Windowed vs. Full screen vs. Borderless

[Leanbean]

When I comes to gaming setup, I want the best performance I can get.

But does these options really matter?

 

i currently run borderless mode on all the games I possibly can due to the fact that I have multiple monitors.

 

What are your settings and why? Do you notice any game changing performance in one setting over another?

[Semper]

It's possible to get a boost in performance with windowed or borderless, however, for me, it's negligible, if at all.

I run borderless whenever I can, fullscreen when i'm using shadowplay, or if the only other option is windowed. seamlessly transitioning from in-game to my desktop, browser, steam, or whatever else it may be is always nice, and significantly lessens the chance of a performance hit, or a crash form an alt-tab.

[MasterRaceFanBoy]

Just test it for yourself. See if you get any fps improves. some games does work better in windowed than full screen.

[WoodenMarker]

I haven't noticed a difference in performance. I use borderless whenever possible since I can play at 1080p and still have room at the top and bottom of my 1200p displays to have a task bar, tabs, or windows that I can easily click. 

[Destroyer]

I always use borderless or fullscreen (windowed) just for the connivence of alt tabbing.

[Joaquin94]

It used to happen to me, when i had my radeon 6850, that, when playing far cry 3, when i played in fullscreen, the fps would "cap" at 30 whereas, in borderless, it could go up to 45. Other than that, i've never noticed any significant difference between both options

[T6kke]

I've found that performance comes down to the game engine and how good is the PC version.

 

Full screen is for immersion(over windowed mode) and some games do perform better(but very little). Windowed allows you to see other apps on the background if you run it smaller then your desktop resolution. And alt+tab works a lot better in windowed mode. Borderless windowed is kind of immersion of full screen & alt+tab convenience.

 

But there is no golden rule for performance for all games. Some run a little bit better in full screen, some run the same in all modes. Also as a rule windowed and borderless are basically the same(as long as the game resolution is the same). Borderless is just windowed mode at desktop resolution and the windows border has been removed from the program.

[Fir35t0rm]

I prefer to run games at borderless wherever possible since I tend to alt-tab in and out of games quite frequently.

Not only I find its a good convenience (also not having to wait for the monitor to refresh in and out) but some games tend to crash wherever you try to alt-tab out or in some rare cases, getting a minor fps boost.