Windows10 Game Mode

[Sadleast]

In the new creators Update from Windows theres a new setting. Is the new Game Mode giving extra fps or is just a useless setting?

 

You got any experience with it?

[GoodBytes]

Depends on your system specifications and what you do with the system, and game.

Game Mode doesn't overclock or unlocks some secret power out of your hardware.

 

What it does is:

 - For UWP made games: Cut out many layers to bring the game to, about, Win32 made games level performance. This is where Game Mode shines the most.

 

 - For Win32 made game, it priorities the game over background programs running. As a result, you have better sustain fps. It turns your PC like a game console, where it dedicate itself to the game. So if you have stuff processing or playing on the back that is demanding on your system, expect massive slow down of them. Some games exhibits worse performance as they are made to be multi-processed and not fully multi-threaded from 1 process. So, Game Mode doesn't priorities the needed game processed beside the one that is focused right now  on your screen and that you interact with, 'causing the game run slower with game mode enabled. An potential example of a multi-process game design: You have 1 process that handles all the level loading and texture loading, you have 1 process that you interact with which draws everything and takes your inputs form your keyboard/mouse/controller. So, in this example, if process that loads textures and level as you move is being throttled by Game Mode, your game won't play with any sort of good performance, as Game Mode will priorities the one drawing, as it thinks it is the actual game running.

 

 

[NPSTR107]

34 minutes ago, Sadleast said:

In the new creators Update from Windows theres a new setting. Is the new Game Mode giving extra fps or is just a useless setting?

 

You got any experience with it?

I personally don't have any experience with it as I'm still on the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, still haven't gotten to the Creators Update. Though I'd expect that it would make a difference depending on your use case.

 

For example Windows 10 likes to perform random virus scans, and on older / less powerful laptops, enabling game mode will probably make a huge difference, as scans generally will hog the CPU / HDD's.

 

But for gaming PC's I wouldn't expect any difference. Take a look at this article.

[GoodBytes]

13 minutes ago, NPSTR107 said:

But for gaming PC's I wouldn't expect any difference. Take a look at this article.

Outdated article.

[D13H4RD]

Depends.

 

If you play games like Forza, Game Mode will help.

 

In other games, it’s mixed. Sometimes, there’s a small gain but other times, you actually get worse performance.

 

My take is this. Unless your system’s gaming capabilities is not strong at all, you can just leave it alone. Even upper-end Kepler GPUs paired with Haswell CPUs can still run many games quite well albeit not totally maxed out

[Sfekke]

If your system is reasonably specced, it'll either not make a difference, or make it worse.

I tried it on older systems, the only one benefiting from it was a C2D E7400 machine running an iGPU and 5400RPM HDD.
So as I said, most likely leaving it alone will do the trick.

Just stop any virus scans, disk defragmentations or updates.
Those really eat some resources

 

TL;DR

In most cases, leave it alone.
Like others on here said already.

 

 

Bonus tip:

If you'd happen to use Steam, do not let games update while you are in game.
By default that is disabled, but people enable that and then complain about random stutter.
That could be some random game updating while it could go without since you are not playing it at this moment.

[GoodBytes]

Anyway, @Sadleast, you can try and see what you get. Do Win+G in your game, pick Settings (gear icon), and you enable/disable Game Mode for the game.

If Win+G does nothing, either the game is not supported, or you have the Game Bar disabled. To enable Game Bar, go to Start > Settings > Gaming, and turn on "Record game clips, screenshots, and broadcast using Game bar".