News Benchmarked: Do Windows 11’s Security Features Really Hobble Gaming Performance?

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Interesting article. ~5% for games isn't very significant to me, however if I were someone using an application like corona often I would definitely make sure these features are disabled. Overall I'm not bothered by these features being enabled since they are able to be disabled, unlike a lot of the other requirements for Windows 11.

Some things that I would have liked to see included would have been a comparison to Windows 10. Additionally, as I fear a lower end CPU might not fair quite as well with these features enabled, a test on weaker hardware would also have been a nice inclusion.

There are plenty of lower end CPUs capable of running Windows 11, after all.
 
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It would be nice if these features could become dynamic, turning themselves off when DirectX, Direct3D or OpenGL APIs are triggered, and then turning back on again for productivity or web browsing.
 
I've definitely seen the effects of it when enabled. I've also done various benchmarking across Unigen Heaven, CPU-Z and Cinebench and there is definitely a decrease in the performance. Also, Doom Eternal runs smooth for me on Ultra, but when I enable VBS (just by enabling the Virtual Machine Platform feature) Doom Eternal starts hitching no matter what detail setting I set it at and it's pretty persistent (about every 30 seconds or so) no matter what I'm doing. Once I remove the Virtual Machine Platform feature, my performance returns.

But with Cinebench I saw about a 3% decrease in performance. Unigen didn't show much difference. (0.78%). CPU-Z had a 2.37% difference.

So I would say overall, I saw a small decrease in speed on my AMD Ryzen 5 360 and GTX 1660, but it wasn't until I tried to play games that ran smooth with no VBS enabled that I saw the effects in performance. Even though my FPS stayed at 60, the hitching in games, like Doom Eternal, were evident. Trying to turn v-sync from on, to triple buffer to off didn't fix the hitching. And once I turned Virtual Machine Platform off, the problem went away.

Also, going to Settings->Privacy & Security->Windows Security->Device Security->Core isolation, I saw that Memory integrity was already off so I couldn't turn it off completely. But going into the System Information->System Summary section, it shows the VBS is enabled.

So overall, it definitely can affect people but how much it affects people may depend on their hardware. For me, I could definitely see the effects on many games. Others not so much.
 
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289 FPS vs 301 FPS? 96 vs 103 FPS? This doesn't look that bad. I'm not sure if we'll notice it that much. Considering how invasive game DRM can be, I might prefer the extra security features. Now, if it were something like 96 FPS vs 120 FPS, I'd be saying something different.

It's still a good service to everyone to benchmark, track, and report on. I would like to see things like frame rate consistency, and systems that are under 60 FPS benchmarked.

bolski said:
enabling the Virtual Machine Platform feature) Doom Eternal starts hitching no matter what detail setting I set it at and it's pretty persistent (about every 30 seconds or so) no matter what I'm doing. Once I remove the Virtual Machine Platform feature, my performance returns.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what I want to hear about.
 
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PiranhaTech said:
289 FPS vs 301 FPS? 96 vs 103 FPS? This doesn't look that bad. I'm not sure if we'll notice it that much. Considering how invasive game DRM can be, I might prefer the extra security features. Now, if it were something like 96 FPS vs 120 FPS, I'd be saying something different.

It's still a good service to everyone to benchmark, track, and report on. I would like to see things like frame rate consistency, and systems that are under 60 FPS benchmarked.



This is exactly what I want to hear about.
Click to expand...

Correct. It's not that much, but what the article was stating was that a 5% decrease in overall performance, at least in the CPU, is a equal to a whole generation step back. That 5% loss in performance means you are using your current CPU as if it was an entire generation back. Is it really worth it if you don't need VBS? That's the entire point.

For me, I want to use WSL 2 over WSL 1. I've done some more tweaks on my system with VBS enabled and I was able to get the hitching almost completely gone now. Basically, turned off some more background apps that were starting up. I'm also going to try and completely wipe my video card driver and install the latest version fresh and clean because I have installed the updates on-top of the previous version for over a year now, so that could possibly also be causing my issues as well.

UPDATE (10/12/2021):
Well, I've been switch back and forth between enabling the VMP feature and disabling it and every time I turn it on, Doom Eternal hitches like crazy. What I started to see though was after switch it off, DE would still hitch, but just not as bad, whereas before with no VMP, it was running just fine. I then forgot that I had the game installed on a mechanical hard drive.

I defragged it, etc but nothing fixed the hitching. Not sure why VMP would cause the hitching AFTER turning it off. I could see possibly why VMP would cause it because of the extra layer possibly it provides even though Hyper-V is not installed nor enabled?

In any case, I had to clear off space on my SSD drive (it's only a 250GB but I'm getting ready to fill my empty m.2ee slot with a 1TB Nvme drive hopefully soon that I'll install all my games on), but now the hitching has disappeared, both with and without VMP on. Again, this is without Hyper-V.

So with my original test, I forgot that Doom Eternal was on a mechanical hard drive as opposed to an SSD. But still, this might still be some proof that if you have a mechanical hard drive, VMP can more than likely affect the performance there. I'm just not sure if VMP is actually causing it or something else? Really hard to determine. It doesn't appear to affect it if I'm on an SSD. Also, my HDD is about 10 years old but hasn't been exhibiting any signs of failure (no clicking noises, etc and health shows it's 100% good but you never know). There does seem to be other games that run fine with VMP enabled and I'm not sure if it's due to Vulcan that could be causing the issues with DE on the HDD with VMP enabled?
 
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I think windows should have "game mode" where all non-essential services and functions are disabled.
I don't need virtual machine security features if I'm not running any virtual machines at that time
Nor do I need windows update, or telemetry or about 100 other things while gaming
 
I'd like to see a comparison between Windows 10 with:
  • VBS and HVCI disabled
  • VBS enabled but HVCI disabled
  • VBS and HVCI enabled

... and Windows 11 with:
  • VBS and HVCI disabled
  • VBS enabled but HVCI disabled
  • VBS and HVCI enabled

That way, those of us on Windows 10 that have VBS and possibly HVCI enabled can see if upgrading to Windows 11 without changing those settings will cause a change in performance.
 
What I would find interesting is seeing how this plays out in a scenario that isn't as hugely CPU bound as the ones you are getting when using 8 core CPUs as the best ones and RTX 3090 graphics cards. How about systems that most people would actually have? The CPUs are probably fine. But try pairing them with a xx60 class card instead of flagship. Is this only measurable if CPU bound or will you also get a slight penalty for enabling VBS in a GPU bound scenario?
 
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