Latest/ October 2, 2021/

Windows 11’s VBS Feature Reportedly Cripples Gaming Performance by Up to 28 Percent

Microsoft’s new Windows 10 Creators Update introduces a new feature called VBS that is designed to improve gaming performance. However, the feature was reportedly found to cripple game performance by up to 28 percent.

The does windows 11 improve gaming performance is a question that has been asked by many people since Windows 10 was released. It seems like the answer to this question might be no, as it is reported that Windows 11’s VBS feature reportedly cripples gaming performance by up to 28 percent.

Image credit: Microsoft

Windows 11 will feature a security option called Virtualization-Based Security (VBS), which will use hardware virtualization to improve system security and minimize vulnerabilities in the operating system, similar to its predecessor. According to new studies, VBS may still have a significant effect on game performance, lowering frame rates by up to 28% in some titles like Shadow of the Tomb Raider on certain setups.

According to a post from UL benchmarks, VBS is enabled by default on new Windows 11 installations:

A feature called Virtualization-based Security (VBS) causes performance to decrease in pre-release versions of Windows 11. After a clean install of Windows 11, VBS is enabled by default, but not when upgrading from Windows 10. This implies that depending on how Windows 11 was installed and whether VBS was enabled or not, the same machine may get different benchmark results. In a future version, we intend to include VBS detection in our benchmarks to help you compare results equitably.

PC Gamer had a different experience, in that VBS wasn’t enabled by default and needed registry editing and BIOS tinkering, but here’s what they discovered in their testing with the current Windows 11 release build:

With just a 5% frame rate decrease, Far Cry New Dawn […] barely shrugs at VBS. However, Horizon Zero Dawn is down 25%, Metro Exodus is down 24%, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider is down 28%. Surprisingly, the 3DMark Time Spy score fell by just 10%.

The Test Rig of a PC Gamer:

Intel Core i7 10700K processor
MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon WiFi Motherboard
Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition graphics card
32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4-3200 memory
Corsair H100i RGB Pro XT cooler
DimasTech Mini V2 chassis
Build 22000.194 of Windows 11

ComputerBase has also released benchmarks that demonstrate how different games perform with VBS enabled on a machine with a Ryzen Threadripper 3970X and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti running at 1080p. The changes seem to be much less substantial here, although one of the 3DMark tests shows a 30% decrease in performance.

ComputerBase image

VBS is described as follows by Microsoft:

VBS, or virtualization-based security, use hardware virtualization to construct and isolate a secure memory area from the rest of the operating system. This “virtual safe mode” may be used by Windows to host a variety of security solutions, providing them with much enhanced protection against operating system vulnerabilities and prohibiting the deployment of hostile exploits that try to circumvent defenses.

On October 5, Windows 11 will be released officially, but the release version is already available for download via Microsoft’s Windows Insider program.

PC Gamer, ComputerBase, and UL are some of the sources.