Microsoft says Windows 11 is 2.3x faster than Windows 10

Microsoft has published an article that boasts that Windows 11 is better and faster than Windows 10. It claims that the newer OS is 2.3x faster, is it? Windows 10 reaches end […] Thank you for being a Ghacks reader. The post Microsoft says Windows 11 is 2.3x faster than Windows 10 appeared first on gHacks Technology News.

Jun 26, 2025 - 20:20

Microsoft says Windows 11 is 2.3x faster than Windows 10

Microsoft has published an article that boasts that Windows 11 is better and faster than Windows 10. It claims that the newer OS is 2.3x faster, is it?

Windows 10 reaches end of support in October, and Microsoft has already tried to scare people by warning that unsupported PCs will no longer receive security updates, it has also advised people to trade their old computers and buy a new one. All of this is marketing, and so is the claim that Windows 11 is twice as faster than Windows 10.

The company has published an article which is captioned "Windows 11 PCs performance claims", which explains how the tests were conducted. Microsoft says that the test involved playing a local video on various laptops. You can go through all the details in the page I linked above, or read the text in the screenshot below.

Windows 11 PCs performance details

The page also lists a table with information about all the computers and their processors. Allow me to split the table into 2, I'll tell you why in just a bit. Take a look at the screenshots, what do they tell you?

Windows 10 pc benchmark

These tests were not conducted on the same PC, multiple models were used for the benchmark. While that's good, do you notice something odd in the table?

Windows 11 pc benchmark

Microsoft did not test Windows 10 on the machines that ran Windows 11, or vice versa. A proper way to benchmark the systems would be to install Windows 10 on the computers, observe the results, then upgrade them to Windows 11 and test them again. That's not what seems to have happened here, does it? Hey, if you are not upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11, why would your users?

Another issue with this test is that all of these Windows 10 computers have a CPU that is at least 5 years older or more, most of them are from 2017-19. In fact, the i5-6200U is from 2015. Microsoft acknowledges it in the documentation. Yup, they actually used a 10-year-old chip in a modern benchmark.

Can you guess how old the CPUs on all these Windows 11 PCs are? They are all from 2022 or later, the only exception to this is the i7-1065G7 which was released in 2019. It also happens to be the only CPU which was also tested on Windows 10. Notice how the CPU frequencies of the Windows 11 machines have been casually omitted?

I'm not saying the older CPUs are bad, but Microsoft's claim is wild. Nope, Windows 11 isn't 2.3x faster, the computers were faster in the benchmarks because they have newer hardware that are more powerful. I've said this many times, never rely on benchmarks, it is absolutely meaningless compared to real-life usage.

There are so many factors that need to be taken into account, the battery capacity, cache, etc. Take the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H for example, it is manufactured on a 7nm process, whereas the Intel Core i5-1135G7 was based on a 10nm process. That makes a huge difference in power efficiency, and performance. That would explain the results in the other table, which highlights the video playback battery life tests.

You see, these benchmarks are not meant for power-users, they are just numbers to confuse the average user. There are innocent people who would be fooled by this marketing, and really believe their PC will be much faster with Windows 11. Some people might even go and purchase a new PC because they may think Windows 10 is 2.3x times slower.

What about AMD PCs, why doesn't the test include any? Why base this claim on Intel PCs alone? I'm an Intel user, and I think this is an unethical way to market Windows 11, don't fall for these tricks.

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