There's been some talk about Microsoft implementing a "gaming mode" for Windows which should help improve the performance of games. Or at least, minimize the impact of the OS on gaming performance. What this means is up in the air. However I decided to take a stab at something that could be like it and create a lean build of Windows 10. That is, a lot of its components were either disabled, deleted, or otherwise no longer a factor.

 

The Setup

I'm using my computer for this test, which has the following specs:

 

• Core i7-6700

• 16GB of RAM running at DDR4-2133

• EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC ACX 3.0

• 256GB Samsung 950 Pro and 1TB Samsung 850 EVO

 

I created a 128GB partition on my 850 EVO for this, as I wasn't going to mess with my current build. Then I installed Windows 10 Pro with all of the settings on by default using the Windows 10 build as of somewhere in December 2016. Then I only installed the following:

 

• Intel's chipset drivers

• NVIDIA's drivers, and only the drivers.

• The drivers for the Realtek ALC1150 chip

• 3DMark

• Unigine Heaven 4.0

• Steam

 

The following tests will be used:

 

• 3DMark

  • Sky Diver (Default settings)

  • Fire Strike Extreme (Default settings)

  • TimeSpy (Default settings)

• Unigine Heaven

  • Extreme preset, with the resolution bumped up to 2560x1440

• Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward Benchmark

  • Default settings on the "High Desktop" quality

• GTA V

  • 2560x1440 resolution

  • No MSAA

  • All settings on their highest, except reflection MSAA which was not set

  • All the advanced graphics setting were set to their highest.

  • Only Pass 4 (the final one) will be used for brevity.

• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

  • 2560x1440 resolution

  • No MSAA

  • DX11

  • Very high preset

• F1 2016

  • 2560x1440 resolution

  • Ultra high preset

All tests were run three times and their results averaged.

 

The Vanilla Build Results

While I forgot to get a screen cap of RAM usage and processes going on, here's what it's like on my current build:

Memory Usage:

 

Processes:

 

And here are the results:

 

 

3D Mark
	Score	Graphics	Physics	Combined
Sky Diver Run 1	35045	70351	11034	23368
Sky Diver Run 2	35046	71077	11003	22992
Sky Diver Run 3	34835	70469	10904	23218
Average	34975.33333	70632.33333	10980.33333	23192.66667
Fire Strike EX Run 1	9588	10643	11682	4765
Fire Strike EX Run 2	9567	10619	11632	4762
Fire Strike EX Run 3	9553	10595	11662	4756
Average	9569.333333	10619	11658.66667	4761
Time Spy Run 1	6702	7229	4627
Time Spy Run 2	6699	7275	4626
Time Spy Run 3	6719	7286	4664
Average	6706.666667	7263.333333	4639
Heaven
	Average FPS	Score	Min FPS	Max FPS
Run 1	64.7	1629	29.8	143.8
Run 2	65.4	1648	8.5	144.9
Run 3	64.8	1633	28.8	143.7
Average	64.96666667	1636.666667	22.36666667	144.1333333
FFXIV Heavensward
	Score	Average FPS	Total Load Time
Run 1	14591	112.85	18.64
Run 2	14506	112.336	18.773
Run 3	14549	112.808	18.927
Average	14548.66667	112.6646667	18.78
GTAV
	Pass 4 Min	Pass 4 Max	Pass 4 Avg
Run 1	41.248425	153.773926	82.296112
Run 2	36.866974	156.470566	81.178818
Run 3	40.984291	145.447479	75.742538
Average	39.69989667	151.8973237	79.739156
Deus Ex Mankind Divided
	Avg	Min	Max
Run 1	62.4	50.5	77.3
Run 2	62.1	50.5	76.6
Run 3	62.2	50.5	76.9
Average	62.23333333	50.5	76.93333333
F1 2016
	Avg	Min	Max
Run 1	92.3871	73.214142	111.866035
Run 2	95.232292	79.891083	118.127655
Run 3	94.716011	79.444923	116.410423
Average	94.111801	77.516716	115.4680377

 

As a curiosity, I ran F1 2016 again, this time with its priority set to "Realtime". Though it did have better performance, it was only up by 4-5 FPS at most. The other games saw no change so I didn't bother with them.

 

Making Windows 10 Lean

One of the first things I did was go to Control Panel\Programs\Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off. Then went and removed the following:

• IE11
• Media features
• Microsoft Print to PDF
• Print and Document Services
• Remote Differential Compression API support
• SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support
• Windows PowerShell 2.0
• Work Folders Client
• XPS Services
• XPS Viewer

 

After a reboot, I did the following:

• A pplied a registry hack that while it does nothing for performance, it reduces a lot of wait times for things so it gives the impression performance did improve.
• In Control Panel\System and Security\System > Advanced System Settings and in the Performance section, set it to "Adjust for best performance."
  • I did not touch the page file, as disabling it may make things worse.
• In Control Panel\System and Security\Security and Maintenance and disabled SmartScreen.
• Disabled hibernate
• In Settings app, did a blanket disable on everything that I didn't need.

 

Now came the question of all those Universal Windows Apps (UWAs), especially the system ones that run in the background all the time. I went to find where they lived, and well, they're spread out quite a bit. The first set is in C:\Program Files\WindowsApps under a super hidden folder that you need to take ownership of before you can even access it. I also had to use WinDirStat to even see the folder. It won't show up in Explorer, even if you disable "Hide system protected files and folders."

 

The first thing I tried is selecting everything and deleting it, but half the folders wouldn't be deleted for some reason. Rather than try to fight it, I found out I could rename them. So I did:

 

Except this isn't where all of them live. Some live in C:\Windows\SystemApps. This is a doozy, because if they live here, they must be vital right? Well, good thing they really aren't. Most of them anyway. However, I didn't delete these, I just renamed them.

 

A few things to note here though:

• ContactSupport_cw5n1h2txyewy is for the Contact Support app
• Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe is for Edge
• Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy is for Cortana
  • If you disable Cortana, you also lose Start Menu Search
• Microsoft.LockApp_cw5n1h2txyewy is for the lock screen
• ShellExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy is for the Start Menu.
• Microsoft.XboxGameCallableUI_cw5n1h2txyewy is for the Xbox Live app

 

In here I disabled everything but the LockApp and Start Menu, because you can disable the lock screen in other ways and not having a Start Menu is odd. The task bar will still work though. Make sure that before you do this, unpin any apps from this list. Otherwise, they'll be in limbo where they're pinned.

 

And lastly, yes there's more, there's one more place to disable UWAs, otherwise they'll automatically run. These live in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Packages:

 

Now that the UWAs are out of the way, I went and looked for services and such to disable. To find which ones were safe to do so, I went to Black Viper's website. Anything that was safe to disable was disabled.

 

And just for kicks, I set the power profile to "High performance."

 

So What Kind of Performance Does This Get Me Now?

After letting Windows settle for a bit, I got it down to this:

 

 

Shaved off nearly 600MB of RAM usage and got the process list down quite a bit. Note that the "Non-paged Pool" is half (~75MB) of what my current build is (~150MB). This is the core operating system components. So I must've done something good there! Right?

 

Enough of that, what kind of performance are we getting now?

 

 

3D Mark
	Score	Graphics	Physics	Combined
Sky Diver Run 1	35089	70950	10993	23352
Sky Diver Run 2	35177	71106	11099	22911
Sky Diver Run 3	34987	70397	10983	23418
Average	35084.33333	70817.66667	11025	23227
Fire Strike EX Run 1	9566	10603	11697	4768
Fire Strike EX Run 2	9577	10634	11696	4750
Fire Strike EX Run 3	9567	10609	11645	4775
Average	9570	10615.33333	11679.33333	4764.333333
Time Spy Run 1	6705	7287	4618
Time Spy Run 2	6689	7267	4614
Time Spy Run 3	6715	7282	4661
Average	6703	7278.666667	4631
Heaven
	Average FPS	Score	Min FPS	Max FPS
Run 1	66.2	1667	27.1	144.9
Run 2	66	1663	25	145.9
Run 3	66	1663	29.7	146.1
Average	66.06666667	1664.333333	27.26666667	145.6333333
FFXIV Heavensward
	Score	Average FPS	Total Load Time
Run 1	14497	112.431	18.796
Run 2	14550	112.619	18.573
Run 3	14610	113.03	18.791
Average	14552.33333	112.6933333	18.72
GTAV
	Pass 4 Min	Pass 4 Max	Pass 4 Avg
Run 1	20.244783	154.143906	81.087631
Run 2	39.342747	154.573441	82.079002
Run 3	20.863869	115.898499	81.30619
Average	26.817133	141.5386153	81.490941
Deus Ex Mankind Divided
	Avg	Min	Max
Run 1	62.4	50.2	76.9
Run 2	62.1	50.5	76.9
Run 3	62.1	49.8	76.6
Average	62.2	50.16666667	76.8
F1 2016
	Avg	Min	Max
Run 1	97.294609	80.587448	119.962158
Run 2	97.303444	81.302322	118.235237
Run 3	95.821739	80.525665	118.570518
Average	96.80659733	80.805145	118.9226377

 

Er... Almost no change at all. With all of these system resources freed up, wouldn't that mean performance should also go up? Well, not really. Most of what I disabled and turned off either wasn't actively being used to begin with, or they're mostly sitting around, waiting for something to happen, with maybe some background activity going on if it detects you're not doing something. i.e., the priority is lower than normal. And this makes sense. If the OS had components that were actively using the CPU time, then something is wrong. One of the OS's main job is to provide services to user applications when they need it. Those services should be running either on demand or at a very low rate.

 

But I do want to make a note on the user experience. I think it actually improved. Although I think that had something to do with the registry hack pack I applied and removing animations more so things just taking up too much resources. Boot times were the same, if not feeling a little worse (perhaps due to Windows trying to find applications whose folders I renamed). However, shutting down is practically instant.

 

Conclusions

If you have a high-end machine, you can expect almost no performance improvement for making a "lean" Windows build. For lower end machines, it certainly might help, but I think what'll really help is just disabling a lot of the GUI fluff. Most of the applications Windows runs run in the background and are idling most of the time.

 

I didn't bother reading, I just want the results of Vanilla Vs "Lean" Windows

	Vanilla Windows					Lean Windows					% Diff (Vanilla vs. Lean)
3D Mark
	Score	Graphics	Physics	Combined		Score	Graphics	Physics	Combined		Score	Graphics	Physics	Combined
Sky Diver Run 1	35045	70351	11034	23368		35089	70950	10993	23352		99.87460458	99.15574348	100.3729646	100.0685166
Sky Diver Run 2	35046	71077	11003	22992		35177	71106	11099	22911		99.62759758	99.95921582	99.13505721	100.353542
Sky Diver Run 3	34835	70469	10904	23218		34987	70397	10983	23418		99.56555292	100.1022771	99.28070655	99.1459561
Average	34975.33333	70632.33333	10980.33333	23192.66667		35084.33333	70817.66667	11025	23227		99.68925169	99.7390788	99.59624279	99.85600489
Fire Strike EX Run 1	9588	10643	11682	4765		9566	10603	11697	4768		100.2299812	100.3772517	99.87176199	99.93708054
Fire Strike EX Run 2	9567	10619	11632	4762		9577	10634	11696	4750		99.89558317	99.85894301	99.45280438	100.2526316
Fire Strike EX Run 3	9553	10595	11662	4756		9567	10609	11645	4775		99.85366364	99.86803657	100.1459854	99.60209424
Average	9569.333333	10619	11658.66667	4761		9570	10615.33333	11679.33333	4764.333333		99.993076	100.0347438	99.82351726	99.93060212
Time Spy Run 1	6702	7229	4627			6705	7287	4618			99.95525727	99.20406203	100.1948896
Time Spy Run 2	6699	7275	4626			6689	7267	4614			100.1494992	100.1100867	100.260078
Time Spy Run 3	6719	7286	4664			6715	7282	4661			100.0595681	100.05493	100.0643639
Average	6706.666667	7263.333333	4639			6703	7278.666667	4631			100.0547749	99.7896929	100.1731105
Heaven
	Average FPS	Score	Min FPS	Max FPS		Average FPS	Score	Min FPS	Max FPS		Average FPS	Score	Min FPS	Max FPS
Run 1	64.7	1629	29.8	143.8		66.2	1667	27.1	144.9		97.73413897	97.72045591	109.9630996	99.24085576
Run 2	65.4	1648	8.5	144.9		66	1663	25	145.9		99.09090909	99.09801563	34	99.31459904
Run 3	64.8	1633	28.8	143.7		66	1663	29.7	146.1		98.18181818	98.19603127	96.96969697	98.35728953
Average	64.96666667	1636.666667	22.36666667	144.1333333		66.06666667	1664.333333	27.26666667	145.6333333		98.33562208	98.3381676	80.3109322	98.97091478
FFXIV Heavensward
	Score	Average FPS	Total Load Time			Score	Average FPS	Total Load Time			Score	Average FPS	Total Load Time
Run 1	14591	112.85	18.64			14497	112.431	18.796			100.64841	100.372673	99.17003618
Run 2	14506	112.336	18.773			14550	112.619	18.573			99.6975945	99.74871025	101.076832
Run 3	14549	112.808	18.927			14610	113.03	18.791			99.58247775	99.80359197	100.7237507
Average	14548.66667	112.6646667	18.78			14552.33333	112.6933333	18.72			99.97616076	99.97499175	100.3235396
GTAV
	Pass 4 Min	Pass 4 Max	Pass 4 Avg			Pass 4 Min	Pass 4 Max	Pass 4 Avg			Pass 4 Min	Pass 4 Max	Pass 4 Avg
Run 1	41.248425	153.773926	82.296112			20.244783	154.143906	81.087631			203.7484176	99.75997754	101.4903395
Run 2	36.866974	156.470566	81.178818			39.342747	154.573441	82.079002			93.70716793	101.2273292	98.90327127
Run 3	40.984291	145.447479	75.742538			20.863869	115.898499	81.30619			196.4366772	125.4955675	93.1571606
Average	39.69989667	151.8973237	79.739156			26.817133	141.5386153	81.490941			164.6307542	108.8276247	97.85025713
Deus Ex Mankind Divided
	Avg	Min	Max			Avg	Min	Max			Avg	Min	Max
Run 1	62.4	50.5	77.3			62.4	50.2	76.9			100	100.5976096	100.520156
Run 2	62.1	50.5	76.6			62.1	50.5	76.9			100	100	99.60988296
Run 3	62.2	50.5	76.9			62.1	49.8	76.6			100.1610306	101.4056225	100.3916449
Average	62.23333333	50.5	76.93333333			62.2	50.16666667	76.8			100.0536769	100.667744	100.1738946
F1 2016
	Avg	Min	Max			Avg	Min	Max			Avg	Min	Max
Run 1	92.3871	73.214142	111.866035			97.294609	80.587448	119.962158			94.95603194	90.85055281	93.25110257
Run 2	95.232292	79.891083	118.127655			97.303444	81.302322	118.235237			97.87145047	98.26420825	99.9090102
Run 3	94.716011	79.444923	116.410423			95.821739	80.525665	118.570518			98.84605726	98.65789124	98.17821914
Average	94.111801	77.516716	115.4680377			96.80659733	80.805145	118.9226377			97.22451322	95.92421743	97.11277731