【AI前沿】Microsoft will lean on your CPU to speed up Windows 11's apps and animations

give me a boostMicrosoft will lean on your CPU to speed up Windows 11’s apps and animations“All modern operating systems do this, including macOS and Linux.”Andrew Cunningham–May 12, 2026 1:49 pm|119Credit:

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    settingsStory textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth*StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers onlyLearn moreMinimize to navMicrosoft has heard your complaints about Windows 11, and it wants to make things better. That has been the messaging out of Microsoftfor most of this year, and the company is also going out of its way to make sure that people know what is being improved and how.One of the goals on Microsoft’slong listwas to improve the performance of core Windows components like the Start menu and File Explorer. One of the strategies for making this happen is something Microsoft is calling the “low latency profile,” which will speed things up by calling on an extra burst of CPU speed when users open Start or other apps and context menus.Windows Centralhas testedthe low latency profile available in test builds of Windows 11 and observed a noticeable increase in speed and responsiveness on the same hardware compared to the current public version of Windows 11 25H2.Some users on social media criticized Microsoft for boosting performance this way, under the impression that it could increase power usage and decrease battery life, and criticized Microsoft for leaning on hardware rather than optimizing its software. Microsoft and GitHub VP Scott Hanselmanresponded tothese complaints, asserting that the low latency profile is being added alongside other software optimizations and that “everything is a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.”“All modern operating systems do this, including macOS and Linux,” Hanselmanwroteof the CPU boosting behavior. “It’s not ‘cheating’; this is how modern systems make apps feel fast: they temporarily boost the CPU speed and prioritize interactive tasks to reduce latency.”Paradoxically, letting your CPU or GPU use a lot of power in short burstscansave energy, relative to running at a lower power level for more time. This is called the “race to sleep,” and basically all modern processors are designed to behave this way; as long as the CPU can return to a lower power state quickly after finishing its work, it improves system responsiveness and saving power.(What Hanselman’s posts don’t explain is why Microsoft wasn’t already doing this for these Windows UI elements if this kind of performance-boosting is so universal in modern operating systems, but we’ll allow that software is complicated and that Microsoft’spriorities have been elsewhere for the past couple of years.)The commitment to quality continuesIn addition to the normal release notes it publishes when a new Windows build is released, the Windows Insider Blog recently started publishing posts specifically tracking Microsoft’s progress on the items in the “Commitment to Windows Quality” post.Aroundup published earlier this monthmentioned the changes Microsoft has made to the Windows Insider Program itself—as we covered, these don’t really reduce the complexity of the program or the number of channels to consider, but they do make it more predictable and easier to actually get the new features you want to test. Microsoft has also worked to scale back the Copilot branding inside of core apps like Notepad and Paint (even if the generative AI features are still there), and to give users more control over when their PCs install updates.Another improvement working its way through Microsoft’s beta program is a cleaned-up Widgets board that cuts down on low-quality news articles, declutters the default Widgets view, and reduces RAM usage. Promised improvements to Taskbar customization, including the ability to dock it to the sides of your display as was possible in older Windows versions, are still being tested internally and aren’t available for public testers yet.Microsoft’s Windows 11 improvement efforts come as the company tries to coax users and businesses off of Windows 10, which still runs on a little over a quarter of the world’s Windows PCs,according to StatCounter data. AsWindows 10’s free year of extended security updatesdraws to a close, users will need to either upgrade their PCs or buy new hardware that meets Windows 11’s system requirements if they want to stay patched. Businesses can buy one or two more years of Windows 10 updates, butthe cost will escalate each year.Andrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast calledOverdue.119 Comments