My games were losing frames to a hidden Windows security feature, and I only found it by accident

Published Sep 23, 2026, 9:00 AM EDT Abhinav pivoted from a career in banking to pursue his first love in writing. Even while working full-time, he continued contributing as an editor-at-large, a role he has held for more than 7 years. A lifelong tech enthusiast who has built three gaming and productivity powerhouse PCs since 2018, his passion for technology keeps him closely following the semiconductor industry, from NVIDIA and AMD to ARM. His MSc dissertation explored how artificial intelligence will reshape the future of work, reflecting his curiosity about the wider social impact of emerging technologies. Every desktop PC I've owned since 2003 has run some version of Microsoft Windows, which means I've lived through Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10, along with the Games for Windows - Live era. For the last four years, I've gamed exclusively on PCs running Windows 11. In that time, I tested the OS's Game Mode, tinkered with various power settings, and also tried many third-party tweaks to improve performance. What I, and my data, can both confidently say is that no OS setting costs games nearly as much as a security feature named Memory Integrity. The impact is rather subtle, but almost always felt. My average frame rates barely move, but the 1% lows tell a very different story. Here's everything you need to know about it. What is Memory Integrity? And what does it do? Contrary to what plenty of rather poorly informed guides will tell you, Memory Integrity is not a useless feature, and neither is it synthetically designed to rob your gaming PC of its performance. All the associated costs relating to the overhead are a side effect of the protection it offers to your device. "Memory Integrity" is the name Windows Security gives to HVCI, which is short for hypervisor-protected code integrity. It runs on top of virtualization-based security (VBS), which uses the Windows hypervisor to create an isolated environment separate from the rest of the OS. VBS was built on the prudent assumption that the main Windows kernel could be compromised at any point. What memory integrity does is that it moves the kernel's code integrity checks into an isolated environment. Before any driver or kernel-mode code runs, Windows verifies the signature and ascertains it has not been tampered with. The hypervisor blocks kernel-mode software from executing anything that does not pass the check, and this, in turn, protects your machine from kernel-level attacks like WannaCry. Kernel-level attacks are a particularly nasty breed. Once malicious code makes it into the Windows kernel, it runs with the same privileges as the antivirus trying to catch it, so no scan from inside the OS can promise a clean result. For this reason, Memory Integrity is built to stop the code from running at all, which is what makes it necessary for most systems. What's the performance impact of Memory Integrity? It depends on what you're playing, majorly The impact of Memory Integrity isn't uniform across all games, as I've confirmed on my test bench consisting of an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X chip with an RTX 4070 Ti Super. I expected the impact of Memory Integrity to largely depend upon whether a game leans on the CPU or the GPU, but as it turns out, the impact is mostly even on this system. Turning Memory Integrity on cost between 1.7% and 2.5% of the average frame rate, and oddly enough, GPU-bound titles actually sat at the top of the range. CPU-bound titles (1080p, Low preset) Ryzen 5 7600X + RTX 4070 Ti Super Average FPS (MI on) Average FPS (MI Off) 1% low (MI on) 1% low (MI off) Counter-Strike 2 398.2 FPS 404.8 FPS 167.3 FPS 158.6 FPS Cyberpunk 2077 183.1 FPS 186.5 FPS 116.8 FPS 124.5 FPS GPU-bound titles (1440p, High preset + RT) Ryzen 5 7600X + RTX 4070 Ti Super Average FPS (MI on) Average FPS (MI Off) 1% low (MI on) 1% low (MI off) Marvel's Spider-Man 2 75.3 FPS 77.2 FPS 66.9 69.0 Resident Evil Requiem 81.9 FPS 83.8 FPS 68.2 70.9 That being said, it's still possible for CPU-heavy games to take a bigger hit. That is because Memory Integrity's extra checks and the hypervisor layer beneath them cost CPU time, and not GPU time. Therefore, the more the game leans on the processor, the more of that overhead shows up in your frame rate. Almost certainly not, unless you're a professional esports player For the vast majority of people, turning off Memory Integrity solely for the purpose of chasing a few extra frames is horrible advice, and there's no two ways to go about it. On my AM5 system, the cost of around 2% of the average frame rate alone warrants no action, seeing as there's a good chance of reclaiming that level of performance with a clever Curve Optimizer offset. Disabling a feature that stops unsigned or tampered drivers from running in the Windows kernel for it is not something to be encouraged in good faith. Competitive players, on the other hand, form a group that could justify an exception, though. In CPU-bound esports titles, where every frame and every bit of frame-time consistency can change outcomes, it makes good sense. At one point in time, Microsoft itself suggested that gamers who wished to prioritize performance should turn the feature off. Now, whether that's still its official position is unclear, because the widely cited Microsoft Support page has been taken down. Not a tweak for the prudent I like to report the data as transparently as I can, because that should allow anyone reading to make the best decision for their system. So I've given you the performance impact, as well as the risks involved in toggling the setting off. My observation is that while Memory Integrity certainly costs performance, that cost itself is worth paying for most users. My recommendation, on the other hand, is to look literally anywhere else to boost the performance of your games, while keeping this toggle as the very last resort.