Windows 11 24H2 might quietly throttle and slow your system when you aren't paying attention

Recently, we conducted our performance experience review of Windows 11 24H2 against version 23H2. We initially tested an in-place upgrade and then followed it up with a clean installation testing to note the differences. There were some rather surprising results but the majority of test data showed minor variances.

However, not everyone may be so lucky and some of the recent Windows patches (KB5050094 / KB5051987) may be causing various issues like game crashes as Neowin forum member kiddingguy found it a few days ago.

But a few game crashes may be the least of the worries as a report from media outlet Borncity discusses how one of its readers came across a performance-crippling bug that can go unnoticed if the user is not paying attention.

The user noted the problem on an Intel Ultra 9 285K CPU ASRock system wherein Windows 11 will go into a sort of power-saving mode when the task like an application is minimized as the CPU enters a state of low usage and aggressive downclocking. The user confirmed this on both Prime95, which is a synthetic stress test, as well as 7-Zip benchmark, which is a real-world application for archiving files.

It is noteworthy here that Microsoft does officially support the Intel Ultra 9 285K on Windows 11 24H2 as per the latest update to its CPU support list.

The screenshot below shows the CPU usage and clock speeds on Task Manager when the app is minimized or not the focus. As you can notice, the above image clearly shows much higher clocks and usage with no throttling.

The affected user also added that the same problem was not prevalent on a previous gen Intel i9-12900K and AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X, even though the latter is still not on Microsoft's 24H2 support list.

That may also explain why we did not come across such a bug during our testing since 14700K shares a similar architectural design as the 12900K as 14th Gen still has hyperthreading (SMT).

Interestingly, this is not even the first time that such reports of Windows 11 hamstringing the performance of devices have surfaced as back in September, it was found that Microsoft's desktop OS could be incredibly inconsistent in this department.

Could this perhaps also explain the slowdown of CPU performance in 2025 that was recently highlighted by PassMark? That could be some food for thought.

Source and images: Borncity

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