Should I upgrade to Windows 11?

[Dave11]

Hi. Just wondering what people’s thoughts are on upgrading to windows 11. I currenly only use my rig for gaming, and at times stream and video edit.
stats

Prosessor	AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Six Core CPU (3.7GHz-4.6GHz/35MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard	ASUS® TUF GAMING B550-PLUS WiFi (DDR4, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)	32 GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3600MHz (4 x 8GB)

Graphics Card

Change to: 12GB AMD RADEON™ RED DEVIL RX 6700 XT - HDMI, DP - DX® 12

I have seen mixed reviews and as this community has been very helpful in the past, I wanted to see your thoughs.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Hi. Just wondering what people’s thoughts are on upgrading to windows 11. I currenly only use my rig for gaming, and at times stream and video edit.
stats

Prosessor	AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Six Core CPU (3.7GHz-4.6GHz/35MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard	ASUS® TUF GAMING B550-PLUS WiFi (DDR4, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)	32 GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3600MHz (4 x 8GB)

Graphics Card

Change to: 12GB AMD RADEON™ RED DEVIL RX 6700 XT - HDMI, DP - DX® 12

I have seen mixed reviews and as this community has been very helpful in the past, I wanted to see your thoughs.

I would definitely wait, they've currently got performance issues for gaming which need to be ironed out.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Just furthermore on this, it's a good OS, all the reviews I'm reading (currently don't have any hardware that officially supports it, although will be forcing through an installation to try when I get around to it) are celebrating it in the main.

But there is currently a performance issue specifically related to AMD CPU's. In windows 10, Microsoft worked extremely closely with AMD to optimise it for AMD processors due to how well the 3000 series CPU's performed. This made substantial improvements in gaming performance in windows. My guess is there's been some error in applying this same technology to Windows 11.

It appears they have a partial fix in the works for this, it's currently rolling out to Insider testers:

Microsoft fixes AMD CPU performance issue with new Windows 11 test build

Microsoft has fixed part of a problem affecting performance of apps on Windows 11 on AMD Ryzen processors and is testing that fix with Insiders in the Beta and Release Preview channels.

www.zdnet.com

There's also VBS in Windows 11 (Virtualisation Based Security) which is a pretty stellar improvement. This is definitely a feature that everyone is going to want, but currently enabling it has an impact on performance.

How to Disable Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) in Windows 11 to Improve Gaming

Getting frame drops while playing games in Windows 11? VBS might be the reason and here's how you can disable VBS in Windows 11.

beebom.com

Benchmarked: Do Windows 11’s Security Features Really Hobble Gaming Performance?

How much do they hurt, and how to opt out.

www.tomshardware.com

 

[ubuysa]

TBH I would wait. I do have Windows 11 installed and on the whole I like the new interface, though I've not found anything that's radically new under the covers. There are a few minor interface things that need cleaning up a tad; if you make the taskbar small for example, the time and date are off screen, my Thunderbird new mail icon doesn't show properly on the taskbar - in fact the taskbar as a whole seems not to have had the attention it deserves.

It's a work in progress, just like Windows 10 was (and still is). There are still plenty of places when the fancy new UI suddenly gives way to the old (Windows 7) dialogs when you're diving deep into the setup. The different is now huge so it's a real ugggh moment when you click on a shiny new WIndows 11 menu item and get the old fashioned dialogs. They'll get there in the end.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I'm in no hurry but am curious about how to upgrade my PC in the future to be able to run Windows 11 (assuming I haven't replaced the whole thing by then). Its 8 years old how would I add tpm 2.0 functionality?

Processor (CPU)	Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-4820K (3.7GHz) 10MB Cache
Motherboard	ASUS® P9X79 LE: INTEL® SOCKET LG2011
Memory (RAM)	16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X FURY DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card	4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 760 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready

You can't, that PC isn't compatible, it doesn't have TPM support and the CPU isn't compatible either.

 

[dtang_ie]

So I've also yet to upgrade my PC to Windows 11 yet as I am running a AMD 5900X and read that that there were issues. Just wanted to check to see if anyone has upgraded with a 5900X? I read that they've fixed the issue in the latest update.

 

[Martinr36]

So I've also yet to upgrade my PC to Windows 11 yet as I am running a AMD 5900X and read that that there were issues. Just wanted to check to see if anyone has upgraded with a 5900X? I read that they've fixed the issue in the latest update.

Yeah running W11 on 5900X and all seems good

 

[JediMonsoon]

Yeah running W11 on 5900X and all seems good

Did you do a clean install?

 

[Martinr36]

Did you do a clean install?

No, did an inplace upgrade using the W11 media creation tool, and applied all updates, previously I had created a 100GB partition which i had been running a clean install on as duel boot

 

[ubuysa]

No, did an inplace upgrade using the W11 media creation tool, and applied all updates, previously I had created a 100GB partition which i had been running a clean install on as duel boot

There's Luke Skywalker brave and there's John Connor brave, but clearly you can't beat @Martinr36 for bravery. 😬

 

[Martinr36]

There's Luke Skywalker brave and there's John Connor brave, but clearly you can't beat @Martinr36 for bravery. 😬

If things had gone really Peter Tong I had both W10 & W11 media creation tools on hand as well as an Acronis system back up that I could restore

 

[mike_d99]

I decided to go with Windows 11 in my build. I quite like it so far, BUT there are a couple of things that are major irritations. First one is the taskbar, namely the fact that for some inexplicable reason they've taken away the option to ungroup items. So you can have 10 folders open in Explorer, or multiple Excel workbooks on the go or what have you and there's no way to view them on the taskbar:

Instead you have to hover over the icon, then find the correct window amongst however many there may be and click into that, and repeat over and over. When you're moving between more two windows it really hampers productivity. If I'd known this to be the case in advance I doubt I would've gone with Windows 11. Might not be an issue for you though.

Second thing is the context menus. Right-clicking on something brings up a truncated menu that contains five or six options, such as 'Open', 'Pin to Start Menu' etc, along with Cut, Copy and Paste options. To view the full menu you have to click 'Show More Options' at the bottom of the context menu. Trouble is, a lot of the things you might ever want to do are almost certainly in the second menu, so you'll be doing this a lot. Might not sound much but it gets tiresome pretty quickly. I don't know if there's a way to turn this behaviour off, hopefully there is.

I also found the built in Media Player wanted 79p off me to buy and install an add-on to play an mkv file Seriously, what decade is this?

If those things don't bother you, it seems pretty nice. I haven't found any incompatibility issues with any of my old W10 programs, which has come as a pleasant surprise.

 

[3qtrsamericano]

Nice shiny new PC which is running absolutely fine on Win10.

And considering I'm not the most tech-savvy when it comes to PC, as tempting as it is to try something new and shiny (whilst I wait for my Corsair LCD upgrade kit to come back into stock ), I'm not going anywhere near Win11 until at least next summer!

And before you start @Martinr36, no, I'm not adding any more RGB lighting to the rig!

 

[Martinr36]

Nice shiny new PC which is running absolutely fine on Win10.

And considering I'm not the most tech-savvy when it comes to PC, as tempting as it is to try something new and shiny (whilst I wait for my Corsair LCD upgrade kit to come back into stock ), I'm not going anywhere near Win11 until at least next summer!

And before you start @Martinr36, no, I'm not adding any more RGB lighting to the rig!

 

[ubuysa]

I decided to go with Windows 11 in my build. I quite like it so far, BUT there are a couple of things that are major irritations. First one is the taskbar, namely the fact that for some inexplicable reason they've taken away the option to ungroup items. So you can have 10 folders open in Explorer, or multiple Excel workbooks on the go or what have you and there's no way to view them on the taskbar:

View attachment 30260

Instead you have to hover over the icon, then find the correct window amongst however many there may be and click into that, and repeat over and over. When you're moving between more two windows it really hampers productivity. If I'd known this to be the case in advance I doubt I would've gone with Windows 11. Might not be an issue for you though.

Second thing is the context menus. Right-clicking on something brings up a truncated menu that contains five or six options, such as 'Open', 'Pin to Start Menu' etc, along with Cut, Copy and Paste options. To view the full menu you have to click 'Show More Options' at the bottom of the context menu. Trouble is, a lot of the things you might ever want to do are almost certainly in the second menu, so you'll be doing this a lot. Might not sound much but it gets tiresome pretty quickly. I don't know if there's a way to turn this behaviour off, hopefully there is.

I also found the built in Media Player wanted 79p off me to buy and install an add-on to play an mkv file Seriously, what decade is this?

If those things don't bother you, it seems pretty nice. I haven't found any incompatibility issues with any of my old W10 programs, which has come as a pleasant surprise.

The taskbar has been completely rewritten in Windows 11 and that has inevitably introduced bugs, but it also means that it only has fairly limited functionality at present. I would expect to see future updates expanding the taskbar's capabilities.

The start menu dialog is also a complete rewrite and the same thing applies to that too.

TBH I think Microsoft wanted to introduce the new hardware security features into Windows (like TPM) and couldn't do that in Windows 10 (not without breaking millions of PCs), thus a new version of Windows was necessary. Its clear that they took that opportunity to not only provide a new UI but to streamline much of the code that underpins it. Inevitably that means bugs, limited functionality and users missing familiar features from older UIs. That's the price of progress I guess...?

 

[JediMonsoon]

TPM is causing more issues with Windows 11 and Ryzen CPUs | Digital Trends

AMD Ryzen systems are experiencing stutters on Windows 10 and Windows 11, and the issue stems from firmware TPM that Windows 11 requires in order to run.

www.digitaltrends.com

According to this article there are still AMD windows issues!

 

[SpyderTracks]

TPM is causing more issues with Windows 11 and Ryzen CPUs | Digital Trends

AMD Ryzen systems are experiencing stutters on Windows 10 and Windows 11, and the issue stems from firmware TPM that Windows 11 requires in order to run.

www.digitaltrends.com

According to this article there are still AMD windows issues!

A bios update will be available for that issue soon:

Home - Gametly.com

gamehob.com

It affects windows 10 and 11 though as it's the fTPM that's buggy.

 

[JediMonsoon]

Do you think pcspecialist may put a message out about the bios updates as the are likely to get a lot of requests for permission to update the bios after this is released?