Users of Windows 11 beta have had access to this for a while now, but with its latest OS update, Microsoft has brought its Low Latency Profile (LLP) to general users across the globe. By giving your CPU a brief kick up the pants when you fire things up, certain apps and tools will now launch quicker than before, giving older PCs that ‘fresh installed Windows’ feeling.
The update in question, KB5094126, is a cumulative one, so your computer may have already received the LLP. But, if it’s been a while since you’ve done any changes, all you need to do is head to Settings > Windows Update and click on the ‘Check for updates’ button.
Once the update has installed and your PC has rebooted, the new feature should be up and running in the background (unless your location hasn’t been selected to receive KB5094126 just yet). There’s nothing that you need to do, as Windows will handle everything for you. According to Microsoft, the LPP feature “accelerates app launch and core shell experiences such as Start menu, Search, and Action Center.”
It does this by briefly forcing the CPU to run at its highest possible clock speed for a few seconds when any interaction trigger is detected. To avoid any problems with heat or battery usage on laptops, the processor is rapidly returned to a lower-power state. Unless you actually track the CPU’s clock speeds all the time, you won’t even notice the change.
Well, that’s not true, as you should notice that things like the Start Menu, search function, and general apps should fire up a touch snappier. How much so will depend entirely on your PC’s specs, though. For example, if you have a high-end gaming PC, you probably won’t notice any difference whatsoever, other than a small bump in the CPU clock speed.
So to check out the Low Latency Profile, I used a budget gaming laptop: an Acer Nitro V with an AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS and 16 GB of DDR5-4800 CL40. While not old, this kind of hardware setup is pretty much what LLP is intended for. Unfortunately, it turns out it had already installed the system a while back, so all I can show you is the aforementioned clock speed changes.
As you can see, the processor briefly jumps by around 100 to 200 MHz when the Start Menu is activated, and again when the Windows key is pressed to close it (though the clock speed increase isn’t as large). There’s no noticeable change in the CPU utilization, of course, because the workload involved here is trivial.
On my Core Ultra 270K Plus main PC, the processor’s speed jumps by 500 MHz, so you’ll see very different results, depending on your computer’s setup. The end result will be the same, though: a snappier-feeling Windows.
However, don’t think that the LLP will make games load any faster. Something like Solitaire might, but the latest Call of Duty will still take just as long as it did before the update. That’s because games on PCs are mostly constrained by the very sequential nature of how Windows handles data, unless DirectStorage is involved to bring in a touch of parallelization.
Still, it’s nice to have Windows acting like a genuinely modern operating system and making better use of the hardware you’ve got. Low Latency Profile won’t turn your gaming PC into a hot-snottin’ monster, but it will put a bit more spring into its step.
