"I upgraded to Windows 11 and my FPS doubled" (Can anyone explain how?)

Not exactly by 200%, but a 15 - 20 FPS boost across the board with more tolerable frame pacing is nothing to scoff at. Am I alone on this, or have other early-adopters had similar experiences? I didn't even do a clean install, just upgraded the OS while keeping my file structure the same. Even so, my games are installed on an external HDD, not the main SSD. Even load times got better.

Maybe it's because my CPU is a Ryzen 5 5600X with 32gb of DDR4-3600, but my ancient GTX 1080ti can enjoyably play things in native 4K at higher settings that I just couldn't tolerate before, like RDR2. Flight Simulator 2020 is still a bit too much for this GPU at 4K though.

I don't know what the cause of my performance boost is. Hardware bottlenecks aren't like they were when I went to college for IT. For someone who, up 'til now, was used to the gen 3 - 7 intel Core lineup, this is like wizardry to me.

Can anyone more up-to-date with modern technology explain what's going on under the hood?

Edit: Previous OS was Windows 10 Pro, in case anyone's confused.

Performance should be about the same. You probably had an issue with your drivers or something when it was Win 10.

You must of had a junked up Windows install,

Because a fresh install of Win 10 and 11 yield virtually the same performance. Win 11 is basically 10 with a new slap of paint and an updated cpu scheduler which does not benefit current Ryzen cpus.

@04dcarraher: I wouldn't doubt that. I've always been heavy handed with my Windows usage. I'm definitely going to have to be more careful not bork down this installation just to keep performance how I like it. Could be related to drivers too, but junking the OS down seems equally likely in my use case.

It's not like I don't know the best practices for managing your install, but I'm much less strict with my own computers than I'd be with someone else's. It's a slacker's hypocrisy thing, I'm not gonna lie.