Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM
Updating his Windows Server book, Jason Eckert casually benchmarked Windows Server 2025 on ARM-based Snapdragon and Intel systems. He found ARM surprisingly and consistently faster for typical server tasks, attributing this to its predictable latency and possibly optimized ARM64 builds. This deep dive highlights ARM's overlooked potential for enterprise server workloads and Microsoft's curious slow pace in fully embracing it.
The Lowdown
Jason Eckert, while working on his Windows Server 2025 textbook, embarked on a seemingly casual experiment: comparing the performance of Windows Server 2025 virtual machines on his high-end Intel Core i9 workstation against a new Snapdragon X Elite ARM system. The results were anything but casual, revealing ARM's surprising prowess for common server workloads.
- The author set up identical Hyper-V virtual machines of Windows Server 2025 on both an Intel Core i9 and a Snapdragon X Elite system, generating the ARM ISO via UUP dump due to lack of official Microsoft release.
- Initial observations revealed the ARM system felt "much, much faster" for common administrative tasks, service startups (like Active Directory), and management console responsiveness.
- While raw architecture isn't the sole factor, the analysis points to ARM's consistent, sustained performance, superior to Intel's dynamic boost/throttle behavior, as key for latency-sensitive, thread-heavy server workloads.
- Performance Monitor data showed Snapdragon maintaining steady CPU utilization, zero processor queue length, and consistent virtual processor wait times, whereas Intel exhibited significant fluctuations.
- Timed tests using
Measure-Commandacross various services (IIS, DNS, AD, file I/O) consistently demonstrated ARM's quicker and more repeatable responsiveness compared to Intel, which often varied significantly. - The article posits that ARM64 builds of Windows Server might also benefit from fewer legacy compatibility layers, leading to cleaner, more optimized binaries.
The findings suggest that for the many small, latency-sensitive operations typical of Windows Server workloads in virtualized environments, ARM64's consistency trumps the peak throughput of x64. While the practicalities of textbook writing mean staying with x64 for now due to Hyper-V limitations, the story implicitly calls for Microsoft to accelerate its official ARM64 server support, echoing the increasing adoption already seen in major cloud providers.