Windows 10's Game Mode reportedly causing freezes, FPS issues

LordDraven · May 8, 2020

Windows 10's Game Mode reportedly causing freezes, FPS issues

Gamers have been reporting that the Windows 10 Game Mode feature which should help them get more stable frame rates is instead causing stutters, freezes, and FPS issues while being enabled.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

Is Windows 10 Game Mode hurting your games more than it's helping?

Is Game Mode causing issues with your PC? Turning it off may help.

www.windowscentral.com

Try turning off Windows 10's Game Mode if your games are stuttering or freezing

A growing number of users say Game Mode is causing performance issues in games.

www.pcgamer.com

Windows 10 users should turn this feature off now for better gaming performance

Game Mode causing problems

www.techradar.com

turning it off fixed COD warzone framerate issues for me. I have a 9700k and 2070 super

Deleted member 34714 · May 8, 2020

W10 game mode or gamebar being disabled has always been the way to go for increased framerates. This was in the early days and it's funny to see it's still a thing on PC.

wwm0nkey · May 8, 2020

Ricerocket said:
W10 game mode or gamebar being disabled has always been the way to go for increased framerates. This was in the early days and it's funny to see it's still a thing on PC.

I refuse to turn of gamebar, the one thing MS did right (after the recent updates). Gamemode can stay off though

Soulflarz · May 8, 2020

This has been a thing since it came out afaik?

chandoog · May 8, 2020

Doesn't game mode just prioritize apps which you can mitigate by not opening extra apps while gaming anyway ?

Arklite · May 8, 2020

I turned this shit off the moment it existed. I feel like youre always better off ignoring automatic software features like this, including junk like the Nvidia game optimizations.

Dreams-Visions · May 8, 2020

Soulflarz said:
This has been a thing since it came out afaik?

yes

scaryrobots · May 8, 2020

chandoog said:
Doesn't game mode just prioritize apps which you can mitigate by not opening extra apps while gaming anyway ?

Pretty much. There's literally no reason this should be causing performance issues.

Evolution of Metal · May 8, 2020

Fuck these articles:

According to the current user reports

"If someone says it's raining, and another person says it's dry, it's not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the fucking window and find out which is true." -Sally Claire

We have clickbaiters and rebloggers on the gaming/tech websites, no journalists.

It is beyond pointless to even discuss without someone doing an actual research into the problem, instead of taking reddit posts as facts...

No_Style · May 8, 2020

I've had zero issues with a Game Bar thus far.

Windu · May 8, 2020

From I understand game mode these days is nothing more than something that stops driver updates and notifications.

Edit:

Microsoft Dev on Reddit said:
In the latest versions of Windows (1809 & 1903) Game Mode no longer does GPU/CPU prioritization. This prioritization was intended to give more resources to the running game at the cost of background processes, but we found it impacted some games and other scenarios. As an example streaming was impacted in apps like OBS because we were starving them of resources needed to encode.

In these later builds Game Mode is intended to help by removing distractions while playing. In particular it tries to stop Windows Update from updating drivers and stops it from notifying you of non-critical updates. It also causes the CPU to run at a minimum of 100% (on desktop, not laptops) to help reduce CPU fluctuations which may cause performance issues.

r/pcgaming - Comment by u/hamiltonia on ”Does Windows 10 Game Mode still hurt performance?”

56 votes and 55 comments so far on Reddit

www.reddit.com

Geedorah · May 8, 2020

Disabled this all ages ago, did it get re-enabled recently??

J_Viper · May 8, 2020

Hmm, gave my bro the 1070 loaded PC I had, and he's been having issues with FPS and frame-rate. Wonder if this is the reason.

Jawmuncher · May 8, 2020

No_Style said:
I've had zero issues with a Game Bar thus far.

Only issue i've had thus far is it not working with its keyboard shortcut when playing Gears Tactics.
Still Alt+Tab to the Xbox Companion app to look at achievements lol.

Jhey Cyphre · May 8, 2020

I know it's not the same (probably) but game mode always reminded me of those old "ram optimizer" programs that did nothing but cause problems.

JustinH · May 8, 2020

I'm pretty sure I've never once turned on Game Mode.

I actually like t gamebar thingy, though.

Cloud-Strife · May 8, 2020

I disabled my Windows Updates because of this.. I'm on a really old version and everything works perfect.

JustinH · May 8, 2020

Jawmuncher said:
Only issue i've had thus far is it not working with its keyboard shortcut when playing Gears Tactics.
Still Alt+Tab to the Xbox Companion app to look at achievements lol.

Did you somehow accidentally make some custom shortcuts?
You can check by pressing start and just typing "game bar shortcuts"

Jawmuncher · May 8, 2020

JustinH said:
Did you somehow accidentally make some custom shortcuts?
You can check by pressing start and just typing "game bar shortcuts"

I might've. I'll have to check next time i play it.

Massicot · May 9, 2020

Game Bar works fine for me, but it's also not my prefered method to screenshot. Game Mode I've never even tried...

dmgdbug · May 9, 2020

windows in general is running like shit for me. can't download anything in xbox app and all my attempts at troubleshooting are ending in frozen apps/control panel

LordDraven · May 9, 2020

Turning off game mode fixed cod war zone for me

Finaika · May 9, 2020

Why would Microsoft do this?

Calabi · May 9, 2020

My PC froze twice the other day I wonder if this was anything to do with it. Although I wasn't playing a game at the time so probably not.

Windows 10's Game Mode reportedly causing freezes, FPS issues

LordDraven