The problem is that in Windows Anki is usually sluggish, for example it takes like 0.5s to play audio vs the same decks in MacOS / iPhone.
I’ve tried in different Windows machines (laptop, desktop, AMD, NVIDIA…) All high-end, new computers. Same result.
Should I try any specific version or setting? I’ve tried Direct3D and Vulkan and it seems Vulkan to be a tiny bit better… but still the MacOS version is waaaay smoother. It’s frustrating.
The add ons I have are AwesomeTTS, JJLAB and Heatmap. Same add ons in both MacOS and Windows. But even without add ons the Windows version is still sluggish.
I use Anki on macOS with M2 machine and on Windows 11 with mid-level 13th Gen Intel processor. So both relatively modern systems, but both aren’t high-end at all. Anki performs fine with no real discernible difference between both systems. Audio playback is instant.
As the behavior you’re seeing seems to be under-defined at the moment, I think more testing is needed. You already started by testing different render settings. As you also suggested, testing with different Anki versions is a good next step. Maybe there is an older version that is noticeably less sluggish on your Windows machines and you can pin-point the version where something changed. Also I do not know the size of your overall collection. You could try with a separate profile with some minimal content just for testing to see if that makes a difference. Add-ons of course can always influence things, so during testing I would advise not having any installed/active.
You mentioned overall sluggishness, but if you can pin-point it to for example audio playback issues, you could then also try to see if different kinds of audio files (format, bitrate, size/length, etc.) behave differently on your Windows setups vs other systems.
One thing you could try is adding exceptions to anki.exe and mpv.exe to your antivirus program. Another thing you could try is playing music in the background while you study - does that alter the speed that sound files take to play?