It looks like Microsoft might have broken Windows 11 24H2 again as performance plummets with Intel's latest CPUs

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The two latest patches for Windows 11 24H2 are causing some users problems
Allegedly, the worst affected hardware is the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K
Game crashes and slowdown appear to be exclusive to the latest updates

Some users of Windows 11 24H2 have been experiencing some issues, including slowdown and even crashing, with people quick to blame the latest update of the popular operating system.

As spotted by Neowin, two of the most recent Windows 11 24H2 patches (KB5050094 and KB5051987) have caused crashing and instability problems. Neowin forum user kiddingguy first observed game crashes with the latest update halting The Settlers: New Allies in Ubisoft Connect, but others have experienced far worse issues since.

Writing to Borncity, one Windows 11 24H2 user running an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor on an ASRock Z890 Pro RS motherboard could only get the newly built system running with a beta bios. The failure to launch was attributed to the Intel microcode update integrated into the bios, despite the latest version of Windows 11 being installed as normal.

The performance issues did not stop once the new hardware was up and running either. With Windows 11 24H2, it's claimed that a "new massive performance problem" was impacting the system as soon as a program was minimized or not the main "focus". It's claimed that applications are "massively throttled", so much so that the CPU's clock rate was even decreased. Screenshots show the differences in utilization.

Arguably, the most worrying thing about the impact of the two most recent Windows 11 patches is the fact that this user was able to replicate the problems with different applications. These include 7Zip and Prime95, proving it doesn't seem to be tied to any one specific program with incompatibility or stability issues with either KB5050094 or KB5051987.

The user claims that the performance in 7Zip's benchmark was effectively halved when minimizing the program and that distributing the workload across all available cores (for which the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K has 24 in total) did not alleviate the issue. No solid fix is yet to be implemented, other than a workaround of forcing the maximum energy-saving plan to push "full CPU performance" in the background processes, which is far from ideal for long-term use.

Interestingly, it's claimed that the same problems did not occur with the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X processor as it did with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, nor with the older Intel Core i9-12900K. Because of this, it's possible that the bulk of severe issues could be specific to Intel's latest LGA 1851 platform, but this does not seem to be as widespread as the software crashing and incompatibilities seen so far.

To double-check your processor's compatibility with Windows 11 24H2, you can read through Microsoft's official supported processors list, which outlines AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm CPUs that are confirmed to run without issue. If you're experiencing any slowdown or crashing, then it may be time to revert to a previous version of the operating system until things begin to stabilize.

The problems with Windows 11 continue

Recently, it seems that there's been no shortage of issues with Windows 11, with the 24H2 version of the operating system having a few outstanding problems. As well as the newly reported crashing and slowdown, this variant of the OS included more advertising in the Settings menu, high CPU utilization from Task Manager, and consistent reminders to back things up.

Another strange Windows 11 24H2 bug even featured half the interface displayed in one language, with the latter half mixed up in another. This glitch was apparently tied to a faulty installation where two language options were layered upon each other, something which was previously unheard of until last month.

Of course, artificial slowdown and software crashes are more severe than advertising, throttling, and language errors, but it culminates in a user experience which has been less than ideal since the most recent version rolled out on October 1, 2024. The two most recent problematic patches are optional, at least, so if you're having trouble with them, we recommend reverting to a previous (more stable) version or freshly reinstalling Windows 11 altogether.