want computers to become locked down boxes like modern cell phones are, but on the other hand, there’s a legitimate reason to ensure a chain of trust in a computer’s bootloader. It’s like how pre-shit covered Windows devs thought isolating the security subsystem and hardening it against attack made sense because Kerberos tickets can be stolen and used before they expire.

But you know, I don’t know anything about computers and I’m a drooling retard.

 

[SCV]

there’s a legitimate reason to ensure a chain of trust in a computer’s bootloader.

Is there really? In theory this stops "evil maid" attacks. How realistic do you think the threat of someone getting unmonitored physical access to your computer, installing a malicious boot loader, then having you start it, then getting unmonitored physical access to your computer again is? Also if your disk isn't encrypted none of this matters because they can just take your computer and read all the information on the drive anyway.

Further if this is the scenario we're trying to prevent secure boot wont help you if they're something like using a malicious USB cable https://shop.hak5.org/products/omg-cable. Now what do you think an attacker is more likely to use? A bad USB cable that works on basically everything and gives them a wifi access point and every key stroke? Or some way to modify your specific boot loader with the hope that either it can compromise your OS and communicate over your connection (or they get no real time data and hope that they can retrieve it later)?

This whole scam is just trying to lock down every computing device for some minuscule theoretical security benefit that larping fags make soy faces about because they know the term "evil maid attack" and think that makes them a 1337 hacker.

 

[Seething Troon Collector]

Is there really? In theory this stops "evil maid" attacks. How realistic do you think the threat of someone getting unmonitored physical access to your computer, installing a malicious boot loader, then having you start it, then getting unmonitored physical access to your computer again is? Also if your disk isn't encrypted none of this matters because they can just take your computer and read all the information on the drive anyway.

Further if this is the scenario we're trying to prevent secure boot wont help you if they're something like using a malicious USB cable https://shop.hak5.org/products/omg-cable. Now what do you think an attacker is more likely to use? A bad USB cable that works on basically everything and gives them a wifi access point and every key stroke? Or some way to modify your specific boot loader with the hope that either it can compromise your OS and communicate over your connection (or they get no real time data and hope that they can retrieve it later)?

This whole scam is just trying to lock down every computing device for some minuscule theoretical security benefit that larping fags make soy faces about because they know the term "evil maid attack" and think that makes them a 1337 hacker.

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).

That won’t stop unscrupulous companies from trying to force it on everybody because it’s possible to shoehorn in security hardening “for your protection”, when in reality it’s to exert control. So for 95% of users it’s completely fucking useless and serves the dual purpose of restricting what you can do with hardware that you own.

I’m not trying to be a doomposter like Fatpacks, there’s always a way around it, but it’s definitely something to be concerned about.

 

[VargReallyDidNothingWrong]

Multi-GB disk space requirements and oftentimes hundreds of MBs of updates as soon as you buy it.

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.

 

[the rat]

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.

For the past 4 or so years under windows I had been consistently hitting a point where there was almost no more memory left and performance ended up tanking to such a degree that I had to forcefully restart my computer (power button hold). RAM is fast but there is a limited amount, don't be greedy. Not that hitting the disk constantly would be a better solution, of course. Most of the applications today I find using so much memory are often JIT compiled programs that import a billion libraries that bring about their billions of sublibraries or individual minimal chrome (which I swear allocates more than it has any fucking need for) instances.

Basically we got to kill the creators of JavaScript is what I'm saying.

 

[Pluciferous]

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.

If the concept of return-oriented programming didn’t exist, you’d still be wrong, but you wouldn’t be so fatally wrong. The more executable code you map into memory, the more gadgets you offer to attackers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return-oriented_programming

 

[Free Alex Jones]

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.



Would any of the previous RAMtards care to explain to me how removing this cache will improve any aspect of the operation of this PC in any way? Or perhaps it is better to think of it this way; if that 48GB of data was not stored in RAM, where would it be stored, and would access to it be faster or slower than storing it in RAM?

 

[Pluciferous]

Would any of the previous RAMtards care to explain to me how removing this cache will improve any aspect of the operation of this PC in any way? Or perhaps it is better to think of it this way; if that 48GB of data was not stored in RAM, where would it be stored, and would access to it be faster or slower than storing it in RAM?

You are assuming that the cache is properly and performantly implemented. You are assuming that the cache is up-to-date with the data it’s supposed to be caching. You are assuming that cache contents are accurately invalidated when the underlying data changes.

There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors.

-- Leon Bambrick

You also seem completely ignorant of the concept of memory leaks. Most software leaks memory (even operating system kernels), and the amount of leaked memory compounds over time until you restart the application and/or reboot the machine. I am very amused by the thought of you watching your used-memory rise and rise, and shouting “YES I AM APPROACHING PEAK PERFORMANCE I’M GONNA COOOOOOOOM”. Dude, both your software and your dick are leaking.

I also imagine that when your doctor says you have high blood pressure, you respond “actually, high blood pressure is a good thing, it means blood can get to all my extremities more quickly”.

 

[SIMON THE PIEMAN]

Out of curiosity I've checked the contents of the standby memory using RAMMap and the very first cached item was a zipped install of Chrome (half a GB), followed by a bunch of other installers I haven't used in months. I'm not convinced that this mechanism works well.

 

[Angry Alt Right Nerd]

You also seem completely ignorant of the concept of memory leaks. Most software leaks memory (even operating system kernels), and the amount of leaked memory compounds over time until you restart the application and/or reboot the machine. I am very amused by the thought of you watching your used-memory rise and rise, and shouting “YES I AM APPROACHING PEAK PERFORMANCE I’M GONNA COOOOOOOOM”. Dude, both your software and your dick are leaking.

I leave my computer on for weeks if not months without restarting and haven't run into any noticeable issues, so I doubt the operating system is leaking significant amounts of memory.

Ver archivo adjunto 8445231

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.

Ver archivo adjunto 8445240

Would any of the previous RAMtards care to explain to me how removing this cache will improve any aspect of the operation of this PC in any way? Or perhaps it is better to think of it this way; if that 48GB of data was not stored in RAM, where would it be stored, and would access to it be faster or slower than storing it in RAM?

From what I heard your cache will simply use less RAM if you need it for something else. I'm guessing the idea is that RAM not being used is wasted RAM.

 

[Free Alex Jones]

You are assuming that the cache is properly and performantly implemented. You are assuming that the cache is up-to-date with the data it’s supposed to be caching. You are assuming that cache contents are accurately invalidated when the underlying data changes.

You are assuming the opposite. Suppose that even if what you are saying is true, that for some reason the 48GB is not filled with recently or frequently used data and code, and is instead filled with "Holy fuck this is /g/ level retardation" over and over for 48GB. What impact would that have on the operation of the PC? Absolutely none. It would just sit there until some process wants to use it.

You also seem completely ignorant of the concept of memory leaks.

Perhaps you could stop writing or executing shitty code? You know you can free() memory after malloc()ing it, right?

I also have to wonder, do you tards also argue against using the L1, L2 and L3 caches? Wouldn't you think it retarded if someone was to come along and state those caches were "too full"?

"Hello Microsoft? Yeah, you don't want to be loading those SQL tables into RAM, just plug in a Seagate 2TB external drive, it'll run much better"
"Hello Pixar? Yeah, you don't want to be buying all those Nvidia cards, you're using too much RAM, just offload it to a tape drive"

I don't think there's much more I can do here, it really is like trying to teach the concept of per capita to niggers. 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.

 

[Vesperus]

>Run Widows and a browser
>Over 13 gig gone
>"Windows is awesome"
>Windows stuffs 47 gig of shit into memory in case I want it later
>"This is efficient"

 

[Lasagna4Dead]

Talk about burying the lead.

They tested it on a laptop from 2011 that they didn't even bother putting an SSD in

You could argue that it should be able to run on older operating systems smoothly, I hear troonix fags always mentioning how their os runs on older hardware much better and faster after removing windows.

 

[CaliforniaRaisin]

I pray to Shiva, Vishnu, Christ, Sathalas, Asmodeus, Budda, Odin, and Zeus that I retire from IT before Windows 12 is forced on my Domain. I cannot take another iteration of enshitment and Linux/MAC is not an option.

Not even GP's or Reg edits can reliably stop stupid Jeet shit anymore. The next time Edge decides to be the default app for .pdf on a random Thursday and my ticket system lights up with a dozen request to reset the default app I swear I'll hit this point:

 

[TenMilesWide]

I also have to wonder, do you tards also argue against using the L1, L2 and L3 caches? Wouldn't you think it retarded if someone was to come along and state those caches were "too full"?

If my operating system on its own with no other programs running decided to clog up the L1/2/3 caches with abject bullshit to the point that programs I'm actually trying to run start popping up with "can't do that, not enough cache" no shit I'd argue against it. That's what Windows is doing to my RAM.
You can say 'that's the programs fault, stop using bad code' all you like but when all these programs still work just fine on the old OS and are noticeably less performant on the new OS, that means the new OS is the bad code.

 

[Seething Troon Collector]

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.

 

[Illuminati Order Official]

NO SAAR WINDOWS 11 VERY GOOD VERY FAST SAAR YOU MUST REDEEM IZZAT SAAR

I made beautiful fanart of Slopya Nadella.