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Published: March 8, 2017 | Source: Ars Technica | Author: Mark Campbell

Microsoft reveals more details on Windows 10’s game mode

Microsoft reveals more details on Windows 10's game mode

Microsoft reveals more details on Windows 10’s game mode

 
At GDC 2017, Microsoft has revealed more details on Windows 10’s upcoming game mode, with the company stating that gamers should see a 2-5% performance increase thanks to the new mode. 
 
Right now, games are just considered as n “ordinary application” at the OS level, acting the same as any number of applications that could be running simultaneously. With Game Mode, Microsoft plans to devote more resources exclusively to gaming, both on the CPU and GPU side to enhance performance. 
 
While gains from this new mode will be limited, there is little doubt that this mode is an improvement over the company’s current game support on the OS level. On the CPU side, the mode can dedicate a specific number of CPU cores to gaming, leaving other processes on a totally different thread than gaming applications. For example, if a gamer is using an 8-core CPU, the OS can dedicate six cores to gaming and two cores to general desktop processes, preventing these tasks from interfering with each other.  
 
This reduction in thread contention will help games get the most out of every CPU core, which is important for games that can heavily rely on single threaded performance. 

  

Microsoft reveals more details on Windows 10's game mode  

When to comes to GPU performance Game mode will also have an impact, though again this impact will be limited, giving games a greater majority of GPU cycles and minimising GPU work on other applications. Game mode will also give games favourable memory residency to assets that are associated with a game, limiting VRAM use for applications outside of a game. 

These benefits will be minimal, as GPUs already deliver the vast majority of their performance to games, though this change should help limit potential performance dips in games. 

When the Windows 10 Creators update launches later this year, PC users will have the final say on whether or not they enable the feature in games, though game developers will have the option to select whether game mode as on or off in their title by default. 

 

You can join the discussion on Windows 10’s game mode on the OC3D Forums. 

 

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