Windows Game Mode is FASTER – $h!t Manufacturers Say Ep3
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,298 words · ~6 min read
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let's face it adding more Graphics power
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to your system is expensive so it
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shouldn't come then as a surprise that there is no shortage of software
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Solutions out there that promise to
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enhance your gaming experience without
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an investment in more hardware and there
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have been a lot of flavors of software
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secret sauce over the years from
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nonsense like basic programs that just
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close the stuff you have open in the background to more credible Solutions
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like driver updates new apis like direct
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X12 and Vulcan and now Windows 10 game
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mode but is this a truly tasty addition
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to your gaming smorgus board or is it 2017's version of blast
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processing let's find out
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out G skills km780r RGB mechanical
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keyboard features a brushed aluminum top plate on the Fly macro recording and
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different Cherry MX switch configurations learn more at the link
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below so the second major update to Windows 10 called the creators update
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has a plethora of of new enhancements
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but we're going to be laser focused on game mode a feature that Microsoft
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builds as providing a better and more
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consistent gaming experience on Windows 10 by dedicating more system resources
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to your game sounds interesting but how
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does it work well using game mode is
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simple it can be enabled with one click from the settings app then when you load
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your game you open the Windows game bar by pressing the Windows key and G and
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ensure it's enabled for that specific game by clicking the little gear icon
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neat but can something this easy really
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make your gaming experience better and
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more consistent well since Microsoft seems to
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be making two separate claims here we decided to test each one of them
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individually by looking at average frame rates to determine if the experience was
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better overall as well as
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99.9% minimum FPS to judge the
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consistency of the experience for our
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game suite we went with DSX mankind divided ashes of The Benchmark and Gears
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of War 4 we were particularly interested
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in the latter as it's a universal Windows platform game and we wanted to
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see if its supposedly tighter integration with Microsoft Technology
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might make it behave a little differently for our test bed Z we
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actually used three different Hardware configurations which you can see on the
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screen right now the goal here was to represent modern high-end mid-range and
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budget oriented gaming setups so let's
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dive into the results and look first then at how game mode affected average
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frame rates hm not very much the
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difference between game mode and non-game mode benchmarks was only a
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frame or two per second across the board
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and sometimes not even that much with
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the exception of Gears 4 on our high-end
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system though I can't imagine why the vast majority of you would notice or
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care about the difference between 145 and
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154 FPS but as the college educated among
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you well know dips in performance can
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actually be more impactful than average
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frame rates so did game mode prevent or
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lessen slowdowns well we actually did see a
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difference in our minimum frame rates here but unfortunately it wasn't in the
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direction that you yes you Microsoft
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prre may have been hoping for both DSX
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and Ashes performed noticeably worse
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in direct X11 mode and the minimums on
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Gears 4 absolutely tanked on our
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high-end setup switching apis to
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directx12 didn't do us many favors
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except in Gears which did at least improve by 5 1/2 frames on our Core i5
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GTX 1060 system but still that
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precipitous drop on higher-end Hardware
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left us scratching our heads a little bit bit so what exactly is going on here
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did Microsoft management decide that the
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release of Windows Vista was far too long ago and they were overdue to give
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us another astonishingly poorly implemented piece of software well it's
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hard to say for certain but our hypothesis is that the problem actually
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isn't at least entirely the poor
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execution but rather that the overall
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concept as a whole is just kind of at
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its very core game mode is purportedly
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trying to divert more of your system
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resources to your games without
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answering the all important questions of
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one what resources are we talking about
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exactly and two are games really starved
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for them so the largest single defining
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factor in how modern games will perform is how powerful your graphics card is
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and I think it's pretty safe to say that no self-respecting gamer is putting a
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secondary load like Bitcoin mining or
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neural network simulation on their GPU
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in the background while they're playing metr last Light and then even for games
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that are considered more CPU bound they
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still usually don't use up so so much
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CPU time that they're going to be seriously affected by other programs
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running in the background partially because reasonably modern versions of
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Windows going back to 7 already do a pretty darn good job of deciding on the
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most sensible way to divvy up CPU time between all of your different tasks so
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why even bother releasing it then we've got a couple of ideas first up it could
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be that game mode was developed for users that have so many junkware
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applications or even outright malware like viruses running in the background
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that system resources are constantly tied up but we would suggest that in
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that case you probably have bigger problems than a few FPS in League of
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Legends and number two maybe they were
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going after lower end or older Hardware
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but then even our budget setup that included a du dual core CPU and a
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graphics card that doesn't even need an extra power connector didn't benefit
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from game mode to be fair to Microsoft
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our testing wasn't comprehensive so with
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the literally millions of combinations
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of Hardware games and game engines out
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there it's possible that there are folks
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out there having better luck with game mode than we did and we'd love to hear
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from you guys in the comments below but for our part especially in
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light of Microsoft's recent push to force Windows 10 users onto newer
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Hardware platforms game mode really feels like a
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solution seeking a problem for the
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moment skillshare in a nutshell it's an
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video editing with Adobe Premiere but there's tons of other stuff on there and
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it's worth giving it a shot check it out today the first 200 viewers to click the
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link in the description will get a twomon free
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trial so thanks for watching guys if you dislike this video hit that button but
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if you liked it hit the like button get subscribed and maybe consider checking
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out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description I
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mean what would we even put down there you buy Windows 10 there you go also
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down there is our merch store where you can get cool shirts like this one and
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our community Forum which you should totally join