dr_rus
Member
After spending a couple of days doing various benchmarks and tests on Windows 10 Creators Update / 1703 / 15063 (which are all the same thing btw) Game Mode feature I thought that the results I've got are different enough from what was described in the previous thread OP link for me to share them.
There's also seem to be a lot of confusion surrounding this feature in general as MS hasn't bothered to provide any solid information on what it does, how it works, how to enable it, etc.
So first things first - how to enable / disable it in any game you want?
There's a couple of quirks with this still:
So what does Win10 "Game Mode" actually do? The post on Windows Central from the earlier thread OP stated that:
What Game Mode actually does is reserve a couple of CPU threads purely for OS and non gaming tasks (that's on my 6C/12T CPU - the number may be different on a 4C/4T CPU for example).
Here's a CPU load graph, the left high load portion is with Game Mode off while the right high load portion is the exactly same sequence but ran with Game Mode on:
Notice that with Game Mode being on the first two CPU threads aren't getting much load while the load on the rest ten threads have gone up a bit.
What this means is that Game Mode is actually stealing CPU resources from the running game and allocating them to background tasks - which may not even exist, as in the example above. This also means that the promise of "fewer dropped frames, specifically during scenes and situations that are more intensive on your system's hardware" is not true at all as with two CPU threads being reserved strictly for background tasks you are likely to see more dropped frames in such scenes and situations - unless they meant situations where something CPU heavy spins up in the background while you're playing a game.
Generally, enabling such Game Mode when you're short on CPU resources - which most modern Core i5s and some older Core i7s are in most recent AAA games - will result in a performance loss in gaming while not providing much benefit unless you have something rather CPU heavy running in the background while gaming. I personally can't think of any software which I might be running in the background while gaming which would require whole two CPU threads being reserved to itself.
OS reserved CPU threads aren't limited to one CPU core, btw, and can in fact be reserved from different CPU cores leading to an even more questionable benefit even in cases when there is something CPU heavy running in the background - as in such cases these CPU heavy background tasks will fight with the game you're playing for physical CPU resources because they'll be running on SMT/HT threads.
So, pure theory suggests that Game Mode is unlikely to lead to any performance gains or even framerate stability improvements outside of situations where you have some WinRAR storing a couple of terabytes of files in the background while gaming - and this is exactly what I'm seeing in my becnhmarks.
Firstly, the "no change" group - these games are either completely GPU limited or can't make any use of 12 CPU threads and thus loosing two of CPU threads to OS reservation don't lead to any significant performance changes.
Here's where things are starting to get ugly though - these games are able to make use of 12 CPU threads sometimes and are thus loosing some performance due to Game Mode locking two CPU threads:
So TL;DR: should you enable Game Mode feature of Win10 1703 / Creators Update? Only if you have something CPU heavy running in the background while playing. In pretty much every other situation Game Mode reservation of CPU threads will likely lead to performance loss or - at the very best - no change in a game's performance.
Owners of 4C/4T CPUs (Core i5s) should be especially wary of Game Mode as it will most likely do more harm than good on their CPUs in pretty much every modern AAA game.
Hopefully this will clear up some confusion around Game Mode feature. Due to what I was able to find out on my PC, I personally will be disabling Game Mode because I struggle to think of any situation where it may be of any benefit to me.
Here's a couple of benchmarks from Creators Update release version from the previous thread first of which show when Game Mode can actually be beneficial:
If anyone's got more links with Game Mode benchmarks - feel free to post them here, I'll add them to the OP.
There's also seem to be a lot of confusion surrounding this feature in general as MS hasn't bothered to provide any solid information on what it does, how it works, how to enable it, etc.
So first things first - how to enable / disable it in any game you want?
- Go into Settings (Win+X -> Settings), then Gaming.
- Make sure that you have the option of "Record game clips, screenshots, and broadcast using Game Bar" enabled in "Game bar" section. This option is in fact enables or disables Game Bar feature. No idea why it has such strange label.
- Note the "Open Game bar" keyboard shortcut below - it's Win+G by default.
- Now to enable Game Mode in a game of your choice you need to invoke Game bar in it and hit the "Use Game mode for this game" checkbox:
There's a couple of quirks with this still:
- There's a separate section called "Game Mode" in the Settings->Gaming. It allows you to choose if you want to use Game Mode or not, globally. What this setting does is a bit of a mystery right now though as it has no effect on any of the games I've tried and all of said games have Game Mode disabled for them by default when I checked it in the Game bar no matter what you set it globally to. If you choose not to use Game Mode here it has no effect on the Game Mode switcher in Game bar either - you can still enable Game Mode from Game bar in a game of your choosing and it will in fact work just fine, even with Game Mode being disabled here in Settings app.
- The list of games where you can easily invoke the Game bar with Win+G shortcut include all <=D3D9 games and all D3D12 games but only a small portion of D3D10/11 games. This is due to the fact that D3D10/11 games use a different (well, it can be called "true" really) exclusive fullscreen mode in Windows 10 which makes it impossible for Game bar to appear on top of such games.
While 1703 Windows update expanded that list again, with additional 88 titles, some notable recent titles are still missing from it - one example being Rise of The Tomb Raider (DX11 version of course). However, there's a way of getting the Game bar to show up in pretty much any DX11 game - for this you need to switch this game in a windowed or borderless windowed mode, invoke the Game bar, make the changes and after that you can switch the game back to exclusive fullscreen - the changes will "stick".
So what does Win10 "Game Mode" actually do? The post on Windows Central from the earlier thread OP stated that:
Notice that there is no info on HOW exactly Game Mode will achieve all this. But after some investigation I think that I have a pretty good idea.Game Mode will prevent system tasks from stealing resources from your games, making frame rates and performance generally more consistent. You should see fewer dropped frames as a result of Game Mode, specifically during scenes and situations that are more intensive on your system's hardware. Game Mode will also limit CPU thread contention between your games and existing system processes, helping to speed things up even further.
What Game Mode actually does is reserve a couple of CPU threads purely for OS and non gaming tasks (that's on my 6C/12T CPU - the number may be different on a 4C/4T CPU for example).
Here's a CPU load graph, the left high load portion is with Game Mode off while the right high load portion is the exactly same sequence but ran with Game Mode on:
Notice that with Game Mode being on the first two CPU threads aren't getting much load while the load on the rest ten threads have gone up a bit.
What this means is that Game Mode is actually stealing CPU resources from the running game and allocating them to background tasks - which may not even exist, as in the example above. This also means that the promise of "fewer dropped frames, specifically during scenes and situations that are more intensive on your system's hardware" is not true at all as with two CPU threads being reserved strictly for background tasks you are likely to see more dropped frames in such scenes and situations - unless they meant situations where something CPU heavy spins up in the background while you're playing a game.
Generally, enabling such Game Mode when you're short on CPU resources - which most modern Core i5s and some older Core i7s are in most recent AAA games - will result in a performance loss in gaming while not providing much benefit unless you have something rather CPU heavy running in the background while gaming. I personally can't think of any software which I might be running in the background while gaming which would require whole two CPU threads being reserved to itself.
OS reserved CPU threads aren't limited to one CPU core, btw, and can in fact be reserved from different CPU cores leading to an even more questionable benefit even in cases when there is something CPU heavy running in the background - as in such cases these CPU heavy background tasks will fight with the game you're playing for physical CPU resources because they'll be running on SMT/HT threads.
So, pure theory suggests that Game Mode is unlikely to lead to any performance gains or even framerate stability improvements outside of situations where you have some WinRAR storing a couple of terabytes of files in the background while gaming - and this is exactly what I'm seeing in my becnhmarks.
Firstly, the "no change" group - these games are either completely GPU limited or can't make any use of 12 CPU threads and thus loosing two of CPU threads to OS reservation don't lead to any significant performance changes.
Here's where things are starting to get ugly though - these games are able to make use of 12 CPU threads sometimes and are thus loosing some performance due to Game Mode locking two CPU threads:
So TL;DR: should you enable Game Mode feature of Win10 1703 / Creators Update? Only if you have something CPU heavy running in the background while playing. In pretty much every other situation Game Mode reservation of CPU threads will likely lead to performance loss or - at the very best - no change in a game's performance.
Owners of 4C/4T CPUs (Core i5s) should be especially wary of Game Mode as it will most likely do more harm than good on their CPUs in pretty much every modern AAA game.
Hopefully this will clear up some confusion around Game Mode feature. Due to what I was able to find out on my PC, I personally will be disabling Game Mode because I struggle to think of any situation where it may be of any benefit to me.
Here's a couple of benchmarks from Creators Update release version from the previous thread first of which show when Game Mode can actually be beneficial:
- Tested: Windows 10's Game Mode makes unplayable games playable—sometimes
- Ryzen-Benchmarks: Windows 10 Creators Update in manchen Spielen schneller
- Windows 10 Game Mode tested: minimal gains, unless you're unusually cruel to your PC
If anyone's got more links with Game Mode benchmarks - feel free to post them here, I'll add them to the OP.