PC users need to be wary of VBS performance impacts on Win 11

[kompukare]

My Skylake laptop has TPM2,etc as its Enterprise grade. However,as it still works fine,I have no intention of having to get a new laptop to run Windows 11. I will use the laptop with even Linux,if it does the job. It will get replaced when it falls apart,or when I actually need more processing power. At least replacing parts in a desktop means another person can re-use them,or another system in the home can be upgraded with the older parts.

With laptops I use them as long as possible. All MS is doing is making more unnecessary E-Waste,when low powered Atom CPUs/ARM CPUs can run this fine.

Well, looks like those workarounds AGTDenton discussed on the other threads work with a VM, so I might have a look at least.

Can't see me trying it on real hardware anytime soon though. Currently benchmarks are still all over the place anyhow - though mostly way down.

My Haswell ThinkPad T540p was the last socketed enterprise laptop as Intel went BGA only after Haswell. Spent ages upgrading the screen (think Lenovo changed to maintenance manuals that gen to no longer list the part numbers and only after I started did I realise that the 1080 IPS screens required a different lid, bezel, signal cable and hinge) but doubt I'll every upgrade the CPU for the quad now.

Next time I buy a new (used) laptop it will hopefully have thunderbolt as I keep wanting to try an eGPU.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Well, looks like those workarounds AGTDenton discussed on the other threads work with a VM, so I might have a look at least.

Can't see me trying it on real hardware anytime soon though. Currently benchmarks are still all over the place anyhow - though mostly way down.

My Haswell ThinkPad T540p was the last socketed enterprise laptop as Intel went BGA only after Haswell. Spent ages upgrading the screen (think Lenovo changed to maintenance manuals that gen to no longer list the part numbers and only after I started did I realise that the 1080 IPS screens required a different lid, bezel, signal cable and hinge) but doubt I'll every upgrade the CPU for the quad now.

Next time I buy a new (used) laptop it will hopefully have thunderbolt as I keep wanting to try an eGPU.

The issue is whether Windows updates will work,so might as well stick with Windows 10 for the immediate future. Beware of Thunderbolt - the link speed can vary a lot in laptops,so it can be close to useless!

I bought my laptop used,as I want a semi-ruggedised case,and upgradeable RAM and storage and got a good deal a few years ago. Either way between AMD/Intel/Nvidia all jacking up prices(and trying not to actually compete with each other) and MS trying to force early obsolescene of systems,sort of getting fedup with PC tech now.

[mtyson]

PC World's Gordon Ung has now also done some VBS On/off comparative gaming testing.
System used was an "Acer Predator Triton 500 laptop equipped with an 8th-gen Intel Core i7-8750H, 16GB of DDR4, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU".
Ung suggests waiting for more reports and testing before a Windows 11 VBS gaming verdict can be made.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

All the test systems which showed the decreases were using Ampere dGPUs.

[kalniel]

All the test systems which showed the decreases were using Ampere dGPUs.

Sample size is too small to draw a conclusion yet - most testers happen to be using ampere cards. Once we get some more non-ampere tests in we can start to see if there's a correlation.

[LSG501]

This performance hit probably affects more than just games so for me a 28% loss (worst case scenario) of performance could mean another 17mins per hour when rendering....in an average 8 hour day that means I could add another 1.5 HOURS onto my work meaning an 8 hour day now needs a 10 hour day or essentially a 5 day week becomes (metaphorically speaking) a 4 day week.

That's one hell of a hit to productivity and kind of goes against everything MS have been saying about the 'design principles' of windows 11... which might explain why they've basically limited the cpu's to those with mbec hardware so as not to show just had bad a hit this is to pc performance.


Obviously not so much an issue with new cpu's with built in hardware (assuming no change to requirements) but for context I would basically need to go from a 16 core to a 20 core cpu to get the performance loss back...which also means going up to (in most cases) workstation grade cpu's and all the other higher priced components which is not exactly cheap.

[kompukare]

This performance hit probably affects more than just games so for me a 28% loss (worst case scenario) of performance could mean another 17mins per hour when rendering....in an average 8 hour day that means I could add another 1.5 HOURS onto my work meaning an 8 hour day now needs a 10 hour day or essentially a 5 day week becomes (metaphorically speaking) a 4 day week.

That's one hell of a hit to productivity and kind of goes against everything MS have been saying about the 'design principles' of windows 11... which might explain why they've basically limited the cpu's to those with mbec hardware so as not to show just had bad a hit this is to pc performance.


Obviously not so much an issue with new cpu's with built in hardware (assuming no change to requirements) but for context I would basically need to go from a 16 core to a 20 core cpu to get the performance loss back...which also means going up to (in most cases) workstation grade cpu's and all the other higher priced components which is not exactly cheap.

Are Microsoft getting seriously into the hardware business?

Maybe this was planned before the current shortages. A few years ago when PC sales were massively down, needlessly forcing upgrades might have gone down a lot better than they will today.

Are Microsoft the first to insist on VBS then? Usually the just mostly copy ideas the Linux kernel has had for ages. To be dependent on something which most installed PCs do not have hardware support for seems very strange.

[badass]

This performance hit probably affects more than just games so for me a 28% loss (worst case scenario) of performance could mean another 17mins per hour when rendering....in an average 8 hour day that means I could add another 1.5 HOURS onto my work meaning an 8 hour day now needs a 10 hour day or essentially a 5 day week becomes (metaphorically speaking) a 4 day week.

That's one hell of a hit to productivity and kind of goes against everything MS have been saying about the 'design principles' of windows 11... which might explain why they've basically limited the cpu's to those with mbec hardware so as not to show just had bad a hit this is to pc performance.


Obviously not so much an issue with new cpu's with built in hardware (assuming no change to requirements) but for context I would basically need to go from a 16 core to a 20 core cpu to get the performance loss back...which also means going up to (in most cases) workstation grade cpu's and all the other higher priced components which is not exactly cheap.

We don't yet know if the hit is more CPU or GPU yet. Also every other site could not get this 28% performance hit. They varied between 0% and 10%.

What would be useful is to test the performance hit in a CPU limited scenario and in a GPU limited scenario and look at the figures.

[DanceswithUnix]

Sample size is too small to draw a conclusion yet - most testers happen to be using ampere cards. Once we get some more non-ampere tests in we can start to see if there's a correlation.

It seems interesting to me that this feature is in Windows 10, but no-one seems to have performance tested it there?

[LSG501]

Are Microsoft getting seriously into the hardware business?

Maybe this was planned before the current shortages. A few years ago when PC sales were massively down, needlessly forcing upgrades might have gone down a lot better than they will today.

Are Microsoft the first to insist on VBS then? Usually the just mostly copy ideas the Linux kernel has had for ages. To be dependent on something which most installed PCs do not have hardware support for seems very strange.

Not sure but they have been working on custom arm hardware supposedly....I wouldn't put a friendly chat from Intel being out of the question though (especially with the AMD 'issues').

They do however make the majority of their windows money from oem sales, so the cynical side of me says it's a calculated thing with the intent to sell more oem windows by helping sell new pc's by requiring new hardware etc.. to be fair depending on the license you'd likely need (officially) a new license if you need a new cpu (and motherboard) so that's another sale of windows too.

As to linux, not really a linux user but it doesn't seem to have as many 'security' issues as windows so it might not even need this level of 'security'.

We don't yet know if the hit is more CPU or GPU yet. Also every other site could not get this 28% performance hit. They varied between 0% and 10%.

What would be useful is to test the performance hit in a CPU limited scenario and in a GPU limited scenario and look at the figures.

As I said worst case scenario but it doesn't really matter if it's gpu in my case either because I could easily have the same hit with gpu rendering (cuda) instead of cpu rendering.... 28% drop would basically mean needing to upgrade to a 3090 from a 3070 ti to get the same performance. Even at 10% it's still not exactly great because you'd still need to go up at least one step in the ladder.


The mbec hardware is usually in the cpu so I'd edge more towards the cpu side of things but like you say more testing is needed, and not just in gaming, to really know where the hit is coming from.