Microsoft Enables Memory Integrity in Windows 11, May Affect Gaming Performance
Microsoft is making significant changes to Windows 11's security features with its upcoming October patch release. One of these changes involves enabling Memory Integrity by default, which could potentially harm gaming performance if not enabled previously.
Memory Integrity is a core isolation feature that uses a virtualized environment to verify kernel-mode drivers before they execute. This ensures that only trusted and secure drivers are allowed to interact with the system kernel, preventing malware from exploiting vulnerabilities in older drivers.
The change is likely to affect modern systems that meet Microsoft's minimum requirements for Memory Integrity: Intel 8th-generation processor or newer, AMD Zen 2 processor or newer, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8180 SoC or newer, at least 8GB of RAM on x64 systems, and at least 64GB of SSD storage space.
Users who have explicitly disabled Memory Integrity via the registry or a Windows Group Policy change will not be affected. However, those using older drivers for legacy devices may still want to disable Memory Integrity due to potential compatibility issues.