Microsoft's New Windows 10 Game Mode Will Maximize Gaming Performance (mspoweruser.com) 129
Microsoft has started officially testing a new Game Mode feature in Windows 10. From a report: Traces of the new option were found back in December, but the most recent test build of Windows 10 (15007) includes Game Mode in the Xbox app. MSPoweruser has supplied some screenshots of how you can enable the option, but Microsoft has not yet officially unveiled Game Mode for everyone to test. Microsoft's description lists the feature as a mode to let a PC make gaming the "top priority to improve your game's quality." It's still not clear exactly how Game Mode will improve gaming performance, but it's likely that Windows 10 will simply suppress system processes and other apps from taking too many CPU, GPU, and RAM resources away from the primary game being played.
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Sure, just play games 100% of the time...
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Probably But I expect if you are going to do multi-tasking background apps may suffer.
Similarly like how Windows modes for Server usage vs. Workstation usage.
Still for gaming DOS is superior. If only we could get hardware vendors to make standard Video/Audio and i/o hardware. So we wouldn't need drivers.
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On my home computer I can not imagine any background task needing any CPU time at all. I don't care if they suffer, I'd be happy if they died off. Instead I find that things are running slow, I open up task manager and I can often see stuff running that I don't care about. Other times I will see the hard disk light going full speed but the moment I open up task manager everything goes quiet, like the offending process is trying to hide (not good enough though, I can tell it's yet another svchost.exe). E
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Only Microsoft Approved games. Just any old game wont' work unless they use the necessary API to inform Windows to play nice.
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It's the new Turbo button!
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Some games were simply tied to the CPU clock speed (like Dragonfly [abandonwaredos.com]. Running at 25MHz, the targets would zip around, while at 4.77MHz, things were a bit more leisurely.
Re: Can we? (Score:1)
Hey woo it's like MS renice
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We need a "spyware" button just like the "turbo" button. Like the days there were software firewalls that had an emergency stop button.
Only universal windows app support :( (Score:5, Informative)
It was confirmed a little while back that this 'Game Mode' will only work on MS Storefront games, like Forza Horizon 3, Gears 4, etc. So it's going to be very limited for most PC gamers.
What's the point? (Score:1)
I was just think what is the point? Most new games are released to the various consoles. Seems like you can't hardly buy any of the better games for PC anymore.
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Console ports are the 'better games'? You are nuts.
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Your kid prefers console.
It's not relevant to the discussion. The best games _for PCs_ are not console ports. How could they be, having been written for a least common denominator.
If your kid had a PC he wouldn't prefer the console ports. The console games don't interoperate with PC versions (so the tournaments aren't dominated by KB/mouse players), he would not be able to play with his friends anyhow.
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He prefers where the games he likes to play are, and they aren't on a PC at this moment. When he was into Minecraft, he was a PC gamer, then consoles got it, along with more games he wants to play. He switched. He has access to a powerful PC, but does not like the games offered. Graphics mean little, he likes gameplay over all else. (I did good)
He has a powerful enough PC but does not play console ports simply because he has the console and does not have to wait a year to play, it's old by then. "He wouldn'
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Naw, the PC games are as expensive as console games or more so. PCs have flexibility. And if you've already got a PC then you can use it to play a game instead of having to buy a second games-dedicated computer. With consoles you have the same issues of exclusive games so that you may not get the games you want anyway (it's really stupid, a vendor that does this is intentionally ignoring large chunks of the market just for a tiny kickback from the console maker).
Basically a PC for me lets me play new and
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PCs or just windows boxen. Face it the reality about M$ game mode is just PR bullshit to cover over the probe, windows watching you masturbate, so will the vibrate mode and lube finally become available. The only one being gamed here is end users and thats by M$. Windows 10, I'll go latin and X marks that choice a bit fat nope, no way, never. Can't play the games, fine, wont buy them.
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Totally agree about the "PC gamer" userbase and that the paper-racing is ridiculous, HOWEVER:
I think that PC gaming is 10x more conducive towards smaller developers putting out truly creative and interesting games. Antichamber, for instance, is one of the only single player games that has really rocked my socks lately, and was basically a personal project at one point. I also think that competitive gaming is much more fleshed out on PC, and that you would never see shit like League, CSGO, and Doter on con
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Most new games are released to the various consoles. Seems like you can't hardly buy any of the better games for PC anymore.
There are major studios producing games solely or primarily or have PC exclusives, even more so as Sony and MS push the lifespans of their aging consoles, while PC hardware continues to improve. The improvement in PC hardware over consoles is important for many gamers. Even for games on both consoles and PC, if the developer puts marginal effort into their PC version it will typically have advantages for gamers like better graphics, better interface, more customization options, and/or competitive play optio
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First MS makes the OS to be crap on gaming and then it extorts developers to put their games into Windows store to get decent performance. Antitrust class action lawsuit is the next logical step.
Will it get as far as class action? I can easily see Steam attacking them single-handed.
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Scratch this, it DOES work for Win32. Now I'm interested.
https://twitter.com/XboxQwik/status/819977391535575040
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Right. So what exactly is this mode doing: slowing down everything that came from Steam, perhaps, giving advantage only to software that has paid up? This sounds dangerously close to the Microsoft that was "competing" with WordPerfect, back in the day.
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Games that may actually run better if you buy them separately from the store so that they're not encumbered with store features.
No steam = just about useless (Score:5, Insightful)
No steam = just about useless. Who wants to use MS store games only?
Re:No steam = just about useless (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft does!!! :)
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And when there isn't one for either platform? Yes that's a thing, my entire library is win only.
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I bought the X-COM series (the first 3) a while back. I could easily copy the DOS executable and associated files over to my regular DOSBox folder and play it. In fact, I keep my DOSBox folder on an SD card so that I can move it around to any of my computers and play it at will, even on computers that don't run Steam.
So surely, you're exaggerating. Maybe "some" or "many" games stop working but not "all".
(Oddly enough, some games on Steam that are obviously just DOSBox wrappers around the original game ar
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Some stuff with 8 bit calls falls over. In my case currently that is an expensive niche CAD program (which works well on linux under WINE) and of all unlikely things a USB dongle licence updater (need to keep a WinXP machine around to run it).
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steam = just about useless.
Your games, ALL OF THEM on steam will be invalidated and unplayable when your OS is no longer supported by the steam client.
It is not factually correct that "all" Steam games would stop working without the client, many would still run. And it could be easily worked around for most of the rest that do not use additional third party DRM like SecuROM or Denuvo.
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That's completely beside the point of the AC 4 levels up, which is that when the Steam client drops support for the OS -- so for example when Steam drops support for XP (if it hasn't already).
It's really quite irritating when you're having a conversation about X and someone comes in and starts arguing against Y. Try reading the conversation for a change.
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Change back that will get them.
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imagine that games running in 'game mode' highly increase the performance, so you get the chance of playing game x through steam with 40fps or through the windows store at 75fps. guess what is going to happen?
MS will put in code to make non-win-store games underperform, do you think this is never going to happen? it wouldn't be the first time MS pulls of something like this. sure, they might get caught and get a fine, the damage will already be done, talk to the companies who were in the same situation befo
Fail DirectX 12 (Score:2, Interesting)
So the improved gaming performance was a lie and now on to plan 2.
Re:Fail DirectX 12 (Score:4, Funny)
So the improved gaming performance was a lie and now on to plan 2.
Except it very demonstrably wasn't a lie, and providing another speed boost doesn't negate the first one.
I'm not sure if you're trolling or just really really stupid.
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Probably the last one. I'm finally beginning to accept that most people including technical people can't do simple logic...
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Unless you have been living under a rock or just smoking one, you would know that DX 12 performance is worse than DX 11 performance no matter the title.
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Which would be true if it weren't completely wrong.
Goes to 11. (Score:5, Funny)
Nigel Tufnel: The performance numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most OSs go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's faster? Is it any faster?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one faster, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your Grand Theft Auto. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One faster..
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten faster and make ten be the top number and make that a little faster?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.
Re:Goes to 11. (Score:4, Insightful)
pff.. vlc volume control goes to 200% that would be 20!
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It reminds me of a time when I tried to order a meal from a fast-food place. Specifically, I said "I'd like the smallest one you have."
He says "We don't have a small, we have a Medium." I said "Ok, so I'll take that one, if it's the smallest one you have." He replies "We just have a medium, we don't have a Small," and then just stands there staring at me.
So I look him directly in the eyes and I say "Well, you have a Medium, a Large, and an Extra Large. I want the smallest of the three." He thinks about it f
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Yeah, but he's probably talking about the Sacagawea dollar coins. You know, the ones no one wants but the government mandated itself to make and is now forced to buy them all to sit in some government warehouse someplace until they finally get melted down, and turned into President dollar coins, which unsurprisingly, no one wants either. Back to the warehouse!
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One, Two, Many, Many-Many ,,,
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15% of the population is below average intelligence? Speaking as a psychometrician, our models assume a latent intelligence space that is normally distributed (actually, while most of the item response models are parametric, I personally prefer mokken scaling, or ordinal IRT. Both however assert stochastic ordering for dichotomous items) which would make the realisation of 15% of the area under the curve impossible for the integral of scores from (-Inf,0). If 15% is the actual area below the mean score IQ,
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Very courteous reply, and always happy to talk statistics. I miss the old Slashdot.
Anyway, assuming a normal distribution, 50% of the distribution is below the mean (integral from -Inf to 0, assuming we've centred the distribution at 0). Basically what they're deriving from those numbers is a normal distribution with mean of 100 and sd of 15 (and therefore variance=225). The first two moments norm and variance define the distribution of a Gaussian variable, and from this we know the portion of the probabili
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For anybody missing the reference: "This is Spinal Tap" [imdb.com]
UWP titles only (Score:4, Informative)
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well those gamemakers could convert their games to uwp and push it though steam, done, gamemode support.
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Seriously, stop accepting Microsoft excuses and accepting their constant excuses. Windows 10 FAILED. It's Windows Vista again, but this time they're doubling down instead of cutting their loses on the worse of it and fixing it in the next edition they're just doubling down.
You do know that they did the same with Vista? Right? Windows 7 is just a re-branded version of Windows Vista. In other words, Microsoft did double-down on Vista.
Vista flopped because the PC manufacturers didn't believe Microsoft on the release date so they dragged their asses in the development of Windows drivers for the new driver model. Then when Vista was released, manufacturers were caught with their pants down. People upgrading to Vista ended up with blue-screens or just couldn't get their hardw
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Vista flopped because the PC manufacturers didn't believe Microsoft on the release date so they dragged their asses in the development of Windows drivers for the new driver model. Then when Vista was released, manufacturers were caught with their pants down. People upgrading to Vista ended up with blue-screens or just couldn't get their hardware to work. Of course, everyone blamed Microsoft.
Well it didn't help that Vista ran like a dog on low end machines. WinXP required 64MB RAM, Vista upped that to 1GB - that's 16x as high in a little over five years - and even that was terrible. I helped a friend who bought a mahcine like that with Vista pre-installed, it was simply painful. I helped him install XP and that worked so much better, since we weren't bumping into the 4GB limit anyway there was no major downsides. While they didn't officially lower the requirement again for Win7, it's generally
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It's not quite the same. There's still a Vista box here from someone who did an end run around IT to bring what was initially an utter piece of shit onto the premises. It wasn't just the drivers, it couldn't even connect to a MS Domain or Workgroup without some command line fucking about.
After all the fixes it's stable and like MS Windows 7 with a
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You're absolutely right, except for the part where you said increase gaming performance by going back to Win 7. That's just plain wrong.
Crap on windows 10 all you like but it quite demonstrably in all benchmarks both for gaming, and general purpose use is faster more resource friendly, and better at allocating multiple processor tasks than Windows 7.
Ignoring the speed boost you get with Directx 12, and ignoring the supposed speed boost that this system also provides, you STILL get better frame rates in out
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I think a part of the problem is that many of those tasks are not something the user wants to have running while they are running a game or other single task. Just dropping back to MS Windows 7 removes some of those tasks dedicated to advertising etc that would be better scheduled for a time when the game or application is not running.
You may ignore it as only a problem with low end machines, but the resource issues with MS Windows 10 make i
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Sorry but that is delusional. The resource requirements for Windows 10 are lower than for Windows 7 and 8. On constrained machines you get a nice benefit from upgrading Windows especially on RAM constrained systems. Windows 10 took freeing up memory to the next level.
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Perhaps thin
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Where the fuck did you get that from?
Absolutely everywhere. This has been tested, compared, measured, benchmarked, and written about in the press over and over again for every release of Windows, and they have all been measurably faster than Windows 7.
The i3 laptop in question went from working on MS Win7 to being unbearable slow on MS Win10
Fix your laptop.
and is really just a cowardly way of calling me a lair
Nope. I don't think you're a liar. But I also don't think you know what you're talking about either.
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It wasn't mine (please at least try paying attention), and I did fix it by rolling back to MS Windows7 which was the entire point of the story here.
As for your "absolutely everywhere", I must admit I have not seen such claims anywhere apart from advertising material which is clearly both overhyped and utterly misleading. If it's "absolutely everywhere" surely you can provide at least one link? Go on, prove that you are more than just a clueless fanboy and that you can think across the boa
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and I did fix it by rolling back to MS Windows7 which was the entire point of the story here.
So you took the second best option.
As for your "absolutely everywhere", I must admit I have not seen such claims anywhere
Then there's no helping you. Windows 8 and 10 were widely benchmarked in all manners including synthetic benchmarks like pcmark, and with specific test to claim Microsoft's advertisements (and yes you're right they did advertise that it has a lower memory footprint). It all comes out in its support. Do your own homework (but you won't).
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Deluded fanboy detected.
When you are asked to work on somebody else's computer other than your gaming rig you'll understand this thread.
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/usr/bin/nice -20 /usr/bin/wine ought to do it.
Ha! (Score:2)
Never sure what it all means (Score:2)
Every time I read an article about a so and so optimization it seems to me like marketing FUD.
Take for example that Windows was optimized for start up and that it's faster than ever before. This was all the rage a while back but I always found that even though you arrive at the desktop faster you are unable to start any applications for some time which could be as long as minutes. Linux or Mac may seem to take a little longer to load but are often functional a lot quicker on the same hardware.
Is this more s
Fix Skype First (Score:2)
Biggest annoyance is when Skype decides to suddenly remove focus from the game window, fucking everything up.
My system runs games just fine and dandy, thank you. Fix your other broken shit that interferes with my gaming.
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Use Discord [discordapp.com] instead.
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Discord sucks because no video chat. I like seeing the faces of my pals as I come in and fuck up their frag count on my other monitor.
I hope it was worth it... (Score:2)
That big fat paycheck from Microsoft.
How can you say "Game Mode WILL MAXIMIZE gaming performance" and have zero information on what it does?
Windows has had a "prioritize performance for the user focused app" since like Windows 98 or 2000. So you can't just say "it will likely do that" because it's already supposed to do that.
I'm ALL FOR new features, kernel improvements, and so on. For Windows or Linux. I really don't care, as I use BOTH on a daily basis. But FFS, either give us some information to validate
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What if I really, really, want to play in Windowed mode?
Back in my day...... (Score:1)
We used to call that the OS, you just didn't install a bunch of stupid stuff.
Nowadays it would appear that there is so much bloatware baked into what they are passing off as an OS that they need a special mode for games.....
SetPriorityClass Windows API function? (Score:2)
Microsoft’s description lists the feature as a mode to let a PC make gaming the “top priority to improve your game’s quality.”
So basically Microsoft is taking the following Windows API call that's been around forever and marketing it as a new feature: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-... [microsoft.com]
Brilliant Microsoft marketing, just absolutely brilliant...
Thats a great invention !!! (Score:2)
Maybe I can finally get work done??
Now if they could change the UI so that buttons are recognizable and repair the really bad win update system !
Microsoft innovates RENICE (Score:2)
Do you mean like renice [man7.org] does it on a Linux system.
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Needing cpu time and bandwidth. Looking for updates and getting data or full updates.
CPU and network use can be strange even on new i5 and i7 with broadband.
The ides seems to be to create a space in the OS to just allow what a game is expected to need.
Will all games get that support by default? Will that support be open to any developer or will it have to be designed in?