Microsoft Is Forcing Memory Integrity Changes That Could Harm Your FPS

In its October patch release, Microsoft is set to enable Memory Integrity in Windows 11 by default, Windows Latest reports . That might harm your gaming frames per second, but the security boost is almost certainly worth the trade-off.

Memory Integrity is a core isolation feature that uses a virtualized environment to verify kernel-mode drivers before they execute, ensuring they're safe. It prevents malware from exploiting an older, vulnerable driver to reach the system kernel, where it can do whatever it wants.

In the early days of Windows 11, turning this off or never enabling it was one method to boost gaming FPS, as software calls on older hardware for this feature could cause performance dips. But from Intel's 7th generation and AMD's Ryzen 2000 generation onwards, hardware-level acceleration means there's almost no performance difference with this feature enabled.

That's especially relevant for this new patch, because it's going to turn Memory Integrity on for a range of platforms, but only those that meet the minimum system requirements . And those are all modern enough to have the hardware acceleration to avoid FPS drops. Memory Integrity requirements include:

• 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

• At least 64GB of SSD storage space

• A BIOS with virtualization enabled.

That pretty much describes any PC purchased in the past five or six years, and even some that are older than that. So if you aren't already running Windows 11 with memory integrity enabled, you can certainly do so, and the patch update will likely enable it if it isn't already.

The only instance in which this won't happen is if you have already explicitly disabled Memory Integrity via the registry or a Windows Group Policy change. If you use older drivers for legacy devices, you may still want to do that since there's a chance Memory Integrity can break older drivers that need to interact with memory in insecure ways. Just be aware of the security trade-off you're making before doing so.

How to Check if Memory Integrity Is Enabled

There's a good chance you already have memory integrity enabled, in which case you won't notice this rollout. To confirm your status, navigate to Windows Security> Device Security> Core Isolation details. There, you'll see a heading titled "Memory integrity." If it's set to On, it's enabled. If it's off, you can either turn it on manually now or wait for the patch. If you really don't want it enabled, you can always return here and disable it after the update.

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