Windows 11 PCs will be among the hottest items this holiday season, but for PC gamers, these prebuilt systems can be significantly underpowered by default.
In a new report from our colleagues at PCGamer, prebuilt Windows 11 PCs will ship with virtualization-based security (VBS), an enterprise feature already used in Windows 10 machines designed for business purposes.
As Microsoft describes VBS as using “hardware virtualization features to create and isolate a secure region of memory from the normal operating system. Windows can use this” virtual secure mode “to host a number of security solutions, providing them with a Significantly increased protection against vulnerabilities in the operating system and prevent the use of malicious exploits that attempt to bypass protections. “
While that sounds commendable, and it is, anyone familiar with PC gaming will tell you that any layers of virtualization you introduce into a system will seriously affect your gaming performance.
As PCGamer studied, using VBS could reduce your frame rate by up to 28%, which is the kind of performance you would get when switching from an RTX 3070 to an RTX 3080. It doesn’t. will not affect PCs upgrading to Windows 11 from Windows 10 (unless you already have a VBS-compatible version of Windows 10) and will only impact newer systems.
Microsoft thinks this performance impact is worth it for the added security.
“The US Department of Defense (DoD) requires virtualization-based security on Windows 10 for their devices. While we don’t need VBS when upgrading to Windows 11, we believe the security benefits it offers are so important that we want the minimum system requirements to ensure that every PC running Windows 11 can meet the same security that DoD relies on, ”the company said in an update article.
“In partnership with our OEM and silicon partners, we will be enabling VBS and HVCI on most new PCs over the next year. And we will continue to look for opportunities to expand VBS to more systems over time.
The security of the computer system is undoubtedly a major issue.
Over the years, countless people have fallen victim to malicious and other malware that has locked down computers with encrypted hard drives or hijacked them to mine bitcoin in the background and burn graphics cards.
Security is important, especially for those who buy a prebuilt PC who may be less familiar with computer systems. The only thing we can say is that they will have to balance priorities when deciding what to buy this Black Friday, but there really should be an option to stay with Windows 10 so that buyers can then switch to Windows. 11 if they choose not to have MoD security on their gaming PC.
- We’ll show you how to build a PC if you don’t want to buy a prebuilt one.
