FEB 2022MAXIMU MPC 11
Jarred Walton
TECH TALK
Jarred Walton has been a
PC and gaming enthusiast
for over 30 years.© MICROSOFT
Windows 10 vs. Windows 11
Context menus now require an extra click to get
at the menu I actually wanted, but what’s worse is
the way some functionality is simply gone. I may
be the exception, but I want all my system tray
icons to always be visible. I’ve encountered far too
many PCs where more than a dozen ‘utilities’ are
running in the background sucking down system
resources. Even worse, some malware sits in the
system tray, and hiding icons by default is a terrible
idea. On Windows 10 and earlier, there’s a simple
toggle to show all icons, but Windows 11 killed it.
Other things have changed as well, such as the
Microsoft Store—which was updated for Windows
10 users too. Changing the default installation
drive used to be easier. Now, I’m not even sure how
to move a Store app to a different drive. I didn’t like
the Microsoft Store before, but the new version if
anything feels worse. And there are a few games
that require me to use the Store app.
The good news is that the performance hasn’t
changed between Windows 10 and Windows 11.
In fact, for newer PCs running Intel’s Alder Lake
CPUs (see feature, page 28), you’ll pretty much be
forced into running Windows 11 whether you want
to or not. The hybrid CPU architecture requires
a new scheduling algorithm and, for the time
being, Microsoft doesn’t want to port that back to
Windows 10. It’s like when AMD and Intel dropped
support for Windows 7/8 for Ryzen and 7th Gen
processors. If you want a new Alder Lake system,
it can use Windows 10, but won’t run optimally.OH, WINDOWS 11, how I love to hate you. Change for the sake of change
doesn’t sit well with me, and Windows 11 has completely altered the
comfortable Windows 10 house I’ve been living in since 2015. A new coat
of paint would have been fine, but it seems as though the UI designers
also felt the need to rearrange the furniture, switch around the drawers,
and clean house a bunch of functionality that I liked. This is not okay.
But what about for people not
running the latest and greatest
CPUs? Is Windows 11 any better—
or worse—than Windows 10?
I set about running a bunch of
benchmarks on a Core i9-9900K
system using an AMD Radeon RX
6900 XT and an Nvidia GeForce RTX
3080 Ti. Both systems had a clean
install and all the other hardware
remained unchanged, except one
has Windows 10 and the other has
Windows 11. The results are mind-
numbingly boring.
Across a 15-game test suite, the
overall performance difference
between Windows 10 and Windows
11 at three different resolutions
was less than one percent. There
were a few differences of up to
three percent, but that’s basically
within the margin of error.
Sometimes Windows 10 was a bit
faster, sometimes Windows 11
came out ahead. But in practice,there was no significant change.
That’s great because I’d hate to
see the new OS penalize or benefit
performance. Maybe I’ll adapt over
time to the Windows 11 changes,
and I do plan on upgrading to an
Alder Lake system eventually, so
I will basically be forced to make
the change during that upgrade.
But my old PCs will continue to run
Windows 10, even if Windows 11
is a free upgrade, and I can’t even
begin to imagine trying to get most
of my family members and friends
to make the switch.
Not that most of them will have
a choice in the matter unless
they want to buy a new PC. The
TPM requirement as well as the
need for a relatively modern CPU
both eliminate many PCs from
upgrading. Perhaps Microsoft was
trying to do everyone a favor, but
it feels like the old curse of every
other Windows version being good.
XP was loved, Vista was loathed,
Windows 7 regained our trust,
Windows 8 flushed it away.
Windows 10 went through
numerous updates, and for a while,
we all thought it might be the ‘last’
version of Windows that we’d ever
need. Windows 11 brings in a new
coat of paint. But, sadly, it has been
rather sloppily applied.
The performance difference
between Windows 10 and Win
11 was less than one percentWindows 11 might be the future
Microsoft currently sees, but
there’s no penalty to sticking with
Windows 10 for the time being.