Windows 11 vs. Windows 10, Play-Tested: Will an OS Upgrade Boost Your Gaming Performance?

Windows 11 offers a range of UI and quality-of-life changes, but Microsoft also claims it's the best Windows OS yet for PC gaming. Part of this is the integration of certain gaming-centric options into the Windows settings. Another is the baked-in Xbox Game Bar. (See our rundown of key new features in Windows 11 for gamers.)

But in these days when the cost of GPUs makes buying one feel like a major life choice, how about the frame rates? What about sheer, raw gaming performance? Does 11, indeed, turn it up to 11?

Just before we posted this article, we tested Windows 11 and 10 on a mainstream Dell laptop to see the differences in performance between everyday productivity apps. To see if there’s any speed advantage (or disadvantage!) in Windows 11 for gaming, we took matters into our own hands once again: We ran the same batch of gaming benchmark tests, in turn, on the same laptop on each operating system, in a best-case scenario to show any differences. The laptop in question here is the Alienware x15, a slim and potent high-end machine. If any consistent variance in performance will arise between the two operating systems, this deluxe laptop will give us enough hardware overhead to make the margins clear.

The Test Laptop and Benchmarks

The Alienware x15 packs up-to-the-moment components: an Intel Core i7-11800H processor, 16GB of memory, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU. That’s a powerful package for gaming. Perhaps not maximum specs, but definitely toward the upper end for slim laptops.

Now, for the benchmark tests. You can read up on how we test laptops in general for more on each test we run. Here, however, we are chiefly interested in testing gaming power. We’re using the same benchmarking games for this project that we normally use in our review process for gaming laptops, and re-running them after upgrading the test machine to Windows 11. 

This usual test suite we employ includes two synthetic tests, from 3DMark (the Time Spy and Night Raid subtests), as well as three AAA gaming titles (each on two visual settings). These real-world games are Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, F1 2021, and Rainbow Six: Siege. To see a wider range of popular games, we also added the demanding Red Dead Redemption 2, and the recently released Forza Horizon 5, to the mix on both operating systems.

Each of these games was run at two visual settings, to provide a scale of performance and differences. The exceptions are Red Dead Redemption 2 and Forza Horizon 5, which we kept at the maximum quality setting just to stress the laptop in another way. Also, note that F1 2021 is run twice, but both runs are at maximum settings—the difference is that one run has Nvidia's DLSS image-sharpening tech switched off, the other has DLSS on. (For more on DLSS, see our primer.) 

Before We Start: Some Windows 11 Gaming Variables

Before we dive in, it’s worth mentioning some of the built-in Windows 11 gaming features, because they may have an effect on our results.

For starters, by default, in the main Windows 11 settings under the Gaming tab, a new feature called Game Mode is active. The OS says this will "optimize your PC for play by turning things off in the background." This Microsoft support page mentions that Game Mode won’t let drivers install in the background and that it "helps achieve a more stable frame rate depending on the specific game and system." Those are some big claims, so we’ll see if there’s a notable difference in the results.

Additionally, under the display settings (in Settings, select Display > Graphics, then click the text that says “change default graphics settings”) there are options for hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling and variable refresh rate. The former says it reduces latency and improves performance, while the latter is essentially forced universal V-Sync. These two options and Game Mode were all switched on for the upcoming results.

Testing Results: Synthetic Benchmarks and Real-World Games

With all of that pesky context out of the way, let's get to those results. The first table here shows the results for the two 3DMark tests...

The two synthetic scores here fell close together, but they weren't identical. Windows 11 had the edge by 74 points on Time Spy and 239 points on Night Raid. That's not nothing, as we sometimes see less of a gap than that between two totally different laptops. It is also outside of the variance we usually see from run to run on the same laptop.

It's ultimately not much of a practical gap in raw power at the end of the day, and it won't amount to much in your everyday gaming, but nobody is going to turn down extra juice. We were able to replicate this slight advantage with repeated runs, too. So between that and the gap's existence at all, the result is worth noting. It's not going to move the needle much, but it is a good sign if you were worried that Windows 11 would reduce this type of performance.

Gaming Tests

Unlike the conclusion we drew in our Windows 11 vs. Windows 10 productivity tests, and to a degree the synthetic tests, we noted some marked jumps between the operating systems here. Some games are also identical between the two, and we should temper any concrete conclusions with this observation: We saw some big frame-rate jumps between benchmark runs simply by restarting the computer or game before.

We ran these tests more than once to replicate any noteworthy gaps, and to try to mitigate that. But frame-rate results, even on canned benchmark tests like these, can be finicky at times, regardless, given the wide array of factors at play. (Plus, some of those factors may be ones attributable to Windows 11 in ways we and others haven't uncovered yet.)

The game tests are where things get interesting, and where a lot of the nuance is. F1 2021 and Rainbow Six: Siege saw at least a few frames of improvement on Windows 11. In the case of the former, it was only 3fps on both settings, so not a world of difference. It was repeatable, though, and seeing as it’s the same laptop and with only the OS and the supporting system software changing, you’d take the “free” boost any day.

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Rainbow Six: Siege, on the other hand, saw a nice jump when going from Windows 10 to 11, enough to drive us to retest the game several times. But, the deltas did, indeed, hold up: a whopping 12fps and 16fps difference on the low and maximum presets, respectively. Again, we’re hesitant to draw any major conclusions here about Windows 11 being definitively better for gaming, given the many variables at play (and the fact that most of the games didn’t change much), but these data points still are what they are. 

Curiously, it doesn’t seem that the built-in, toggle-able gaming features are responsible. We switched Game Mode, GPU acceleration, and variable refresh rate off, and the frame rates in Windows 11 didn’t drop back to Windows 10 levels. (Somewhat comically, they actually went up by 4fps and 1fps in those two games.) Isolating any one setting didn’t have a clear, trackable effect, either. Between run-to-run variance and other factors, we’ll call that a wash. But the Windows 11 numbers were better regardless.

Meanwhile, the larger open-world AAA titles (Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Forza Horizon 5) were totally unchanged by the OS switch. Perhaps the higher-fps titles (F1 2021 and Rainbow Six: Siege) are more susceptible to frame-rate differences, but these three demanding games saw virtually no change. Valhalla was technically one or two frames lower on Windows 11, but that’s well within the margin of error, and Red Dead and Forza served up identical frame rates. Disabling the Windows 11 gaming features also saw, at most, changes up or down of 1fps, so there’s nothing to remark on there either.

Will Moving to Windows 11 Up Your Game?

TL;DR? No, not much, if at all.

On a gaming-performance basis, let's just say we see no reason not to take the plunge to Windows 11 based on these results. Plenty of other considerations come into play with an OS upgrade, of course, but if the numbers lean either way, it’s marginally in favor of Windows 11. No games in our tests performed worse on the new OS, at least, and a few saw better frame rates. The synthetic tests, too, were boosted slightly. 

Anecdotally, some of the new features have had their ups and downs. The improved built-in Game Bar is another positive for Windows 11, though in our own off-hours experiments, we’ve had some issues getting the built-in footage-capture feature working properly. We've also noted some conflicts with streaming. In our use, streaming through Discord saw some significant lag on Windows 11 on the viewers’ end. We're not the only folks who have seen this; some community troubleshooting threads suggested turning the GPU hardware scheduling feature off. (Indeed, that did fix our issue on this end.) 

Problems like this are likely to vary system to system, and hopefully can be ironed out with future updates. As far as raw frame rates go, though, our testing noted some mild improvements in spots, giving Microsoft some footing to claim this is the best OS yet for gaming. Maybe another half-dozen tests would cement that impression, but from what we've seen so far, Windows 11 is looking performance-neutral at worst.