Getting a 2009 operating system onto 2020s hardware took some persuasion. Windows 7 has no native NVMe or USB 3.0 support, so drivers had to be slipstreamed into the installation ISO, and AMD offers no official Windows 7 chipset drivers for AM5. The motherboard also had to support CSM, the legacy Compatibility Support Module boot option, which many modern boards have dropped. Enabling CSM meant Resizable BAR was off the table, and the RX 6950 XT's driver does not support HAGS on either system.

The results so far suggest neither operating system simply wins. In Metro 2033 Redux, a predominantly GPU-bound DirectX 11 title, Windows 11 delivered a higher average frame rate, but Windows 7 handled the CPU-related dips far better, producing significantly stronger 1% lows, a measure of the worst moment-to-moment stutter. The site notes the advantages of each OS vary depending on whether a game is CPU-limited or GPU-limited.

One caveat worth keeping in mind: although both systems used the June 2022 Adrenalin 22.6.1 driver package, the two builds contain different internal driver versions, with the Windows 11 driver based on a more advanced codebase. The DirectX 9 games also run natively on Windows 7 but through the D3D9On12 mapping layer on Windows 11, so Windows 7 starts those tests with an expected advantage.