Windows 11 23H2 reportedly has a nasty bug slowing down PC games – but there’s a fix
According to some recent reports, Windows 11 is having serious issues with PC games due to the latest 23H2 update.
New has noted the performance issues supposedly caused by the annual upgrade for Windows 11, which apparently mainly affects PCs with AMD processors.
Redditor BNSoul describes the problem in a post that has attracted serious attention, with many other users saying they are having similar gaming woes.
BNSoul writes: “Every CPU benchmark shows significantly reduced CPU performance after updating to Windows 11 23H2 from 22H2, even after a fresh/clean install.
“I could add an endless list of benchmark results here, but let's just say it's always 23H2 5-8% slower in every single benchmark, whether single or multi-thread, compared to 22H2.”
They add: “Games also suffer from random stuttering, all of which was resolved by going back to 22H2.”
Another user on Microsoft's Answers.com forum, Anant Acharya, makes something similar complaint supported by others further down the thread: “After I updated to the Windows 23H2 update. I've noticed sudden stutters and drastic FPS drops in the games mentioned above (Valorant, CS:GO, Grand Theft Auto 5, Forza Horizon 5).”
The stuttering encountered is quite bad according to those who experience the problem, so this is a nasty one. The good news is that Microsoft has provided a fix to the Redditor who posted the original post, which we'll discuss next.
Analysis: Defendius Kedavra
That solution apparently provided by Microsoft customer support involves resetting Microsoft Defender, so the preliminary conclusion is that the security app is involved in this somehow.
In any case, the disadvantage is that the procedure outlined is unfortunately not entirely simple and involves the use of PowerShell commands. However, that is not the difficult part, but it is the core of the solution.
To launch PowerShell, right-click the Start button (or press the Windows key + X) and click “Windows PowerShell (admin).” While it's not clear that you need administrator mode (you can just use the regular 'Windows PowerShell' option), there's no harm in using it.
Once opened, run the following two commands in PowerShell (type them and press Enter). First:
Set-ExecutionPolicy UnrestrictedAnd then:
Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.SecHealthUI -AllUsers | Reset-AppxPackageThat second command resets Defender, after which you restart your PC.
The instructions then say that upon reboot you should go into your BIOS and make sure CPU virtualization is enabled. Messing around in the BIOS is a little trickier – as BIOSes are all laid out differently and have their own interfaces and quirks (check the relevant resources from your motherboard vendor) – but many PCs may already have this enabled, so maybe not gotta do it.
Finally, once you're back on the Windows 11 desktop, fire up Windows Security (type that into the search box and open the app that appears), select 'Device Security' from the left panel and in the Core Isolation settings you'll need to enable Memory Integrity in. Again, you will need to restart your PC.
Then you're done, and according to BNSoul and others, this process will give you the same level of gaming performance for 23H2 as it did for 22H2.
If the above procedure seems like a hassle, or doesn't work for you, you can always return to 22H2 and wait for Microsoft to investigate and hopefully resolve this issue. Or if you haven't upgraded yet and are concerned about these reports, you can postpone the 23H2 upgrade for now.
We called Microsoft to find out what's going on here and whether a fix is expected. We will update this story if we hear back.