Microsoft Just Made Windows 11 Up To 40% Faster On PCs With 8GB Of RAM

After making some real gains in efficiency with Windows 11 26H2, Redmond isn't finished yet. Microsoft's Windows honcho Pavan Davuluri says that, after yesterday's updates, Windows 11 is 20% more responsive, offers 40% faster multitasking, and has seen significant reductions in memory usage across the platform and ecosystem. Despite that the purpose was primarily to make Windows less miserable on 8GB laptops due to the ongoing RAMageddon, these gains are real, and Microsoft deserves to be praised for them.

I can actually verify the gains in Windows 11 26H2 with real empirical testing. In my recent review of the ASUS ROG XBOX Ally X20, I retested every single handheld I have, including the original ROG Ally machine with just 16GB of RAM. Remember that in these handheld devices, the graphics memory is borrowed from main memory; with Windows 11 25H2, I wasn't able to run some demanding games due to running out of memory, but with the Windows 11 26H2 update installed, I was able to complete more of the test suite. It was quite remarkable!

However, what Davuluri is talking about today goes beyond Windows 11 26H2's gains. The latest update has improvements specifically to the responsiveness of Windows' built-in functions and tools, including the Start menu, search, right-click context menus, the Settings applet, the Snipping Tool, and File Explorer. Davuluri also promised drastically improved multitasking, empirically tested at a 40% speed gain, using Edge with 20 browser tabs, a 4K video, a large Word document, a big PowerPoint, and a massive Excel spreadsheet, as well as running Outlook and File Explorer windows.


It doesn't take a genius to understand that Microsoft is making these changes to make Windows look better in comparison to its competition. The MacBook Neo comes with just 8GB of RAM, and it's perfectly usable. Many laptop vendors are likely looking at launching new 8GB machines due to the extremely severe RAM shortage that's still ongoing and predicted to last through the entirety of next year, at least if you believe memory vendors. The honest question is why it took Microsoft this kind of crisis to make these sorts of optimizations; users could have benefited from a leaner and cleaner operating system for years.

Still, whatever the reason, whenever they come, these kinds of optimizations are more than welcome. The operating system of a PC primarily serves to allow the user to run applications and manage the system, not to get in the way of doing those things. If the OS is using less memory and taking up less CPU time, that's a good thing for everyone. If you're keen to enjoy the newer, lighter Windows 11, make sure your system is fully up to date and you should see a considerably lighter-weight OS.