Windows 11 Finally Beats Windows 10 for Gaming. The Holdouts Just Lost Their Last Excuse.
For five years, the most popular piece of advice in PC gaming forums was the same: stay on Windows 10. It runs games faster. Windows 11 is bloated. Do not upgrade until you have to.
That advice just expired.
Hardware Unboxed published updated gaming benchmarks in October 2026, testing Windows 11 25H2 against Windows 10 22H2 across 14 games on a Ryzen 9800X3D with an RTX 5090. The results were not ambiguous:
Windows 11 25H2 averaged 4 to 5 percent faster than Windows 10 at every resolution — 1080p, 1440p, and 4K. Individual titles showed even wider gaps: Arc Raiders ran 11 to 15 percent faster on Windows 11. Borderlands 4 showed 9 to 13 percent gains. The old performance penalty is not just gone — it reversed.
And that is only half the story. NVIDIA just confirmed that its last Game Ready driver for Windows 10 ships this month. Starting in November 2026, every new Game Ready driver — with day-one game profiles, DLSS optimizations, and compatibility fixes — is Windows 11 only. Windows 10 users get quarterly security patches and nothing else, through 2029.
Over 70 percent of Steam gamers have already moved to Windows 11. The June 2026 Steam Hardware Survey put Windows 11 at 70.44 percent. The holdouts are now a shrinking minority running an unsupported OS with a ticking clock on their GPU drivers.
If you have been waiting for a reason to upgrade, this is the month it arrived. Here is what changed, what it means for your hardware, and how to make the switch without losing a frame.
Why Windows 11 Is Faster Now — When It Was Slower for Years
Microsoft finally fixed the scheduler. The biggest source of Windows 11's gaming performance penalty was how the OS scheduled threads across hybrid CPU architectures — Intel's big.LITTLE designs with performance and efficiency cores. Early versions of Windows 11 regularly assigned game threads to efficiency cores, costing frames in CPU-bound scenarios. The 24H2 update improved this significantly, and 25H2 refined it further. Thread Director — the Intel and Microsoft co-developed scheduler — now correctly prioritizes game threads on performance cores in nearly every tested scenario. AMD's 3D V-Cache chips like the 9800X3D also see better cache utilization under 25H2, which is why Hardware Unboxed's testing on that CPU showed the clearest gains.
Background overhead got cut. Microsoft committed publicly to reducing background process overhead for gaming in 2026, and the 25H2 update is where those changes shipped. Telemetry services, Widgets, and Copilot background processes that consumed CPU cycles during gameplay were either deferred or throttled while a full-screen game is running. The result is not a single dramatic improvement — it is dozens of small overhead reductions that compound into the 4 to 5 percent average gain Hardware Unboxed measured. On older hardware with fewer cores, the effect is likely even more pronounced, because those systems had less headroom to absorb background work in the first place.
DirectStorage matured. DirectStorage lets games bypass the CPU and send compressed asset data directly from your NVMe SSD to the GPU for decompression. Version 1.4, which shipped alongside 25H2, added smarter compression algorithms and real-time asset streaming — meaning the technology no longer only affects loading screens. It can now reduce texture pop-in and LOD transitions during live gameplay. The catch: DirectStorage's full GPU decompression pipeline requires Windows 11. On Windows 10, you get a stripped-down version without GPU decompression, which eliminates most of the benefit. If you own a fast NVMe drive, Windows 11 is the only OS where that speed translates into a visible gameplay difference.
Security features stopped tanking performance. One of the ugliest early Windows 11 issues was that Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) and Memory Integrity — enabled by default on new installations — cost 5 to 10 percent in gaming performance. Turning them off helped, but most users never knew they were on. The 25H2 update restructured how VBS interacts with the hypervisor during gaming workloads, reducing the overhead to near zero in most tested scenarios. You no longer have to choose between security and frame rate.
The Highway That Used to Have Construction — and Finally Doesn't
Imagine a six-lane highway that connects your house to your office. For years, four of those lanes have been under construction — cones, detours, temporary lane closures. You can still get to work, but it takes longer, and every morning you wonder why you are not just taking the old two-lane road that never had any construction at all.
One day, the construction finishes. All six lanes open. The old two-lane road is still there, still works, but it only has two lanes and the speed limit never changes. The highway is now objectively faster for the first time — and it has features the old road will never get: on-ramps that let you merge without stopping, real-time traffic management, and HOV lanes for priority traffic.
That is Windows 11 25H2. The construction that slowed it down — the scheduler issues, the background overhead, the VBS performance tax — is done. The old road is Windows 10: still functional, still familiar, but it has no more lanes to add, no more features coming, and the maintenance crew just announced they are leaving at the end of the month.
You can keep taking the old road. But the highway is faster now, and it is the only one getting new exits.
Windows 10 vs. Windows 11 25H2: What Each Version Actually Gives You for Gaming
This is not a full feature comparison — it is the four things that directly affect your gaming experience and hardware lifespan:
Feature | Windows 10 22H2 | Windows 11 24H2 | Windows 11 25H2 | Why It Matters for Gaming |
Gaming Performance (avg across 14 titles) | Baseline — was ~2-3% faster than Win11 23H2 | Closed the gap — roughly tied with Win10 | 4-5% faster than Win10 at 1080p-4K (Hardware Unboxed) | The old "Win10 is faster for games" argument is dead. 25H2 reversed it. |
DirectStorage API | Limited — bypasses CPU for asset loading but fewer optimizations | Full support with GPU decompression pipeline | Full support + DirectStorage 1.4 with smarter compression and asset streaming | NVMe SSD speeds finally matter for game loading. Requires Win11 for full GPU decompression. |
Auto HDR | Not available | Built-in — applies HDR to 1,000+ DirectX 11/12 games automatically | Built-in with improved tone mapping | Older games get HDR visuals without developer patches. Free visual upgrade on HDR monitors. |
GPU Driver Support (NVIDIA) | Last Game Ready driver: October 2026. Security-only patches after. | Full Game Ready + Studio driver support | Full Game Ready + Studio driver support | After Oct 2026, new games on Win10 get zero driver optimization. Performance and compatibility degrade over time. |
The table tells a simple story: Windows 10 is not broken, but it is frozen. Every improvement from here forward — performance, features, drivers, security — lands on Windows 11. Staying on Windows 10 is not standing still. It is falling behind at an accelerating rate.
The NVIDIA Deadline: Why October 2026 Changes Everything
NVIDIA's announcement deserves its own section because of what it means in practice — not just in theory.
The last Game Ready driver for Windows 10 ships this month — October 2026. After that, NVIDIA moves Windows 10 to quarterly security-only patches. These patches fix vulnerabilities. They do not add game profiles, DLSS improvements, or compatibility fixes for new titles.
Here is what that means concretely:
Every game released after October 2026 ships without a dedicated Windows 10 driver profile. GTA 6 launches on PC in November 2026. If it has a day-one NVIDIA driver — and it will — that driver is Windows 11 only. The same applies to every major release after it. Your GPU does not stop working on Windows 10, but it stops getting the optimizations that make new games run well on launch day.
DLSS updates stop on Windows 10. DLSS Frame Generation, Ray Reconstruction, and future DLSS versions are delivered through Game Ready drivers. No new drivers means no new DLSS versions. If NVIDIA releases DLSS 4.5 in 2027, Windows 10 users will not have access to it — not because the hardware cannot handle it, but because the driver that contains it will never ship for their OS.
For storage: DirectStorage's full pipeline runs only on Windows 11, which means a fast NVMe SSD like the addlink A93 at 7,400 MB/s sequential read delivers its full benefit exclusively on Windows 11. The GPU decompression path that DirectStorage enables — sending compressed data straight from the SSD to the GPU without CPU involvement — does not exist on Windows 10. Your drive still works fast for file copies and general loading, but the next-generation asset streaming pipeline that games are beginning to adopt is a Windows 11 feature.
The addlink A93 is built for this transition. Gen4 NVMe at 7,400 MB/s, available in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB, with a PS5-compatible heatsink variant. On Windows 11 25H2 with DirectStorage 1.4, it becomes the kind of drive that does not just store games — it feeds them data fast enough to eliminate asset-streaming bottlenecks that slower drives create. Paired with addlink DDR5-5600 32 GB RAM, you have a system where the OS, the storage, and the memory are all running at the speeds the latest games are optimized for — instead of being held back by a five-year-old OS that no longer receives the driver updates to use them properly.
How to Upgrade to Windows 11 25H2 Without Losing a Frame
Step 1 — Check your hardware compatibility. Open Settings → System → About on your Windows 10 machine and note your processor and TPM version. Windows 11 requires TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, and a supported CPU (8th-gen Intel or AMD Ryzen 2000 series and newer). Microsoft's PC Health Check app gives you a pass-or-fail answer in ten seconds. If your system passes, you can upgrade in place. If it fails, you are looking at a platform upgrade — which, given the age of hardware that fails this check, is likely the right call anyway.
Step 2 — Decide between in-place upgrade and clean install. An in-place upgrade preserves your files, settings, and installed applications. It is the path of least resistance but can carry over years of registry bloat and old driver remnants. A clean install on a new SSD — like the addlink A93 — is the better option: fresh OS, fresh drive, no legacy overhead. Keep your old drive as a secondary for your game library and documents. If you go the clean-install route, back up your game save files (most are in Documents or synced through Steam Cloud) and export your browser bookmarks and passwords before wiping.
Step 3 — Install drivers in the right order. After Windows 11 is running, install your chipset drivers first (from AMD or Intel), then your GPU driver (NVIDIA or AMD), then everything else. This order matters because the chipset driver configures how the CPU communicates with your RAM and storage controller. With the chipset driver in place, the GPU driver can see and use the correct PCIe lane configuration. After drivers are installed, enter your BIOS and enable XMP (Intel) or EXPO (AMD) for your RAM. Windows 11 25H2 benefits from full DDR5 bandwidth — leaving your DDR5-5600 kit running at the JEDEC default of DDR5-4800 costs you measurable performance for free.
Step 4 — Verify VBS settings after installation. Open Windows Security → Device Security → Core Isolation. Check whether Memory Integrity is on. Under 25H2, the performance cost of leaving it enabled is minimal for most systems — but if you are on older hardware where every frame counts, turning it off is still a free performance lever. The 25H2 update reduced VBS overhead significantly, so the days of "always turn it off for gaming" are largely over, but verify on your specific system with a before-and-after benchmark in your most demanding game.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Will I actually see a performance difference switching from Windows 10 to Windows 11 25H2?
In most cases, yes — but the size of the gain depends on your hardware and the games you play. Hardware Unboxed tested 14 games on a Ryzen 9800X3D with an RTX 5090 and found Windows 11 25H2 averaged 4 to 5 percent faster than Windows 10 22H2 at 1080p through 4K. Individual games varied: Arc Raiders showed 11 to 15 percent gains, Borderlands 4 showed 9 to 13 percent, while others were within margin of error. On a more modest Ryzen 9700X with an RX 9070 XT, the difference narrowed to 2 to 3 percent. The gains are real but not transformative — the bigger story is that Windows 10 is no longer faster, and staying on it means losing driver support, security updates, and access to features like DirectStorage that only exist on Windows 11.
2. I heard Windows 11 has more bugs and stability issues than Windows 10. Is that still true?
Windows 11 has had a rougher track record for stability, and that has not entirely gone away. Early 2026 patches caused boot failures and sleep issues on some older hardware. The October 2025 end-of-life for Windows 10 also means Microsoft has shifted most of its engineering resources to Windows 11, which ironically means bugs get found and fixed faster there now. If stability is your top concern, wait two to three weeks after a major Windows 11 update before installing it — let the early adopters find the issues. But the risk of staying on Windows 10 is no longer just "missing features." It is running an operating system with no security patches, no driver updates, and a shrinking compatibility window for new software.
3. My PC has a TPM 1.2 chip instead of TPM 2.0. Can I still upgrade to Windows 11?
Officially, no. Microsoft requires TPM 2.0 for Windows 11 installation. In practice, there are workarounds — registry edits during installation that bypass the TPM check — but Microsoft does not support them and could block updates on non-compliant hardware in the future. If your machine has TPM 1.2, it is likely from 2016 or earlier, which means it is also running DDR4 at best and possibly DDR3. At that age, the smarter move is a platform upgrade rather than an OS hack. A new motherboard, CPU, and DDR5 RAM gives you TPM 2.0 compliance, Windows 11 support, and a generational leap in performance. The addlink DDR5-5600 32 GB kit paired with an A93 NVMe SSD makes the new platform perform at a level your old hardware never could, regardless of which OS it ran.
4. Does DirectStorage actually make games load faster on NVMe SSDs?
DirectStorage reduces CPU overhead in the asset-loading pipeline by letting the GPU handle decompression directly from the NVMe SSD. In theory, this means faster texture streaming, shorter load times, and less CPU bottlenecking during open-world traversal. In practice, adoption has been slow — only a handful of titles have fully implemented it so far, including Forspoken, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, and Forza Motorsport. The latest DirectStorage 1.4 update adds smarter compression and asset streaming, which should accelerate developer adoption. The real benefit is forward-looking: as more engines integrate DirectStorage, having a fast NVMe SSD like the addlink A93 at 7,400 MB/s becomes a measurable advantage rather than just a spec-sheet number. On Windows 10, you get a limited version of the API. On Windows 11, you get the full GPU decompression pipeline.
5. Should I do a clean install of Windows 11 or upgrade in place from Windows 10?
A clean install is always the better option for performance and stability, but it requires backing up your data and reinstalling all your applications. An in-place upgrade preserves your files and most settings, but can carry over registry bloat, old driver remnants, and configuration quirks that accumulated over years on Windows 10. If you are upgrading your storage at the same time — adding a new NVMe SSD like the addlink A93 — the decision is already made for you. Install Windows 11 fresh on the new drive, keep your old drive as secondary storage for games and files, and you get a clean OS on fast storage without losing anything. This is the cleanest upgrade path: new OS, new drive, zero compromises. After installation, go into BIOS and enable XMP or EXPO for your RAM — Windows 11 benefits from the full memory bandwidth, and the default JEDEC speeds leave performance on the table.
The Verdict: What to Do Now That Windows 10's Advantage Is Gone
Here is the short version:
If you are still on Windows 10 and gaming on NVIDIA hardware: Your deadline is now. NVIDIA's last Game Ready driver for Windows 10 ships this month — October 2026. After that, every new game release ships without a dedicated Windows 10 driver profile. That means no day-one optimizations, no SLI or DLSS fixes, no compatibility patches for new titles. Your GPU does not stop working, but it stops getting better. Upgrade to Windows 11 25H2 now, while your current hardware is still fully supported and the transition is a settings change rather than an emergency.
If you are building a new PC or upgrading your platform: There is no scenario where Windows 10 belongs on new hardware. Windows 11 25H2 is now measurably faster for gaming, it is the only path to full DirectStorage support, and it is where every hardware vendor — NVIDIA, AMD, Intel — is focusing their driver and optimization work. Pair it with addlink DDR5-5600 32 GB RAM and an addlink A93 NVMe SSD. The DDR5-5600 kit feeds the CPU at the speed Windows 11 is optimized for. The A93 at 7,400 MB/s gives DirectStorage a drive fast enough to matter. Together, they are the foundation of a system that runs at the speed 25H2 was designed to deliver.
If you are upgrading your OS and storage at the same time: This is the cleanest path. Install Windows 11 25H2 fresh on a new addlink A93 NVMe SSD. Keep your old drive as secondary storage for your game library. You get a clean OS with no legacy bloat, a drive fast enough for DirectStorage and 7,400 MB/s asset streaming, and your old files intact on the second drive. Add an addlink DDR5-5600 kit if you are still on 16 GB or DDR4, and you have closed every bottleneck the new OS can expose — memory, storage, and driver support — in one upgrade cycle.
The performance gap flipped. The driver deadline hit. The migration window is open. Whether you are upgrading your OS on existing hardware or building the system that makes the upgrade worthwhile, the addlink DDR5-5600 and A93 NVMe lineup is built for the Windows 11 era — not the one that just ended. Browse the full lineup at addlink.com.tw.
When did you finally make the switch to Windows 11 — and what pushed you over the edge? Or are you one of the holdouts still running Windows 10? Drop a comment. Either way, check your NVIDIA driver version. The clock just hit zero.
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