Microsoft recently introduced a native NVMe driver in Windows Server 2025 aimed at improving storage performance, and users have already found ways to enable it on standard Windows 11 systems. According to benchmarks done several users, the new driver shows measurable performance gains.
Getting Native NVMe Driver To Work In Windows 11
Now, let’s explain what’s the deal with the new driver first. Before this, all SSDs and other common storage mediums used on Windows systems operates on a legacy SCSI-based driver. SCSI is a 44-year-old interface designed for things that predates SSDs, including HDDs and even floppy disks, but it’s not really designed to deal with solid-stage storage, which uses NVMe protocol instead.
Image: Microsoft
So, Windows ended up using a “translation layer” that converts SCSI commands to NVMe, and vice versa; naturally, this introduces some overhead that hurts performance. By removing this bottleneck with a new native NVMe driver, high-speed SSDs like PCIe 5.0-capable models or HBAs will see performance boosts, with random performance being the biggest beneficiary of this upgrade, according to Microsoft.
Enabling NVME native drivers in Win 11 (tried on 25H2) Works pretty good. Just open regedit. Go to : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetPoliciesMicrosoftFeatureManagementOverrides Add DWORD 32 Bits: “735209102”=dword:00000001 “1853569164”=dword:00000001… pic.twitter.com/UhE9q5Sw5h
— Mouse&Keyboard (@PurePlayerPC) December 22, 2025
This does translate to improvements in the real-world, as seen by community tests. The first one – courtesy of X (Twitter) user Mouse&Keyboard – involves Windows 11 25H2 with SK Hynix Platinum P41 2TB SSD as the test subject, using the AS SSD benchmark. Once the NVMe driver is enabled via registry, the scores improved by about 13%, and in particular, random write performance metrics like 4K and 4K-64Thrd workloads saw 16% and 22% uplifts, respectively.
Native NVME Support for Windows 11 25H2 byu/Cheetah2kkk inMSIClaw
Similar results were reported by Reddit user Cheetah2kkk, who tested the driver on an MSI Claw 8 AI+ gaming handheld with a Crucial T705 4TB SSD. Sequential write performance saw minor improvement, but random performance once again showed more significant gains, with random read speeds improved by 12%, while random write speeds increased by a massive 85%.
There is a caveat, for now. Currently, third-party SSD utilities like Samsung Magician won’t work with the new NVMe driver, which explains why this new driver is only formally available in Windows Server 2025, where servers will make uses of all available performance potential of the hardware they’re equipped with. Practically speaking, you won’t see too big of a performance difference in daily use, so it’s not too imperative for home users to get this driver switchover until the said software are ready for it.
Source: Tom’s Hardware
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