I’ve been thinking about upgrading my AMD-based system to Windows 11, but I’m a bit on the fence and wanted to hear from folks here who’ve already taken the leap. I’m currently running a Ryzen 9 5900X with an RTX 3080, and while the performance on Windows 10 has been solid, I’m curious about any real-world improvements—or setbacks—after moving to Windows 11. I’ve come across some reports about issues with AMD performance early on, especially regarding how the OS handles the CPU scheduling. But I’ve also seen people mention noticeable improvements in boot times, responsiveness, and overall UI smoothness. I’m particularly interested in how well Windows 11 handles gaming workloads, general system stability, and whether the new features actually make a difference in day-to-day use. For those of you who’ve been using it for a while, would you recommend upgrading now, or is it better to wait until more bugs are ironed out? Really appreciate any thoughts, tips, or issues you’ve faced post-upgrade—especially if you’re on similar hardware. Thanks in advance!
I have the same hardware and I didn’t notice anything. I didn’t run any benchmarks, though.
The upgrade has been some time ago, but generally I’d recommend getting the latest driver from amd.com and nvidia.com and maybe even do a full DDU for the latter. It’s maybe also a good time to check on all the other drivers on your system like NICs, printers etc. A BIOS update might also be a good idea if you haven’t done one in a while.
The main new feature of Windows 11 IMHO is total surveillance of the user. If this doesn’t bother you, go ahead.
MSFT works hard to keep the experience to the average user the same as long as they can extract value from their use of Windows.
Meaning, I doubt you will notice a meaningful differnce in performance/stability/UI smoothness.
Yes, it does look a little different and it really wants you to use chatgpt, etc.
By now you have figured out that while I dabbled a little with Win11, I don’t really have a meaningful answer to your question.
I am responding to your post to encourage you to question if Windows should have a future on your hardware. Consider alternatives.
Whatever your choice ends up being - let it be a deliberate informed choice.
Hardware.
Newer (than yours) CPU architectures can benefit from an OS upgrade; mind the “can”, as in potentially, user and workload depending; not a certainty and never mind the advertising. Not the case here with you, just mentioning it so you keep it in mind, for the next time you upgrade your hardware. So that’s out for now.
Gaming-wise.
it depends really…
Scenario a) most older/very popular/light (in terms on resources) games:
If you do your research and tweak Win10 accordingly, there’s zero benefit from upgrading to 11. More of a loss, unless you spend even more time tweaking 11, to get to exactly where you are now!
Scenario b) select and most recent titles that “benefit” from “resizable bar”. Windows 11 could, in theory, offer you some minimal gains there. Minimal because while in synthetic benchmarks an improvement’s always in improvement, real life often begs to differ, as you cannot discern it yourself. But it is a thing and with newer hardware, something for you to keep in mind. A note here that i do not play games, so someone else may be in a position to help you out more; some other factor i may have missed.
Specific, win11 only software.
Not the case, you’d know about it before posting, would have upgraded by necessity.
General/various benefits.
Frankly, none, unless you are the kind of person that goes for new just because it’s new. Which in tech is like 99% of folks out there, but…
Ease of use.
On the very contrary, Microsoft is getting worse and worse, i swear they’re trying to drive folks away. The older/more accustomed to previous OSes you are, the more you will struggle and for no benefit whatsoever.
Leading us to a very common underlying factor, you’d notice if you bothered with anything recent.
If not a “gamer”, it’s not for you.
If i didn’t mind becoming very, very unpopular, i’d urge younger folks to consider this a bit more with examples no one would find particularly alluring, most especially because they’d ring both true and offensive. But, this is the market.
Anyway, lest there’s a specific gaming title you literally struggle with, the answer for you would be to currently stay where you are and count yourself lucky. Soon enough you’ll be forced to use 11 anyway (newer CPUs), so no need to rush!
Your post doesn’t add any value unless you’re willing to explain why you think the question is silly, which would make your post potentially insightful. Not an insight everyone might agree with, but an insight nonetheless.
After 3.5 years I think it’s pretty safe to conclude 11’s a permabeta and Microsoft’s never going to fix its multiple regressions from 10. The sustainable options for 10’s end of life are pretty much to take 11 for what it is, which amounts to assorted improvements from 10 22H2 with enough added problems most of us would say it’s a net downgrade, or switch to Linux. The new stuff’s mostly different for the sake of being different but not reimplemented to the same quality.
How bad 11 is is a YMMV thing but, surveillance aside, there’s a lot of stupid but usually minor stuff like double click to open files sometimes breaking until you restart. On dual chiplet Ryzen 11’s scheduler mostly runs like a 5-15% penalty compared to 10 but it’s not uncommon I’ll see 20-40% downgrades when it goes off in the weeds. Worst bust down I’ve hit so far is a 70% regression where 11 would suspend all but one core for no reason.
M$FT didn’t do any favours, for a [VERY] long time, when it came to larger core count CPUs
Wasn’t until Intel tossed $$ at M$FT, to assist with core scheduler [for their P-E core divvying]
This isn’t the same windows of days past
Unnecessary run-arounds, for accessing simple tasks
W11 trying their damnedest, to create a MacOS vibe [+ still faceplant it]
This was NOT including the cloud account expectation / Swiss-cheese Privacy / …
+Any bug, is just a Hydras head… It won’t end there
That was an early development issue and has been since resolved. I have a 3700X and 6650XT machine on Windows 11 and didn’t notice any particular slowdowns from when it was on Windows 10. Though I made sure to run Chris Titus script to lighten it a bit.
What I noticed is performance degradation over time since I first installed it. Once I added more software to it I could feel it getting slower.
I think, performance wise, it’s as good as it will ever be.
Regarding bugs it’s such a complicated piece of software that those are around the corner at every update. Just like they are on lots of operating systems and drivers.
One thing: I did a full wipe and install, I did not upgrade from Windows 10. Never overwrite a Windows install with a new one, always start from scratch whenever possible.
