Digital Foundry’s testing shows a recent Windows update, released in October as patch KB5066835, is significantly slowing down game performance. They discussed the issue on their podcast and described the update as currently unusable.
The podcast hosts mainly talked about problems with the operating system, but Alex Battaglia specifically explained how Windows 11 updates have been affecting gamers. He also pointed out that the updates happening automatically without much notice made the situation even more frustrating for users.
Battaglia also explained that the performance problems weren’t widely noticed until Nvidia released a quick update for its graphics cards. This update confirmed that Windows 11 was causing lower performance and attempted to resolve the issue. The problems are particularly noticeable in certain games, such as Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Battaglia reported that a recent KB patch significantly harmed performance in at least two games, including Assassin’s Creed Shadows. He noticed a dramatic decrease in performance immediately after loading the game, leading him to investigate. His testing confirmed a major issue, and he demonstrated the problem with video comparisons showing performance before and after installing the hotfix driver.
Before Nvidia released a fix, players experienced around 34 frames per second (FPS) when running Assassin’s Creed Shadows on the latest Windows 11 update, even with a powerful setup – an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card. They were using 4K resolution, the highest visual settings, and DLSS set to Quality. After installing the Nvidia fix, the frame rate jumped to 71 FPS – an improvement of about 206%.
According to Battaglia, the way this Windows 11 update was rolled out is questionable. It’s possible there’s an issue with how Nvidia graphics cards use DirectX, but Microsoft shouldn’t be silently releasing updates that cause problems. Instead, they should directly inform Nvidia about any issues they find.
Battaglia explained that if the problem isn’t related to how Nvidia complies with DirectX standards, it suggests Microsoft is releasing Windows updates without fully understanding their impact. These updates are quietly hurting game performance, leaving players and graphics card companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Intel to identify and fix the issues through their own testing. That’s why Nvidia is still releasing updates over a month later to address the problem.
The timing of this is strange, and it doesn’t look good for Microsoft’s management of the operating system, no matter who ultimately caused the problem. Since Microsoft is the one releasing the updates, they should probably wait to issue a patch until Nvidia has a driver update that resolves the compatibility issue.
Battaglia mentioned he’s been thinking about switching to Linux for PC gaming, given that Windows 11 isn’t currently meeting his expectations.
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2025-11-26 16:41