It appears that Microsoft is working on a “Game Mode” for Windows 10 that will improve performance while playing games. According to WindowsCentral, this mode is featured in the recently leaked build 14997, although it isn’t working yet, and will be available very soon to Insiders.
This “Game Mode” is said to be working similarly to the one featured on Xbox One. Basically, this mode will reduce memory, CPU and GPU footprint on running apps when a game is running. As such, this mode will – most likely – make games run faster on existing hardware.
It is unclear yet whether this feature will be exclusive to UWP games or whether it will support Win32 games.
Still, this is great news for all gamers that are using Windows 10, and it will be interesting to see whether some UWP games will benefit from this new feature and run better (Forza Horizon 3 and Quantum Break are two examples that could benefit from such a thing).
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Is it still cool to hate Microsoft ? i don’t know if i should like this or hate it ( ?° ?? ?°)
why would you hate it?
UWP
Then you should hate UWP, not this game-mode feature…
UWP isnt something coming from a different planet, its microsoft work and a string of moves that are very user unfriendly
if you have any faith that ms will do anything right and not pick the stupid corporatist overhyped bloatware choice, then you are a naive.
I rather quite like Windows 10 but there’s no way I’ll ever be buying any UWP game from the Windows 10 Store.
Dear microsoft, please just stop.
Please enlighten us on why they should stop? There’s nothing wrong with this.
Yes how dare they improve their product and customer experience….scandalous lol
Yes, good on Microsoft to do what Microsoft does best; push more Beta-stage sh*t onto the consumer, then deny anything is wrong for months on end, all while stalling the fixes on the 2+ year-old issues even further.
They could have done that ages ago instead of making one stupid choice after the other up to a point that no one even trusts them anymore to do anything right.
GamesForWindowsLive likes your comment.
What’s games for windows live got to do with reducing gpu and cpu overheads etc??
Regardless of issues you may may have with MS (and most people have some, myself included,) facts are that Windows 10 is a better OS than previous OS overall.
I hate the windows store as much as anyone, but any improvement for gamers MS make, is a positive in my eyes
Windows 10 could be a better OS than the others (note: future-tense), in a few years (spyware excluded), if they actually work on its various problems, by which point it won’t matter anymore, though, since people’ll have moved on to whatever comes next, instead. Right now it’s just a Beta-stage piece of sh*t forced out the door 2-3 years too early, because Microsoft had to rebuild its battered reputation after the EPIC FAIL that was Windows 8.
“Any improvements for gamers MS makes” – Except they haven’t made any. They’ve created a walled garden of a store, demanded that we migrate to Windows 10 to use it, & demanded that developers use DX12 on games in order to put them on their piece of sh*t store in the first place, not to mention everything else.
What a crock.
Could it be better, yes. Is it better, without doubt.
You seem obsessed with UWP, witch pretty much everyone unanimously agrees is awful in concept and execution. However Windows 10 is I’m reality l better OS than 8 or 7.
Will it get better over the years? Without a shadow of a doubt, but then even XP and 7 took years to become fully mature and they are regarded as the best OS’s. Name me a better OS than 10 currently, there isn’t one.
Furthermore, a big company incentivises their latest product, we’ve never seen that ever, have we???
People demonise MS both fairly and unfairly, but mainly it’s hysterical self entitled whiny idiots who do so.
Okay, which part of it, specifically, is better, exactly?
Yes, some bits & pieces are superior – the ability to select multiple files outside of the grid-format pattern we’ve been locked into for decades, for example, is great. The new file transfer window (carried over from Windows 8, I believe), is also great, etc. etc. etc. but these are minor things. The big things? They suck.
– Ribbon UI’s were a terrible idea from the start, now they’re even worse.
– Quick Access is a nightmare which I never figured out how to turn off, unfortunately.
– Cortana is not only mandatory, but also ridiculous.
– Edge is a joke, with bugs dating back to when Windows 10 was still in f*cking Beta. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Internet F*cking Explorer is a better browser than Edge, right now – 1.5 years post-launch.
– UWP is a joke – nice you see you admit it, too.
– The new Settings Panel is a Beta-stage mess pushed out far too early, for the sake of…. I don’t know, mass-Beta testing?
– DirectX 12 is a joke. They probably wouldn’t even have called it DX12 if it wasn’t for the Mantle ripoff, they’d probably have just used the DX11.3 version that exists there regardless, & saved the words “DX12” for their new Shader language, launching next year. No, seriously, this is probably the funniest part of all of this; their new Direct3D shader language is coming out almost two years after Windows 10’s initial launch……
– The spyware & mandatory updates are a hilarious feature to be trying to force onto people in a post-Snowden age, especially considering how we’re talking about one of THE shadiest Mega-Corps in the tech industry. Funniest part of this particular debacle? Trying to force this sh*t onto their corporate clients. Yeah, like that was going to work. F*cking genius move there, morons.
– What else is there….. oh, right, the overbloated Start Menu riddled with advertising, regardless of if you got on-board during the free upgrade era, or if you actually paid for a license – yay for Premium Solitaire!?
– Oh, & my personal favourite? The lack of Aero. Why? “Because Apple dropped glass, so we have to do it too!” /eyeroll.
Really? I seem to remember Windows 7 being just fine right out of the box, perhaps you’re confusing it with Vista, y’know, the big joke that everyone laughed at Microsoft for, which forced them to shape up & release 7 shortly thereafter in order to make up for it’s EPIC FAIL? Sound familiar, maybe?
A better OS than Windows 10? Easy. Windows 7. Hell, Windows 8.1, even. No, seriously, if you insist on upgrading past Windows 7, Windows 8.1 with Start Menu & Aero mods is the best way to go.
There’s a difference between incentivising your product to the general public, & preparing for a complete & utter takeover of the entire market in question – google Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, & maybe you’ll begin to understand why there’s so many tinfoil hats around UWP.
People demonise Microsoft mainly when they actually do something either shady-as-f*ck, or just flat out wrong, which is really more often than not. Oh, & also when they do something blatantly stupid, like mandatory Kinect on the Xbox One, 24-hour suicide checks, etc. etc. etc.
-lets not forget UEFI made hardware trouble shooting extremely hard
-no safe mode boot, like really wft i need to be able to boot to windows to be able to boot into safe mode??
-lots of windows updates that get rushed out the door with HUGE problems
Ugh…. UEFI. I never thought I’d actually say this, but I miss BIOS.
Sure, overclocking was a nightmare compared to “enter UEFI, click button, done!”, & that menu system was literally straight out of the ’80s, but even so…… “The good old days.” 😀
Windows 7 is light years better than Win10 and its “something went wrong” errors.
lol
Everytime MS makes a push towards “gaming” it hurts us, the gamers. Remember how Windows Vista was gonna be the gaming OS, remeber GamesForWindowsLive, and now Windows 10. Keep making you lame xboxs and leave gamers alone!
Like i said they need to make a “screw off ms” mode, so they can screw off and let us play games on pc in peace.
It’ll be UWP exclusive. It’s Micro$haft.
Yes, it is exclusive to UWP:
“MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network):
Game technologies for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps
With the introduction of UWP in Windows 10, your Windows 10 titles will be able to span all of the Microsoft platforms… In addition, Windows 10 offers many new features that are particularly beneficial to games:
* Reduced memory paging and reduced overall memory system size
* Improved graphics memory management actively allocates and protects more memory for the foreground game”
That’s not conclusive as it states”in addition, Windows 10 offers etc”.
They’re independent clauses, the second isn’t necessarily dependen first.
This is a single section about new API in UWP. I don’t think that MS still create new API for 20-years old Win32, they are focused on UWP
They may be focused on UWP but reality is they have to accommodate for developers and consumers who aren’t as well.
The way they phrase that paragraph appears to make a clear distinction between benefits of UWP and Windows 10.
Time will tell though
“reality”
Your argument just failed, for one simple reason; you tried to apply reality to Microsoft. Other than that, I agree with you, for the record.
introduce yourself to microsoft, show them your comments and amount of trouble you went into for advertising their products, i’m not joking, they might give you something, you never know
The guy is simply answering a question. He’s being quite unbiased in reality. Simply because he doesn’t share the ridiculous hatred for Microsoft that 90% of the people on DSoG comments section have does NOT make him a “shill” for the company.
I like how it’s unbiased when you call the opposite “hate”. You just prove to us all that you’ve got your very own bias set.
We’re all biased as hell, you and Amiga are virtually no different.
i’m not part of those 90 percent who hate windows, i love windows 10
Do you love UWP, dx12 and xbox one too? Because he does.
i don’t like xbone, i like dx12, uwp is alright, i’m not a fan but it is not harming me, so i’m ok with it on my system
for you people you lot b*tch way too much about uwp, it’s one thing to saying something about win 10, it is another to constantly b*tch about windows 10, heck if you don’t like it leave!, buy another os or something honestly, msft isn’t holding a gun to your head
Congratulations, you found the one comment to defend in which he’s actually, straightforwardly confirming a fact, instead of just shilling on about Microsoft products, & how good they are using faulty-as-f*ck arguments, due to the absence of actual facts.
Feel better about your own fanboyism now, do you? By the way, how exactly is he being “unbiased”? All he does is talk about how DX12 & Windows 10 are the best things ever, & everything else is inferior. Literally, every single time he comments, he tries to forward Microsoft’s agenda, or argue about how Microsoft’s [insert] is superior to [insert]’s, “because.” Yeah, really “unbiased” logic he’s got there, eh?
Also, dagoat actually made a rather good joke. Get over it already.
You must be new here
You’d think, right? Except, nope!
He’s generally like this.
You are either new here or utterly stupid. Ridiculous hatred? Ms has not done ONE good thing for pc gaming for the last …..pffft i dont know how many years. Its not hatred, its ms HATING pc gaming, everything they do is a freaking mistake, everything. I am suppose to say to them “thank you ms for your new garbage os and porting console games to pc with ridiculous drm platform” Thank you for the joke that dx12 is.
The reason this guy is a shill for ms is not because we dont like ms but because he knows EVERYTHING related to ms and xbox and he keeps defending all the stupid nonsense he does, he truly believes that ms and xbox are the best thing ever. That makes him a shill.
DX11 was great IMO! Also, DX12 like vulcan allows for MGPU any flavor without separating vram. Theres alot of nonsense in the business world when it comes to computing, and THAT is the biggest hurdles. I’m actually glad they arent open source.
not sure if you are on here quite often but he really does stick up for Microsoft on basically every issue i even think privacy concerns. I agree with him on some stuff myself and i’m one of those in the middle people when it comes to 10 things i like things i don’t like.
Basically i still think 7 is the best interface but 10 at least on my machines seems to be faster and even boot and shutdown faster. Settings app seems a bit clustered
This is true, I received a gift from Forza team for a post in their forums. It installed directly to my user account which my xbox account. Should I be angry about thier support? Nope. Unforntunately, my issue/bug I found still exists and hopefully will be fixed in the next patch.
dude i have to say i don’t even disagree with you a lot of the time but man even the way you word things sounds like you work for microsoft ha ha
If so, it’ll be virtually worthless. Shame.
it will probably like the razer gamebooster good for casual users but power users like most pc gamers might not feel a thing
I can’t imagine the footprint of other programs is so large that they affect performance on medium to high end systems
People expecting miracles with this. LOL.
Let me tell you one thing.
DO NOT HAVE HOPE.
if they let us disable the bloatware around windows 10 that would be great.
‘It is unclear yet whether this feature will be exclusive to UWP games or whether it will support Win32 games.’
John do you really have to ask.
“It is unclear yet whether this feature will be exclusive to UWP games or whether it will support Win32 games”
On MSDN they say that this new mode is exclusive to UWP:
“MSDN – Game technologies for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps
With the introduction of UWP in Windows 10, your Windows 10 titles will be able to span all of the Microsoft platforms… In addition, Windows 10 offers many new features that are particularly beneficial to games:
* Reduced memory paging and reduced overall memory system size
* Improved graphics memory management actively allocates and protects more memory for the foreground game”
I don’t think they were talking about the Game Mode.
Razer Cortex by Microsoft anyone? lul
DOS games of yesteryear?
I wouldn’t expect it making a huge difference in performance. To non-power users maybe, but to anyone who likes to keep tabs on running processes and services, it’ll be next to nothing.
Perhaps in poorly optimized, or games using a very old engine (Grim Dawn comes to mind) it’ll be noteworthy, if it works outside UWP.
“As such, this mode will – most likely – make games run faster on existing hardware.”
How, exactly, unless I’m missing something? I mean, outside of systems that routinely max out their CPU, GPU, &/or RAM usage, that is, & even then, sure, you might gain a couple of FPS on a GPU-bound title, but again, it sounds like a gimmick, honestly…..
After all, console hardware =/= PC hardware.
It’s nice & all considering the current state of PC optimisation, though on the other hand, I do hope this doesn’t just make things worse…..
“How, exactly, unless I’m missing something?”
MSDN:
* Reduced memory paging and reduced overall memory system size
* Improved graphics memory management actively allocates and protects more memory for the foreground game
Yeah, so? Besides, bullet points are just that, bullet points, ergo marketing gimmicks, 99% of the time, just like this one seems to be. As I said, how does this affect any system that doesn’t routinely max out its CPU, GPU &/or RAM resources? Let’s take me, for example;
I have a 3-year old system with 16GB’s of DDR3 RAM, which usage-wise I hardly ever see go over 90% with two browsers open + a game, & my CPU usage barely goes over 80%, so, again, how is this going to affect the non-casual who’s NOT running 5-year-old hardware (& probably doesn’t even have a DX12-compatible GPU in the first place, anyway)?
Stuff like this is great for the hardware-bound (i.e. conslows & casuals), but for serious users it’s just a joke, as far as I’m aware.
I’m just glad MS release their games on PC at all, I don’t have to buy a console just to play their games.
On the other hand;
– Mandatory Windows 10 upgrade.
– Mandatory UWP Store usage.
Sure, you don’t need to buy an Xblow, but it’s close to it.
I want sunset overdrive the rest are trash. Also no halo.
windows 10 suxs.. all my steam games were stuttering on fullscreen mode. only option is borderless window. with borderless, there’s no more stuttering and FPS go from 30 to 60. fuuu microsoft.
Hopefully this is just an option you can leave always turned on that will disable the stupid background tasks that always seem to eat up resources and tank your frame rate (like an anti-virus’s gaming mode) HOPEFULLY!!!!!!
PLEASERONI MOCROSAFT!!!1111!
Can they develop a “screw off” mode? It will be the best thing MS can do for pc gaming.
Without Windows, you’re life would be much harder
Really?
Expand, plox?
If this can whittle down the OS and anything else that frees up assembly resources, then we can effeminately expect performance gains. If xbox can get 4k on lesser hardware than alot of enthusiast PCs, and the thought behind this is to replicate that functionality, well… I see myself finally playing Forza at 6k @ 60-80 fps on High with my current hardware. Keeping my fingers crossed for the best.
“secret sauce” confirmed
cortana aint useless, i can pause music with no hands MA
or better give the users the choice to do what they see fit with the software, as they should
I want to meet a real person (not including illegal MS astroturfing or employees) who wants to give MS more control over our ports or games when they sabotage Xbox One games like Forza Horizons 3 to use one core so we can’t play the game at 60FPS. If I ever meet that person they are getting punched in the mouth.
If you think it is bad now with a XB1 at 1.3 TFLOPS, just imagine the nightmare we will have when they bring out Scorpio with 6. Look at Quantum Break on UWP nightmare vs DX 11 port on Steam. Look at Forza’s worse core optimization than DX 11 racing games. Look at how great Doom runs on Vulkan.
Look at the maker or reshade/SweetFX saying he has no plans to ever even get Windows 10 or support it and that he would probably support Vulkan. Just go away MS. You ruin everything. You sabotage our ports to try and give your console value, UWP is garbage that we can’t even inject SMAA to. DX 12 is garbage due to it being locked to 10. AMD has relive now so Windows 10 DVR is pointless because relive and Shadowplay are better. You offer NOTHING and all you do is take away from PC Gaming. Either support Steam with DX 12, put it on older version of Windows so it has total adoption or just leave the API to the Khronos group which includes Intel, Nvidia and AMD. You are a plague MS.
It sucks having Forza 3 on my PC and I enjoy the game more on my Wife’s Xbox1
Big part of pc gamers doesnot deserve games like Forza because of moral ugliness.
Become better people and then complain.
So it turns out you do have a thing against PC gamers after all, interesting.
What MS should do is to add PC-xbone crossplay for all their titles: that’s what’d kill any kind of Linux competition for good.
But but dx12!!??
I dont understand how this will help me, it’s not like I am short of memory or disk space or cpu cycles, even when i game with all my background programs running. Microsoft cant optimize the game’s code themselves