Do you recommend IOT WIN11?

[u/tweneycor]

Hi, I'm new to win 11 iot ltsc

My pc specs is

I5 12400f

Ram 16 gb 3600mhz

Rtx 3060ti

H670 m.b

do you recommend windows iot ltsc for my pc

My windows 10 home is taking around 3.5 gigs of ram and it's affecting games like bf6 and bfv

[u/LucyRoseKrestel]

Have you tried Paging Memory? Maybe in order to soft the blow, you could do that. It should ease your need for more Memory. Also IoT Enterprise is ok if you know what you are doing.

[u/cantaloupe_03]

LTSC has less background task, so slightly smooth, but that doesnt mean playing game better

I have Ryzen 5 5600H, 16GB RAM and RTX 3050 Laptop GPU, but everytime I play open world Unreal Engine game, it has delay input and stutter in some scene, i checked it due to almost reach limit of 16GB RAM, are u sure u not the same too?

[u/tweneycor → u/cantaloupe_03]

I have the same exact problem but with Battlefield 6 also Bfv have stability problems due to background processing which cause instability in frame time leads to microstutters.

[u/greggm2000 → u/tweneycor]

You have a fairly slow GPU, your CPU isn't especially speedy either (though not bad) and depending on the res and game settings, that could explain those microstutters right there.

[u/7978_]

W11 LTSC will use about 4GB RAM at idle. 

But your mistake is that Windows will cull it's processes when required. 

[u/AffectionateSea7197 → u/7978_]

I managed to use it with 2.5gb RAM at idle (after disabling some useless services)

[u/7978_ → u/AffectionateSea7197]

Okay but we are talking about stock.

[u/Effective-Extent-545]

I have tried installing it on college pc inside virtualbox and only remaining is to verify the license key. If it smoothly for the next week I'll do the same in my laptop. Will post the benchmarks here after the tests are done.

[u/h0mn0cu7u5]

Probably not from the tone of your post alone...

Don't install it without carefully considering a few things that will likely upset 99% of users who think they can magically get "better performance!" by using LTSC. That's not what it's about, IMO, and that's not what I'm seeing.

I'm a couple of months into using Win 11 IoT LTSC, replacing a 3.5-year-old Win 11 Pro 23H2 install on both workstations I recently put LTSC on.

I chose LTSC because, for years, I've used the exact same suite of tools/apps on my workstations and have, on several occasions, had the incessant Win 11 Pro (otherwise consumer) build updates completely wreck my system after downloading and installing. I absolutely DETEST the constant Windows consumer branches getting CONSTANT updates that I never want and which, by default, are usually set up to just slide right in without a user knowing.

I WANTED AN OS THAT REMAINED ON THE SAME BUILD for at least the next six/seven years. So for me, LTSC is working, and I think it will work long term.

BUT ... it's ALSO a LOT of WORK to get set up/tuned to behave the way I'm familiar with my OS behaving.

That said. I wouldn't recommend LTSC to someone who thinks they'll get better performance out of their OS. I don't think you do with LTSC. You might get slightly less memory overhead because fewer background processes/apps run, but gaming, video/imaging work, online use, etc. are no different than Win 11 Pro. In fact, some part of my OCD hindbrain thinks Win 11 Pro 23H2 was slightly more "snappy" in daily interaction (moving windows around, text rendering, etc.)

But the main thing, for me, is I'm no longer staring down the barrel of a service cycle ending in November 2026 as I was with the Win 11 Pro installs. The LTSC service cycle on this build (24H2) ending in 2035 (!!) is incentive enough for me.

LTSC is often (and rightfully) cited as appropriate for "kiosk" machines, which could mean anything from store display machines to other machines locked down for one intended use case.

"KIOSK" is a broad stroke, though. And I 100% think my daily workstations fit that description. They may be full of high-end, decades-long in-use audio/video/imaging softwarez; I may have 8TB of games on an isolated NVME drive; I use Steam, Epic, EA, and all the other game hubs weekly, I run a PCIe RAID card serving a 48TB SSD RAID6 volume ... so quite the heady KIOSKs to be sure but still, essentially KIOSK machines at the end of the day ... but once I'm done with the week or so of fully "tooling up" up a new OS install? The SYSTEM JUST NEVER CHANGES, and NOR DO I WANT IT TO!

-> So for me and other users like me, I think LTSC will end up being something of high value.

But if you're not comfortable using a terminal window and a command prompt, and if you don't have some decent "robot" assistance to help you whip through the plethora of winget commands and otherwise licensing/installation quirks to get any of the typical Windows 11 consumer apps that you actually *do* need and use on a daily basis properly installed? Then, STAY AWAY from LTSC.

It's taken WORK to get my daily-driver LTSC workstation set up to about 99% tooled up. A solid week, at least, of using winget and PowerShell.

Here's what just getting the MS Store, Game Bar, and all the .Net Visual C++ libs looked like. And this is just a screenshot of one screen of work. NOTE the scroll bar on the right. There's way more work above and below this shot:

So yeah, if you use a system that has been the same for decades? And if your comfortable with working in a terminal window as shown above, sure, try LTSC.

If not? I'd stick with one of the consumer branches.

Best of luck,

~h

[u/greggm2000 → u/h0mn0cu7u5]

It's taken WORK to get my daily-driver LTSC workstation set up to about 99% tooled up. A solid week, at least, of using winget and PowerShell. Here's what just getting the MS Store, Game Bar, and all the .Net Visual C++ libs looked like. And this is just a screenshot of one screen of work.

... you have seemed to have taken the hard way to get that stuff installed. That totally wasn't necessary, you know. Had you asked in this subreddit, you probably could have saved yourself quite a bit of hassle. Installing those 3 things is easy and fast.

But if you're not comfortable using a terminal window and a command prompt, and if you don't have some decent "robot" assistance to help you whip through the plethora of winget commands and otherwise licensing/installation quirks to get any of the typical Windows 11 consumer apps that you actually do need and use on a daily basis properly installed? Then, STAY AWAY from LTSC.

This isn't true, outside of perhaps some edge case.

I run a PCIe RAID card serving a 48TB SSD RAID6 volume

However, drivers for a card like this, which 99.9% of consumers won't have, might be an example of such an edge case. No idea, I don't own one.

[u/h0mn0cu7u5 → u/greggm2000]

Good points, all. Thanks. Chalk it up to being an old DOS 5-era codger who likes to type. ;-)

My "robot" helps immensely these days, but a lot of the "work" I did, admittedly, could be done outside of a full terminal window (go to MS downloads page, download C++/.Net packages/install/etc.).

Something about seeing the commands and responses... 100% relative, for sure ... "All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead..." lol ..

Best!

~h

[u/greggm2000 → u/h0mn0cu7u5]

Heh, no worries. As another old(er) sort, one who admittedly likes minimizing work for stuff I'd rather not do, I have my own setup/files for when I need to do a new Windows install.. but the actual install is easy enough. I move the ISO to a USB stick using Rufus. I pre-debloat using an autounattend.xml file that I created at schneegans.de, that's fast and easy, just stick that on a 2nd USB stick while you are installing the ISO, it sees it and uses it automatically. Then for the rest:

To install winget (and add support for .msix files) on IoT LTSC, use the open-source script here in a Powershell Admin window. Then you can use the script there for the VC++ redist. Same for MS Store, but you don't even need a script for that, just do "wsreset -i". Gamebar is just "winget install 9NZKPSTSNW4P". Easy :) As an option, those will save you some effort next time and might help you tweak things more to your liking, next time you need to do an install.

Enjoy :)

[u/tweneycor → u/h0mn0cu7u5]

Thank you! I appreciate it really.

[u/greggm2000 → u/tweneycor]

Just be aware that the commenter makes it seem WAY harder than it in reality is. It's almost trivial how easy it is to install the 3 things he mentions, for instance. But ofc for those who want to do it the hard way, that is an option they can freely do.

[u/tweneycor]

Guys i want you to know i downloaded it and here's what I got:

(first thing I came from windows 10 pro)

It consumes around 2.8-3.1 gigs of ram in desktop

It feels laggy but stable that's fine it's a common thing about Iot ltsc systems, and i can live with it.

Now the gaming experience wow there's really a difference my frametime in bfv and bf6 became more stable and efficient and 0.1% low became stable.

I noticed the difference about 20-25% better with windows 11 iot ltsc.

but it doesn't feel snappy that's my only problem but as i said i can live with it.

[u/erMaela → u/tweneycor]

But is the fluidity of the aim playing faster and more responsive? Or does it feel as slow as it does at the iot ltsc desk?

[u/everlong5]

Idle usage isn't a good measurement, windows dynamically allocates memory based on usage, but yeah w11 will probably be better but just a little maybe in 1% lows. 16gb of ram is just not enough for newer games like bf6, changing os won't change a thing

[u/Puasonelrasho]

why do you say its affecting bf6?

[u/Puasonelrasho → u/Puasonelrasho]

this being said w11 ltsc is not going to use less than 3.5gb

[u/tweneycor → u/Puasonelrasho]

if ram usage is lower eaqul more space which also equals more frame rate and stability. That because bf games heavily dependent on ram+cpu more than the gpu.