AtlasOS – high-performance Windows 10 lite custom open source system optimized for gaming
Although Microsoft has been releasing new versions of Windows 11 and updates, Windows 10 is still more stable and compatible for the “gamer” community at this point in time.
It is based on the original Windows 10 system and is designed to improve gaming performance! Better than Microsoft’s version of Windows 10 for enterprise applications! It can rejuvenate old machines and bring out the most powerful performance of high-end graphics cards and other hardware! AtlasOS is an open source, free project that aims to provide gamers with the most suitable operating system for running games. It is based on Windows 10, “streamlined” by removing non-essential system components and stripping out many Windows background processes, thus saving a lot of system resources for gaming. It’s all about the game! Especially suitable for dedicated gaming PCs or game consoles like Steam Deck.
According to the official description of Atlas OS, Atlas has reduced the default number of background processes from 185 to 35, the memory usage from 1.5GB to 600MB, the process latency from 3.09 to 2.55, and the size of the installation package from 4.5GB to 1.49GB, freeing up more hard drive space for games, making it short and compact in all aspects.
In terms of streamlining, AtlasOS removes components that are useless for gaming or have an impact on performance, such as Windows Defender, Bitlocker, TPM Trusted Platform Module, storage space management, eMMC drivers, RAID configuration features, biometric features, voice commands, and restore point and system reset features, among others.
In addition, AtlasOS has made numerous optimizations, such as customizing power plans, disabling power saving settings, streamlining drivers, disabling non-essential system services, disabling resource-intensive security measures, boot configuration optimization, optimizing process scheduling, and more.
So, does AtlasOS work for gaming performance improvement? According to some gamers’ real-world tests, several games of different genres, running on the same PC hardware + the same game settings, do get higher and faster FPS frame rates on AtlasOS than on stock Windows 10! Some of the games also have a significant performance improvement.
You can see that AtlasOS is really useful for game optimization. Of course, the effect of optimization varies from game to game, sometimes it can increase by 10 or 20 fps, which is quite exaggerated! In some cases, the difference is only 2 or 3 fps. Overall, the performance improvement is visible to the naked eye.
If you don’t need any loaded apps, you can use the recommended UninstallService to get rid of the apps you don’t need.
By default AtlasOS has only an English interface (American English) for streamlining purposes and does not include any other language packs, and it has also streamlined the system update components so that language packs cannot be downloaded directly via web updates.
Although AtlasOS is an open source and free project, it is not a pirated version. Essentially, it is a Windows 10, so to use it legally, you need a genuine Windows 10 activation code. In other words, you can activate Atlas the same way you activated Windows 10 before.
AtlasOS is all about gaming performance! Therefore it is only suitable for gamers and computers installed for dedicated gaming purposes. And if you want to be streamlined, stable and intended for office or productivity use, Microsoft’s official Windows 10 is more suitable.
In short, life is a toss-up. If you want to squeeze every ounce of performance out of your hardware, then AtlasOS is worth trying out. Finally, there are trade-offs in everything, and deep simplification can bring some unpredictable problems. If you are less hands-on, don’t like to toss and use your computer for a wide range of purposes, then stock Windows 10 should still be your first choice.