Windows 10 Game Mode To Offer FPS Boosts Of Up To 5 Percent, More Consistent Frame Rates
For a period of time, Microsoft's hyper focus on its Xbox game system made it seem like PC gamers were a forgotten bunch in Redmond. That all changed with Windows 10 and Microsoft's desire to unify different platforms under a single ecosystem. Microsoft has renewed its commitment to PC gaming and to prove it, there are some exciting features included in the upcoming Creators Update for Windows 10, one of which is a performance enhancing Game Mode.
"Last year, we set out to make Windows 10 the best Windows ever for gaming. With Game Mode, it’s our goal to now take things a step further to make the gaming experience on Windows even better. Our vision is that Game Mode optimizes your Windows 10 PC for an improvement in overall game performance," Microsoft stated in a blog post.
Subscribers to Microsoft's Windows Insider program can already test this feature out in the latest preview build. To enable it, users need just pull up the Game Bar by pressing the Windows key + G and then navigating to Settings. From there, users can opt the running game into Game Mode.
There are two main objectives Microsoft is trying to accomplish with Game Mode. One is to boost the average framerate when playing a game and the other is to bump up the overall (or peak) framerate. How exactly Game Mode accomplishes these performance enhancements is not something that Microsoft is willing to go into detail about at this time. However, Kevin Gammil, partner group program manager for the Xbox platform, did share some general information with Arstechnica about how it works. He said that it is along the lines of suspending or deferring certain background tasks and manipulating processor priorities and affinity to lessen the performance hit from non-gaming tasks. The result of this effort is an up to 5 percent jump in framerates.
Game Mode will work with both Win32 and new Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games sold through the Windows Store, with the latter seeing slightly better performance gains. The reason for that is Win32 games sometimes create multiple processes that are used by games with special launchers or copy protection, or install background services, both of which Game Mode is unable to detect and properly optimize.
The Creators Update will also introduce built-in Beam streaming for Windows 10 and Xbox One. This has not been shipped to Windows Insiders yet but will be included in preview builds shipping later this week on Windows 10. On Beam, broadcasters will enjoy less than one second of delay when streaming. Beam will also allow fans to interact with livestreams as if they were in the same room as the broadcaster.
These are just a couple of the many features the Creators Update will introduce to gamers when it ships this spring. We can hardly wait.
"Last year, we set out to make Windows 10 the best Windows ever for gaming. With Game Mode, it’s our goal to now take things a step further to make the gaming experience on Windows even better. Our vision is that Game Mode optimizes your Windows 10 PC for an improvement in overall game performance," Microsoft stated in a blog post.
Subscribers to Microsoft's Windows Insider program can already test this feature out in the latest preview build. To enable it, users need just pull up the Game Bar by pressing the Windows key + G and then navigating to Settings. From there, users can opt the running game into Game Mode.
There are two main objectives Microsoft is trying to accomplish with Game Mode. One is to boost the average framerate when playing a game and the other is to bump up the overall (or peak) framerate. How exactly Game Mode accomplishes these performance enhancements is not something that Microsoft is willing to go into detail about at this time. However, Kevin Gammil, partner group program manager for the Xbox platform, did share some general information with Arstechnica about how it works. He said that it is along the lines of suspending or deferring certain background tasks and manipulating processor priorities and affinity to lessen the performance hit from non-gaming tasks. The result of this effort is an up to 5 percent jump in framerates.
Game Mode will work with both Win32 and new Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games sold through the Windows Store, with the latter seeing slightly better performance gains. The reason for that is Win32 games sometimes create multiple processes that are used by games with special launchers or copy protection, or install background services, both of which Game Mode is unable to detect and properly optimize.
The Creators Update will also introduce built-in Beam streaming for Windows 10 and Xbox One. This has not been shipped to Windows Insiders yet but will be included in preview builds shipping later this week on Windows 10. On Beam, broadcasters will enjoy less than one second of delay when streaming. Beam will also allow fans to interact with livestreams as if they were in the same room as the broadcaster.
These are just a couple of the many features the Creators Update will introduce to gamers when it ships this spring. We can hardly wait.
