- TechSpot retested Windows 11 for gaming performance versus Windows 10
- Windows 11 came out victorious and was noticeably faster in some games
- The previous test showed that Windows 10 was faster, but 24H2 has significantly improved Windows 11 on the gaming front – but there are other issues to consider here
Which is better for gaming: Windows 11 or Windows 10? If you thought – as quite a few people do – that Windows 10 is faster for PC gaming performance (despite being the older OS), well, not according to a new comparison, although there’s admittedly a lot of nuance here.
Still, the big news is that in a TechSpot test comparing gaming performance across a range of benchmarks, the latest version of Windows 11 (25H2) came out ahead of Windows 10 (22H2, the last incarnation) – albeit not by much.
As TechSpot concluded: “The verdict? Windows 11 25H2 edges ahead of Windows 10 in gaming performance, though your mileage will vary depending on hardware configuration, and we obviously can’t benchmark every conceivable configuration.”
This was based on benchmarking with 14 different games and averaging those results across three resolutions. At 1080p, Windows 11 was 4% faster than Windows 10, and it was 5% faster at both 1440p and 4K.
Notably, this reversed the result of a previous test which showed that Windows 10 (22H2) was faster than Windows 11 23H2 when the latter was the latest release. TechSpot notes that the 24H2 update actually addressed a number of gaming performance stumbling blocks.
Here come the catches. Of course, this result is based on one hardware configuration, and as TechSpot admits, it’s a high-end setup – AMD’s Ryzen 9800X3D processor and Nvidia’s RTX 5090 GPU. A low-end gaming rig may well show a somewhat different perspective, and changing the selection of games can of course also skew the results in a different way.
Using an AMD GPU can do the same, although the test also ran a few bonus benchmarks (to clarify some issues with certain games) which used an AMD RX 9070 XT and Ryzen 9700X. It’s also a more realistic typical gaming setup (though still advanced), and Windows 11 continued to be faster in one test (by 2% to 3%), though it was a dead heat in the other. Then again, it was a slight nod in favor of the newer operating system.
Averages aside, there were some eye-opening individual results here. Arc Raiders especially stands out, as Windows 11 proved to be a whopping 11% faster at 1080p, and somehow 14% and 15% faster at 1440p and 4K respectively. Borderlands 4 was also between 9% and 13% faster on Windows 11.
Analysis: various catches – and the giant bug in space
This is an exciting battery of tests, and it certainly shows that Windows 11 is no slower than Windows 10 – which is an often-cited anecdotal claim on social media. Although that idea is rooted in the past, when Windows 11 was (slightly) slower, according to TechSpot’s previous tests.
This is good news for gamers on Windows 11, but we must keep the mentioned caveats firmly in mind – and that overall there is hardly a big gap in game performance (apart from the mentioned deviations).
We should also remember that TechSpot notes that it “stripped down both operating systems to minimize interference”, which means disabling VBS, memory integrity and kernel isolation (security features), as well as antivirus and the like – which seems like a sensible precaution (but not everyone does).
Caveats aside, my problem – and I suspect the problem for many PC gamers – is not the performance levels that showed up well for Windows 11 here. Those are the mistakes.
If you’re running Windows 11, you’re more likely to hit frustration with bugs, and while 24H2 may have improved gaming performance nicely, as TechSpot explains, it was also crawling with gremlins. It was the start of a bad run of bugs for Microsoft, and we’re still seeing Windows 11 hit with these annoyances in the very first patch of 2026, which has packed some really nasty issues, including startup errors and also messed up hibernation for some older PCs. There have also been quite a few game-related bugs with Windows 11.
Okay, so not everyone runs into errors with Windows 11, and of course it depends on the PC configuration, the apps installed, and for gamers, the specific GPU they have and games they often play, how often they update their drivers, and so on. There are a lot of moving parts, and that includes Microsoft’s monthly updates to Windows 11, which can introduce game (or other) bugs out of the blue.
Windows 10, on the other hand, is a much more desktop beast. It only gets monthly security updates with no new features and a minimal level of tinkering with the underlying codebase. It’s more stable and reliable, in short, and gamers who are on Windows 10 must surely see the Windows 11 error reports and frustrations pouring in and think to themselves, ‘well, I don’t bother upgrading’. And can you blame them? Even though Windows 11 is now faster than Windows 10 by all accounts (which it should have been anyway in the first place).
Of course, the situation will change when Windows 10 runs out of extended support in October 2026, because then upgrade decisions (or new PC purchases) will be forced. But in the meantime, I think Microsoft’s frustration with not migrating to Windows 11 from its older OS – with gamers, and indeed regular users – will continue.
That said, there seems to be some work going on to fix the kinky innards of Windows 11 in terms of the occurrence of errors, and as I discussed elsewhere this morning, I really hope it does – but I have no real conviction that it will. Fingers crossed that I’m wrong.
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