This Neat Windows Registry Trick Boosts Nvme SSD Performance Up To...

Random IOPS could increase by up to 80% for servers, says Microsoft.

Users have discovered a registry tweak that can improve NVMe SSD performance on Windows 11, namely those all-important random 4k speeds.

Windows treats most drives as SCSI (Small Computer System Interface), which has been used for decades now and largely intended for hard drives. As such, NVMe drives that offer higher parallel performance than a hard drive are somewhat limited by the SCSI conversion: taking NVMe commands from an NVMe SSD and changing them to SCSI for the benefit of the OS, which introduces processing overhead and latency.

You can see this for yourself by going into your PC's device manager -> Standard NVM Express Controller -> properties -> details -> class. It will be described as 'SCSIAdapter'.

But Microsoft just announced that native NVMe support is now available in Windows Server 2025; essentially circumventing the entire conversion process and speeding things along.

"Switch onto Native NVMe as soon as possible or you are leaving performance gains on the table!" Microsoft says in the announcement blog post.

"With Native NVMe in Windows Server 2025, the storage stack is purpose-built for modern hardware—eliminating translation layers and legacy constraints."

Native NVMe support is an opt-in model, so enterprise users need to enable it via the registry. What some users have found out, however, is that it's possible to apply the same tweaks to Windows 11 and see similar improvements to those touted by Microsoft for enterprise users.

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This is made possible through registry tweaks, which can only be carried out at your own risk. You can brick your PC, seriously.

Source: PC Gamer