Microsoft seemingly enabling VBS by default in Windows 10

**kirill** · 03-15-2023

Microsoft seemingly enabling VBS by default in Windows 10 too, leading to performance loss

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Time and again, Microsoft has stated that Windows 11 is the best OS for gaming. First in mid-2022, when DirectStorage for PC was first announced, and more recently, earlier this year, with a video that was perhaps a little awkward; and this was just days after testing showed nearly no discernible difference between it and Windows 10, at least in terms of performance.

Reports have suggested in the past that certain security features which are enabled by default in Windows 11, like Virtualization-based Security (VBS) or Core Isolation/Memory Integrity, can lead between massive to noticeable performance loss, even on officially supported Windows 11 CPUs (Microsoft has itself recommended disabling it). And now, it looks like Microsoft is also enabling VBS by default on Windows 10 22H2 as well. Tom's Hardware's Avram Piltch noticed that Memory Integrity was enabled on their clean-installed Windows 10 build.

The publication also conducted a round of testing across 15 titles at four different game settings and resolution. These gaming tests were run on a Windows 11 system powered by the AMD Ryzen 7950X3D, which has already proved itself to be the most efficient gaming CPU, completely blowing Intel out of the water, and an Nvidia RTX 4090.

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While one would expect the biggest performance deltas at 1080p, which is the most CPU bound resolution out of all the three, it is really hard to predict, as it seems performance is all over the place depending on the settings used. Overall, it is a 5% drop with VBS on. You can view the full performance chart in the image above. Although this test was only on Windows 11, it is likely that VBS is going to have similar impact on Windows 10 as recent tests have showed performance on the two OSs are in the same ballpark.

Microsoft isn't the only company which is having to deal with performance loss at the moment though, as both AMD and Nvidia have also had buggy drivers recently. On the former, a rare bug in the driver is causing over 50% performance loss, meanwhile Nvidia just fixed a high CPU usage bug with its latest Game Ready driver.