Program that includes game mode

Users had mixed reactions to the game mode in Windows 10. On the one hand, it is designed to improve the work operating system. On the other hand, it also loads it.

At all Game Mode activated by default. Moreover, it is carried out in the background, and this affects the fps indicator. For many gamers this is critical.

Thus, the game mode improves some things, but on the contrary slows down others. Controversial innovation.

Default

In fact, the very fact of the game mode running in the background and launching by default is not the most pleasant. It can degrade performance and add some lags to the game.

Still, to improve the performance of games, you first need to pay attention to the hardware - graphics accelerator, volume random access memory, free memory on disk, processor.

This is not something that can be solved with a software offering.

Yes, in some games this mode really saves the situation. So you need to try it in practice - whether the game mode will suit your needs or, on the contrary, will worsen the process.

Nevertheless, the main task game mode still improves the gaming experience, optimizes performance and performance.

So it’s worth trying it out for yourself to understand whether the programs work better this way or not.

Mode activation

Enabling Game Mode in Windows 10 is quite easy. The main thing is to update your computer on time.

Game mode appeared only with the advent of Windows 10 Creators Update. Go to system settings.

If you have latest version updates, there should be a special “Games” section.

Everything will be there required parameters mode regulation.

There, find the item “Use game mode” and select it. This is how the game mode is activated.

In addition, you can use the keyboard shortcut Win+G. This also enables game mode.

In general, the idea with a keyboard shortcut is very good due to the fact that you can press it even during the game.

Accordingly, performance and performance should improve, and you won't have to return to your desktop.

Moreover, after games that are difficult for the system, exiting them takes a somewhat long time.

Game Mode is intended primarily for optimizing the performance of games, but it also improves performance with other programs that require a large number of system resources. For example, you can try out development in graphic editors.

In addition, even if you constantly have many programs running in background, this development will be very useful.

Game store

Windows also prompts users to choose their own game. It can be downloaded from the corresponding library.

Of course, this is not Steam, but still there are quite a lot of diverse developments in the assortment. This is still an advantage over the same Linux distributions.

They also have an application store, but there are more utilities for office work.

Use in practice

According to theory, that is, according to the developers, games receive maximum priority in this mode. They should load faster and the graphics should look sharper and more colorful.

It turns out a little differently. Appropriate tests were carried out. Based on their results, we can say that the game mode sometimes has no effect on performance.

Of course, it’s good that it doesn’t make things worse, but that’s not what this development was created for.

That is, if you are just playing, and have not yet turned on the browser with a video from YouTube, while simultaneously launching several other small applications, you will not feel much improvement in the operation of the operating system.

Only under heavy load does Game Mode show itself in its full glory.

For example, launch a browser with a movie, Skype and anti-virus scan files. Here you will definitely notice the difference. The minimum frame rate in a gaming application increases significantly.

Shutdown

So the game mode could realistically be like effective way improving computer performance, and useless due to the lack of any significant result.

Purpose

Microsoft says Game Mode works best with UWP games.

These are exactly the programs that users install on their computer through Windows Store.

With others - from Steam, Origin and other game stores - things will be a little different. Game Mode in Windows may simply not work for them.

This is due to the fact that UWP games are open to Windows developers. They can create an optimization mechanism for them. It's more difficult with other platforms.

Some games may not even support Game Mode at all.

True, Game Mode has already simplified life, if not for users, then for the creators of those UWP games. Game Mode will be installed automatically and by default in the program itself.

conclusions

A new development from Microsoft should help gamers and other users when working with resource-intensive programs. However, in reality this is not always the case.

Some gaming applications They just don't support Game Mode. It will not be possible to optimize them.

In addition, the game mode only manifests itself in cases of heavy load on the operating system.

Accordingly, if you only play without running additional programs in the background, the effect will also be minimized.

However, it is better to try the development in practice. For some computers this development can really improve performance and performance.

In rare cases, Game Mode significantly slows down your computer. Of course, it works in the background and by default, but its main task is still process optimization.

If anything, leaving the regime is not difficult.

As for activating the game mode, it can be done either through the settings panel, or simply using the Win+G key combination. It turns off in the same way.

This week Microsoft released next update for Windows 10, and it's far from normal fix errors, otherwise we would never have written about it. This update is amazing because it includes a game mode that speeds up Windows operation 10 and has the proud name - Game Mode. Today we will talk about this mode in more detail and in all details.

How to enable Game Mode Windows 10

Step one - go to settings and click on the new “Game” icon, decorated with advertising in the form of an Xbox. There you can find various options For streaming and just below is the same Game Mode for Windows 10. There is a possibility that it is enabled by default.

But in fact, even if this is the one, then for everyone games Game Mode Windows 10 will need to be turned on separately, when you first start the game by pressing WIN + G on the keyboard and in the lower right corner of the panel to enable the Windows 10 Game Mode checkbox.

Game mode doesn't work in Windows 10

In fact, there are a lot of problems with Game Mode in Windows 10. The Game Bar works 50% of the time - although this is comparable to calling Steam Overlay, so I won't regret it too much. The interface design itself is a bit of a failure, each of the new games must be added manually, the window takes up a lot of space and has nothing other than “Play” and “Delete” options. Hope this gets fixed soon.

Windows 10 Game Mode - Tests

We tested the game mode on a couple of games; we haven’t had that much time yet, but I can provide the test results now.

First I chose Nier as a test subject.

Nier, Game Mode Off:

Average FPS
59.283

Nier, Game mode enabled:

Average FPS
59.25

As you can see, I couldn’t feel the difference... and I bitterly launched my beloved “The Witcher 3”.

The Witcher 3, Game mode off:

Average FPS
80.2

The Witcher 3, Game mode enabled:

Average FPS
80.15

Hmm...surprisingly, it didn't work again. I went online and read that the FPS at normal mode- the game is unlikely to affect. But if you do something in the background (archiving, video transcoding), then the streams are distributed more smoothly and that’s when it works this mode. I'll be doing a couple of tests in the next few days for more... weak computer(not with the i7 and 980) and I’ll tell you in the same post about the results... but so far there is little consolation for gamers. Game mode and its tests show zero growth.

Game mode became available in Windows 10 with Creators update Update, which is designed to increase performance in computer games. Let's look at how to enable game mode in Windows 10?

Windows 10 Creators Update offers the user many improvements and new features, including the introduction new feature"Game mode". But can this feature actually increase frame rates? What is its effect and how to enable it?

What is Game Mode in Windows 10?

Windows 10 runs many services and background processes that take up your computer's resources and can slow down gaming performance. Many users try to get the most out of their computer but are hampered by the fact that some system processes may be running in the background while gaming.

Game mode solves this problem. After its activation, the game process receives the highest priority. All resources will be distributed in favor of the game process, and currently “unnecessary” services that run in the background will be limited. As tests show, the function does not so much affect the frame rate per second, but, of course, allows you to limit the so-called “slowdowns” in games, which often occur due to the fact that some system process is running in the background, for example, a file indexing service ( in turn causes high load to disk).

How to activate the Game Mode feature

Player mode can be enabled through the game menu, which is called up using the “Win + G” keys. The menu is an overlay in the style of those offered by Steam or Origin. In its settings you can enable the mode for the running process.

First, you need to check that the game menu is enabled in Windows 10. Open the Start menu, go to Settings (gear icon) and select the Games tab.

Here you should check whether the “Display game menu during playback in” checkbox is checked. full screen mode verified by Microsoft."

Pay attention to the name of this option, you might think that game mode can only be enabled in those games that were purchased from the Windows Store as universal apps (UWP), for example, Rise of Tomb Raider.

But this is not true at all. The menu can be enabled via the Win+G key combination in any game, provided that it was launched in windowed or full-screen format. It is enough to go into the image settings in the options and set the display format from “Full Screen” to “Windowed” or “Windowed without frame”.

When the game is already running in windowed format (or full screen if downloaded from Windows Store), then simply press the Win+G key combination. The game screen will appear on the screen Windows menu 10.

Click on the gear icon to go to settings. In the menu, find the option “Use game mode for this game.”

It will be enough to check this item to enable a mode that will increase productivity. Now you can switch it to the classic full-screen format - the settings in the menu will be saved, and the game mode will still be enabled.

The new game mode - Game Mode - from the Windows 10 Creators Update, looks, without a doubt, extremely tempting: they give us free upgrade computer operation. The reality is a little more complicated, but we found a lot of appeal here, especially if you try to play on a regular workhorse rather than on a high-end gaming PC. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

So: what is it and where can you find it?

Meet Game Mode Windows 10

Game Mode in Windows 10 is designed to improve computer performance in games, both to increase dry frame rate numbers (FPS) and to generally “smooth out” the image. This is achieved by reassigning a large portion of your computer's resources to the very game you are playing. this moment launched, which does not allow parallel running processes draw on the forces of the machine and cause sudden interruptions in gameplay(goodbye sudden antivirus scans!). Game Mode in Windows 10 gives games more CPU clocks and a certain number of main threads. system processor, although the specific details will depend on your system configuration.

Source: Microsoft

How to start Game Mode on Windows 10

To our delight, Game Mode works with all games, not just those from the Windows Store. Unfortunately for us, it is not very clear how to enable this mode yourself, since Creators function Update is hidden in a particularly dark corner game panel Game Bar. Microsoft says some "official" games will launch Game Mode automatically, but we'll have to see how they handle that, even with Microsoft titles like Gears of War 4 or Forza Horizon 3.

To enable it, launch your game and click Windows keys+ G to call game Windows panels 10. Select the Settings section on right side panels to view a list of settings. Check the box next to the Use Game Mode for this game option. After which you can simply close the dialog box and the Game Mode panel - and, in fact, start playing. There is no need to restart the game for the changes to take effect, but you will have to manually enable this option each time on each toy you would like to use it with.

Testing Game Mode on Windows 10

Microsoft downplayed the results of the application new option, discovering how it actually works and advising you to expect a 2-5% increase in performance. It's just a switch Windows resources, not a miracle. Initial testing of Game Mode by PC Gamer, PCGamesN, and Laptop Mag on dedicated gaming systems showed little to no improvement. Why, PC Gamer even observed a decrease in performance when launching Game Mode in the Hitman game!

So if you have a relatively modern gaming “tank” with a “large-caliber” graphics card- don't expect much from Game Mode. And if not?

Microsoft's announcements about improving graphics smoothness intrigued me a lot. Assigning a certain amount of system resources to a specific game may not have much impact on a gaming PC, filled to the top with powerful hardware, but for a more resource-dependent budget system or even a laptop, it will be just a revolution. It’s the latter that I’ll be testing here.

Here's our testing tool - Microsoft's Surface Book

Microsoft provided PCWorld with the Creators Update on our Office Surface Book. This is not the most regular laptop: Our top model contains SSD size 1 TB, 16 GB RAM, Core i7 processor and discrete video card Nvidia. However, this card is a rather modest GTX 965M with 2GB of RAM, and the processor is limited to just two cores. So while the Surface Book is a cool laptop, it's not up to par with gaming PC standards.

Windows Store games, being universal Windows apps, will probably benefit from Game Mode more than other games because they don't generate additional processes. So we tested Gears of War 4, DirectX game 12, written as universal Windows application, along with the DX11 version of Rise of the Tomb Raider on Steam. We also tested an older Bioshock Infinite toy with Nvidia video card, just to see how Game Mode supports integrated graphics.

Each of the positions was run on the default game standards, with average graphics settings at a resolution of 1280x800. This allowed all three to reach an acceptable level of 30 frames per second. We tested each game in four different ways.

First, each control task was launched without any system support except software from Nvidia, GeForce Experience.

As you can see, Game Mode made almost no difference in all three games. If you don't have any running parallel programs, competing for precious CPU power, Game Mode provides virtually no value to you.

After that, it's time to muddy the waters by running background processes. We have opened an automatic YouTube playlist in Edge browser, started turning up the music volume in the Spotify player and at the same time launched AVG antivirus- a completely plausible simulation of what real user can be done in parallel with the game - and tested each game in Game Mode and without it.

Bioshock and Tomb Raider both showed limited average frame rate increases of about 1 frame per second or so - basically nothing your eye would notice in real life. But with Gears of War 4 it turned out to be very interesting. Firstly, productivity against the backdrop of basic processes literally skyrocketed, by about 50% overall. This is great. Additionally, Game Mode proves to be a real asset under these conditions, increasing frame rates by just over 6 fps. This may not sound particularly significant, but when you're hanging around at just 30 fps, that's an increase of almost a whopping 22%. This is also enough to push Gears above 30 fps, which is considered by many gamers to be the minimum acceptable frame rate. Amazing!

But it's still not as amazing as Game Mode's impact on the minimum frame rate when apps in the background were consuming system resources. First let's look at the minimum frequency without base system processes- for comparison. (Bioshock Infinite and Rise of the Tomb Raider numbers show absolutely low values frame rates achieved during testing, while Gears 4's performance hovered within 5% of normal levels).

Boring. As with the averages, there is almost no difference. Game Mode doesn't change anything as long as you don't overload your computer with a lot of programs. But if so, then the game Windows mode 10 gives a significant boost, enough to make a simple but significant difference between the game "running" and "not running."

Running our trio of programs in the background blows the minimum frame rate to smithereens. With Game Mode disabled, Gears stumbles over its own shadow, dropping from nearly 50 fps to just 12.5 fps. And this, in addition, is a very dirty 12.5 fps, with almost constant jerking and slow or completely freezing movements. Frame rates in Bioshock and Tomb Raider games, in turn, drop by almost two-thirds, below 10 fps. And while Bioshock's results look bad on the chart, Tomb Raider actually performs significantly worse, stuttering, stuttering, and stumbling just like Gears, with the added "bonus" of lengthy loading times for each subsequent testing segment.

Moving slightly away from the control tasks, closer to the gaming itself, Bioshock could still be tortured somehow. But Gears and Rise of the Tomb Raider were completely un-games - literally at all. Turning on even a couple of normal basic processes while trying to play on our beautiful laptop, which cost over three thousand dollars, was a terrible disaster.

This is what it's like trying to play these games without activating Game Mode.

But Game Mode softened this mode - and just right.

I don't intend to go too far and say that playing Gears 4 and Rise of the Tomb Raider with background processes was a special pleasure. Game Mode removed the long pauses and smoothed out the twitching just enough to allow some play, and it’s unlikely that gaming experience can be compared to the pleasure of real gaming on a prepared, sophisticated gaming machine. The frame rate in all games hovered around 30 fps, with occasional dips and brief stumbling.

And yet, although minimum frequency in Bioshock and Tomb Raider it was pretty lame; when Game Mode was activated, it doubled. Obsessive gamers accustomed to standards of at least 60 fps will hardly be satisfied with this game. But for users trying to run some games on more modest machines, Game Mode is definitely worth checking out.

No magic

This brief test is far from comprehensive, but it shows that Game Mode isn't as much of an overkill option as earlier reviews made it out to be. If you're playing on a modest desktop or laptop with disabilities Windows 10's Game Mode is capable of making "unplayable" games work quite well (though in a case like ours, it would be better to simply close those parallel programs). I suspect that on laptops simpler than the luxurious Surface Book with Core processor i7, the effect will be even more pronounced.

Dedicated gamers with fancy PCs will probably benefit less from Windows 10's Game Mode than our testing showed, although I'd bet more on the edge cases where Game Mode can make a difference. more difference. Extremely demanding CPU games, like Fallout 4, can reveal more significant gains (if you're the kind of person who keeps other programs open while playing) than, for example, games running on ultra-fast 144 Hz monitors that can literally grind the processor. I also wouldn't be surprised if Game Mode doesn't bring much benefit, since AMD chips are loaded to the brim with cores and threads. Will need to test it!

Finally, it doesn't hurt to remember that Windows 10 Game Mode significantly blocks the resources needed for parallel open applications, which can have a very noticeable impact on their work. Activating the game mode reduced the stuttering of the three games tested today, but in turn caused a hitch in the playback of a YouTube video in the background. You should absolutely avoid turning on Game Mode if, for example, you decide to blow off some steam on Steam while another time-consuming process is moving megabytes of information - keep in mind, it will take longer than usual to do this.

Windows 10 Game Mode is designed to improve your PC's performance while gaming by prioritizing your PC's resources for running game. Game mode in Windows appeared after the release Windows updates 10 Creators Update.

Game Mode in Windows 10 optimizes the operating system while running a computer game. In game mode, the performance of the game increases; the work of other applications running at this time is slowed down so that they do not consume computer resources.

Due to the correct allocation of resources, it is possible that fps indicator in games. By reducing the load on the processor, there will be free power used in game processing.

Please note that to improve performance and optimal performance computer game, are primarily influenced by completely different factors: gaming video card, amount of RAM, processor power. Optimal performance in games, depends mainly on the availability powerful iron, not from software.

Therefore, enabling game mode in Windows 10, without having hardware that supports demanding games, if it leads to an increase in productivity in computer game, then quite a bit. In any case, you need to try everything experimentally on a specific computer with a specific computer hardware configuration.

The author of these lines does not play games at all (although I had to install quite a lot of games on my computer in my time), there are a large number of gamers (people who love to play computer games). They should definitely try Microsoft's Gaming Mode to be able to play games with maximum comfort.

Game mode in Windows can be enabled in a specific game if it improves PC performance while playing that game (testing required).

How to enable Game Mode on Windows 10

Now let's look at how to activate game mode in Windows 10. Game mode is enabled in the operating system settings by default.

In order to launch Game Mode in Windows 10, you need to do the following:

Go to the Start menu, click on Settings.
In the Settings window, click on the Games section.
In the "Games" section, enter the "Game Mode" setting.
In the “Use Game Mode” option, move the switch to the “On” position.

In the “Game Menu” setting, you change the parameters for interacting with the game: displaying the game menu in full screen mode, keyboard shortcuts in “Game Mode,” etc.

Game mode in Windows 10: how to enable Game Mode in a game

Game mode must be enabled in a computer game running on Windows 10 if this mode helps improve system performance while using the game on the computer.

To launch Windows 10 Game Mode in a game, follow these steps: