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You may recall that when Windows 11 first appeared, in late 2021, there was quite a bit of buzz about VBS (Virtualization Based Security) slowing down games – and beware, here comes some more controversy surrounding this security feature.
On stage left (perhaps accompanied by a clap of thunder) a report from Tom’s Hardware (opens in new tab)where our sister site recently did a whole bunch of graphics card benchmarking, and then realized: namely, VBS was enabled.
Here’s the problem, the editor-in-chief at Tom’s who wrote the report, Jarred Walton, had previously disabled VBS, but at some point a Windows 11 update (presumably) brought the feature back and enabled it again without Walton noticing. (Windows 11 now has VBS enabled by default for new OS installations).
Walton further notes that Tom’s editor-in-chief, Avram Piltch, is running Windows 10 Home and hasn’t touched VBS since the clean install of the operating system last summer — but VBS was also enabled with that system. Again, we can guess this happened via an update at some point (note, we don’t know for sure).
Basically, Microsoft wants to enable this feature for tighter Windows security – obviously – and seems to enable it by default on all PCs (most likely during major updates). But if users don’t know that VBS is being re-enabled and it could have a negative effect on game frame rates, that’s a bit of a pain to say the least.
At the launch of Windows 11, we heard stories of VBS crippling framerates in some cases, with framerate drops of up to 30%. That turned out to be a worst-case scenario, as Tom did his own testing at the time, which showed that the drop averaged more than 5% (still a significant drop in frame rate).
With that in mind, what impact does VBS have these days? Walton was curious, so ran a series of tests to find out with an Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics card (with different resolutions and graphics settings for 15 games).
Would VBS have any noticeable impact on gaming performance with a new processor – Intel’s Core i9-13900K – and an advanced GPU?
Apparently the performance drops remain at about the same level as previous tests a year and a half ago, with VBS reducing performance by about 5% overall. At higher resolutions, the impact was less: just 2% at ultra settings in 4K.
There were some games that fared worse, as you might imagine. Tom’s Hardware highlights Microsoft Flight Simulator, which experienced an average drop in frame rate of about 10%. Far Cry 6 and Control also showed around 10% drops (at least at 1080p resolution with certain graphics settings). Other games were much less affected, or in some cases saw no difference at all.
Analysis: a difficult choice perhaps, but one we have to make ourselves
It seems that VBS is still pretty much the same as when Windows 11 first launched in terms of slowing down games with an average drop of about 5% in fps (frames per second).
So nothing has changed in the broad overarching picture, but what has changed is that Microsoft now apparently enables VBS post-updates, at least in some cases (and this can be true for Windows 10 systems as well as Windows 11).
That’s concerning, because the choice of “VBS or no VBS” should be yours – and you don’t have to worry about the OS creator deciding you shouldn’t be without this security feature and turning it on without your knowledge. At the very least, if this is the route Microsoft thinks it should take, the move should be documented somewhere in the patch’s release notes, or some effort should be made to inform the user.
The question of whether or not you should disable VBS is a thorny one. On the one hand, it’s a security feature, and it’s clear Microsoft believes it would be silly not to use it; hence turning it back on. The impact is undoubtedly also quite minimal for many games (as we can see from Tom’s tests).
There is some impact though, and a 10% delay in remote cases is a hefty penalty to pay. Especially for avid gamers obsessed with tuning their PC to squeeze out every extra frame – a one-tenth drop in fps is akin to a leaden weight strapped to the feet of that sort of enthusiast.
Furthermore, while VBS can be undeniably important in business PC scenarios, for the average home user, there are those who argue that it’s overkill – and probably not even necessary. Again, on the other hand, Microsoft has pointed out in the past how VBS can be a useful extra line of defense against some malware attacks.
Ultimately, this decision comes down to you, the kind of games you play and whether you play them competitively – as well as how careful you are about security. But honestly, what’s kind of puzzling here is that Microsoft seemingly makes these decisions for users, as it apparently does now.
