Tested: Default Windows Setting Slows Games Up to 10%, Even on RTX 4090
Remember, when Windows 11 was released, there were concerns about the performance impact of enabling Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) and HyperVisor-Enforced Code Integrity (HVCI) by default. A lot of noise was made, benchmarks were run…and we all moved on. Dating back to 2023. Recently, in the past few months, I’ve noticed that the PC I’m using for my GPU benchmarking tier has been updated and VBS has been re-enabled. (He has an article on how to disable VBS if you want).
Windows 10 also has this setting and may be enabled by default. Avram Piltch, editor-in-chief of Tom’s Hardware, found that he uses Windows 10 Home on his main desktop and that VBS appears to be enabled.
I’m already in the process of retesting all graphics cards related to the 2023 version of the GPU tier on a new testbed containing a Core i9-13900K CPU, 32GB of DDR5-6600 G.Skill memory, so this got me It made me worry. , and a Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G 4TB M.2 SSD. It goes without saying that we don’t combine best-in-class parts just to perform additional functions that could hurt performance.
So we set out to test and retest the performance of our fastest graphics card, the GeForce RTX 4090. VBS may or may not be enabled. After all, two newer CPU generations than at the launch of Windows 11, with faster CPUs and a new architecture, his VBS is probably even less impactful than before. At the same time, it also uses a new GPU that offers significantly better performance than the RTX 3090, which was the fastest GPU in 2021. This can lead to CPU bottlenecks and additional features such as VBS. more disturbing than before.
Windows 11 VBS test hardware
You can see my test PC hardware using Nvidia’s 528.49 driver (now superseded 3 times). Let’s get straight to the results using an updated test suite and settings consisting of 15 game batteries at 4 different setting/resolution combinations. I’ve tabulated the division into average FPS on the left and 1% low FPS (average FPS in the bottom 1% of frame times) on the right.
For clarity, all tests were performed on the same PC over several days. No game updates were applied and no new drivers were tested. One change was to disable VBS (because it was initially on by default in Windows 11).
Each test was run multiple times to ensure consistency of results, but with one discrepancy. Total War: Warhammer 3 Performance is everywhere now. I can’t remember it being like that before, but it seems like things got worse around February or he early March. (The cause is currently under investigation.)
A high-level view of things probably doesn’t look that bad. With VBS disabled, performance improved by ~5% overall, dropping to just 2% at 4K Ultra. And if you’re running this level of gaming hardware, I’m guessing he probably wants to run 4K ultra as well, but even at the highest possible settings there are some notable exceptions I have.
Provides the greatest overall improvement Microsoft Flight SimulatorThis makes sense since that game tends to be very CPU constrained even with the fastest possible processor. Turning off VBS resulted in a consistent performance improvement of around 10% in our RTX 4090 tests, with a low of 1% improving by as much as 15%.
not by chance, flight simulator is also one of those games that absolutely loves AMD’s massive 3D V-Cache on the Ryzen 9 7950X3D. Our CPU tests use a different test sequence, which is more demanding, but still the AMD chip with the massive cache is about 20% (Ryzen 7 5800X3D) to 40% better than the Core i9-13900K ( 7900X3D) is fast. Presumably, VSB will have less of an impact on AMD’s X3D CPUs, but I haven’t been able to access one of them to test.
Another game that tends to hit CPU bottlenecks on low settings is far cry 6and also fairly consistently showed a performance gain of 5% or more — noticeable in benchmarks, but less so in real games. Cyberpunk 2077 Even with ray tracing enabled, we saw about 5% better performance. This is probably because the work of building his BVH structure for ray tracing calculations is done on the CPU. Many other ray tracing games also saw increases of 5% or more.
What about games where VBS was never an issue? bright memory infinite (Standalone benchmarks, not the whole game) I see little change, Mine Craft At the more aggressive setting (24 RT render chunk distance), we saw only a small improvement at 1080p. Plague Story: Requiem, Borderlands 3, Forza Horizon 5and red dead redemption 2 In some cases, the minimum FPS could have changed more, but it also showed less impact.
(Again, I didn’t actually say anything Total War: Warhammer 3 Because the performance variability is too great. Even after more than 20 runs each with and without VBS, no clear typical results were obtained. The results were not bell curves, but fell into three clusters: lows, mids, and highs, with even less consistency at 1% lows. However, removing that result changes a low delta of 1% by less than 2%. )
The largest delta was generally 1080p, and it didn’t seem to matter much whether we were running “medium” or “ultra” settings. Because it’s a lot, and not just when textures and shadows have high resolution.
Windows VBS: Conclusion
So should you leave VBS on or turn it off? Not a clear question/answer split. The real security benefits are probably minimal, especially for home desktops that go nowhere. And if you’re serious about squeezing every last drop of hardware performance, whether it’s better cooling, overclocking, or buying more expensive hardware, 5% for vague “security benefits” Disable VBS as it probably isn’t worth losing. .
Turning VBS on is the default for new Windows installations (and even one of the various Windows Updates released in late 2022 said it might have been turned back on if it was disabled. I’m confident). So it can be argued that Microsoft at least thinks it’s important and should be left alone. However, the fact that Microsoft also gives instructions on how to disable it indicates that the performance impact can be very real.
For many people, especially those who aren’t on extreme hardware, performance hits while gaming are likely to be in the low single-digit percentage points. But if you’re looking to set performance records, it can certainly hold you back.