Low fps caused by windows 10

[Klooger]

This is going to be a weird one, and I'm mostly putting this out here to see if anyone has any idea why this is happening.

 

Basically modern warfare 3 singleplayer on windows 10 is capped to at most 230fps, though it will jump between 190 and 230, no matter how good your specs, and no matter the ingame settings, this is the best you can do, I have had several people confirm this. 

Where it gets weird is that there is no such limit in windows 7 (I haven't been able to try any other operating systems yet) back when the game was new, on windows 7 I was able to hit peaks of 400+ fps, and so were many other people; and with newer hardware, and judging by other games from the same series, that should be closer to 700+ these days.

 

I've prettymuch just tried running in compatibility mode and a few other basic things, but I have no idea how I might fix this.

The main reason I want uncapped fps is that there are some engine quirks that can be abused at 500ish fps for speedruns, and that would be pretty neat if possible.

 

[Applefreak]

Not sure why that is but why not use Windows 7 then? 

[rcmaehl]

21 minutes ago, Klooger said:

Where it gets weird is that there is so such limit in windows 7 (I haven't been able to try any other operating systems yet) back when the game was new

Have you tried the latest version on Windows 7?
What about the original release on Windows 10?

 

Sounds like they patched it and you'll need to downgrade MW3.

[Klooger]

3 minutes ago, Applefreak said:

Not sure why that is but why not use Windows 7 then? 

MW3 is just one of many games that I play, and I prefer using windows 10 for a multitude of reasons at the moment, so it wouldn't really be worth it. This is more of a neat if possible to fix kind of thing.

[Klooger]

2 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

Have you tried the latest version on Windows 7?
What about the original release on Windows 10?

 

Sounds like they patched it and you'll need to downgrade MW3.

Yeah sorry I didn't clarify, but as recently as 2 years ago I was able to get unlimited fps on windows 7, and the game absolutely has not had any updates since then.

[manikyath]

presuming this is a directx9 title.. there's some limits in the implementation of directx9 in windows 10, for example the modded skyrim folks complained about the game not being able to use all of their VRAM in windows 10.. i've never looked into it, and i've never followed up on it, i just know that at some point that was a thing.

[Tanaz]

1 minute ago, Klooger said:

Yeah sorry I didn't clarify, but as recently as 2 years ago I was able to get unlimited fps on windows 7, and the game absolutely has not had any updates since then.

Windows 10 has a window compositor also known as DWM. A compositor is responsible for things like window decorations and  built in "v-sync" on your desktop to prevent screen tearing. While every version of Windows since Vista (I believe) has had a compositor in Windows 10 it is deeply intertwined in the OS to the point where it can not be disabled. In Windows 7 that is not the case. Windows 10 is more optimised contrary to popular belief and newer games especially will run better on it than on Windows 7 but the compositor boggs things down when it comes to mouse input lag and high FPS gaming. My bet is that the devs intentionally set that limit in Windows 10 in order to prevent bugginess with DWM.

[Applefreak]

1 minute ago, Klooger said:

Yeah sorry I didn't clarify, but as recently as 2 years ago I was able to get unlimited fps on windows 7, and the game absolutely has not had any updates since then.

Could be windows telemetry stuff, could be the Spectre patches etc. Try with a clean install of windows 10 and get a tool to deactivate telemetry (will brake some stuff like updates though).

I've found that using a third party AV is usually less impacting than windows defender, which is turned on until you install something else. You can try the current windows server iteration. It should be less bloated but I am not sure if some games may have an issue with the OS. While Vista was the best you could get on desktop, I was using the server edition instead, worked for the most part except for some games and their anti-cheat stuff that could not recognize the os as valid.

[Klooger]

6 minutes ago, Tanaz said:

Windows 10 has a window compositor also known as DWM. A compositor is responsible for things like window decorations and  built in "v-sync" on your desktop to prevent screen tearing. While every version of Windows since Vista (I believe) has had a compositor in Windows 10 it is deeply intertwined in the OS to the point where it can not be disabled. In Windows 7 that is not the case. Windows 10 is more optimised contrary to popular belief and newer games especially will run better on it than on Windows 7 but the compositor boggs things down when it comes to mouse input lag and high FPS gaming. My bet is that the devs intentionally set that limit in Windows 10 in order to prevent bugginess with DWM.

This sounds legit, but I would honestly be surprised if they bothered to go back to mw3 specifically when windows 10 released. None of the other games before or after in the series exhibit the same behaviour.

[Klooger]

7 minutes ago, Applefreak said:

Could be windows telemetry stuff, could be the Spectre patches etc. Try with a clean install of windows 10 and get a tool to deactivate telemetry (will brake some stuff like updates though).

I've found that using a third party AV is usually less impacting than windows defender, which is turned on until you install something else. You can try the current windows server iteration. It should be less bloated but I am not sure if some games may have an issue with the OS. While Vista was the best you could get on desktop, I was using the server edition instead, worked for the most part except for some games and their anti-cheat stuff that could not recognize the os as valid.

It isn't anything tanking fps, like I get the exact same results at 720p minimum and 1440p max; and other people with completely different systems get the exact same max fps. It's more like a hard limit on the fps you can get, and this current install is only about 2 weeks old.

[Tanaz]

6 minutes ago, Klooger said:

This sounds legit, but I would honestly be surprised if they bothered to go back to mw3 specifically when windows 10 released. None of the other games before or after in the series exhibit the same behaviour.

Might be something hardcoded beforehand that just doesn't gel well with Windows 10. But again I'm fairly confident that part of it involving DWM. If you've paid attention to recent titles released in the past 2-3 years you'd probably see "Exclusive Fullscreen" as an option. The reason it's not just "fullscreen" anymore is because "Exclusive Fullscreen" was introduced when Windows 10 became so dependent on DWM and game devs basically created a way for games to circumvent the compositor all together by putting them in this "exclusive fullscreen" mode. Whatever the problem with MW3 is I can pretty much guarantee you that it's not something that you'd be able to fix easily (or most likely at all)

 

edit: Also the devs might have seen general bugginess in the game after people started playing it on Windows 10 even though it was 5 years after release and they could've implemented a simple patch that just limits the FPS.

[Klooger]

1 minute ago, Tanaz said:

Might be something hardcoded beforehand that just doesn't gel well with Windows 10. But again I'm fairly confident that part of it involving DWM. If you've paid attention to recent titles released in the past 2-3 years you'd probably see "Exclusive Fullscreen" as an option. The reason it's not just "fullscreen" anymore is because "Exclusive Fullscreen" was introduced when Windows 10 became so dependent on DWM and game devs basically created a way for games to circumvent the compositor all together by putting them in this "exclusive fullscreen" mode. Whatever the problem with MW3 is I can pretty much guarantee you that it's not something that you'd be able to fix easily (or most likely at all)

Yeah I have about the same expectations on being able to get around this problem, but I figured it was worth asking somewhere, and if by some miracle someone did know the exact reasons why, that would be pretty neat.