Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's New Windows 10 Game Mode Will Maximize Gaming Performance (mspoweruser.com)
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.
Sure, just play games 100% of the time...
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
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.
It's the new Turbo button!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Hey woo it's like MS renice
No steam = just about useless. Who wants to use MS store games only?
So the improved gaming performance was a lie and now on to plan 2.
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.
Game Mode will only work for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games so it will not benefit any of the games that would really benefit from it.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I bet it's just SteamOS in a VM...
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 smoke and mirrors? Given all the variables involved how do you come to the conclusion that this will be faster for ALL games, not the select few that are run for these tests.
I believe you can get better performance from conscientious game developers than a magic flag that may or not improve performance for a given game.
If I need to tweek my OS for every use then I'll be spending more time tweeking than using.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Console ports are the 'better games'? You are nuts.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
/usr/bin/nice -20 /usr/bin/wine ought to do it.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
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 hardware to work. Of course, everyone blamed Microsoft.
By the time Windows 7 was released, most people had upgraded to new hardware and manufacturers had Vista/Win7 drivers available. So it was a much easier transition.
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.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
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 of the box Windows 10 system than in Windows 7.
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 options. The PC hardware improvement is also important to many developers, particularly those who design their own game engines (e.g. Id Software and Epic Games), because a large part of their business is licensing their engine to other game makers for years to come. The game doubles as a playable marketing tool/demo to other game designers, therefore having it on the latest technology available (i.e. PC) has value to them.
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 your claims, pick more conservative wording, or just straight up tell us this is an advertisement.
Except the turbo button actually slowed down your processor for legacy programs.
What if I really, really, want to play in Windowed mode?
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.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
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.....
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-...
Brilliant Microsoft marketing, just absolutely brilliant...
We'll make great pets
Some games were simply tied to the CPU clock speed (like Dragonfly. Running at 25MHz, the targets would zip around, while at 4.77MHz, things were a bit more leisurely.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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 recognized that Microsoft put Vista on a diet. Three years later not only was more memory common, it actually ran far better on far less.
Other annoying features was an overly aggressive Superfetch, causing disk churn and annoying lacks in responsiveness. And while UAC might be a good thing, it was very noisy to begin with and lots of software triggered UAC prompts more often than they should or even when they didn't need to. For users that already trusted the software they ran under XP it was easy to see the annoyance and hard to see the immediate benefit. It was a whole host of issues that made Vista a giant flop.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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't enjoy the ports" Do you posess some kind of all seeing eye? How do you know what he would enjoy, he isn't you!
So it's very relevant when you have a person who does not care about the platform but the games, they go where the games they want are, and currently the games are on console. I am a PC gamer, but this year was pretty bad for me, I am thinking about a console again. Many of the "good" as you would call them releases were TO ME nothing but graphics fests with vapid, boring, been there done that gameplay. You I guess liked them more.
Ports could be better, but why deal with an entitled, whiny customer base, that's paying 20% less to begin with even though you have to exert more effort to make the game work. (all that hardware?) when DLC on the console will make you the same money? On just a handful of hardware configurations, with marketing from the console maker if you're lucky to boot.
"Science is the power of man"
Only Microsoft Approved games. Just any old game wont' work unless they use the necessary API to inform Windows to play nice.
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). Even after turning on the obvious culprints, like indexing files (useless) this continue happening now and then. Windows causes more disruption than viruses.
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 old games. Old meaning 10-20 years old. Consoles don't do this. A PC lets me use a keyboard and mouse that I use every day and am very efficient at using, whereas consoles have a relatively clumsy controller that cramps my hands, they're ergonomic nightmares. Though more and more games are becoming consolized you still find many games that allow more freedom than a typical console game - save anywhere, allow mods, raise or lower resolution, make backups of saves anywhere you want, flip over to the web browser to read mail in the middle, and so forth. PCs let me sit at my desk, whereas most consoles seem oriented to sitting on your couch, which may or may not be an advantage based upon the type of game or the type of player. PCs have many many independent game developers and you can make your own without begging permissions from anyone, whereas console games are in the walled garden all the time and a portion of the game's price goes directly to the console maker.
So if I put solitaire into the autostart folder, I can finally stop those annoying win10 updates and myriad mysterious internet connections???
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 !
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 consoles (aside from the input-barrier).
Most people don't upgrade the OS, you can see that perfectly clearly at the dismal %25 Windows 10 marketshare even though it was offered as a free upgrade and MS used all kinds of sleazy tactics to trick people into the upgrade. Most people end up with a new OS only when buying new PC's and the major problem Vista had was buckling to Vendor pressure and lowering the "required minimum specs" just before release. Those lowered specs simply were not good enough to provide a consistent and satisfactory user experience in Vista. MS significantly increased minimum specs in Windows 7, RAM requirements were doubled among other things
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.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
"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"
Do you mean like renice does it on a Linux system.
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 few bits missing, many parts on the configuration side. I think it's even missing "ipconfig" from memory.
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 it a very poor choice for some of the machines it is on. Over Xmas I made an i3 machine that is only used for Skype and Firefox usable again by rolling it back to MS Windows 7. The owner joked that the ten in MS Windows 10 is the minimum number of minutes it takes to start up.
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.
Where the fuck did you get that from? The i3 laptop in question went from working on MS Win7 to being unbearable slow on MS Win10, something many have observed. It's just not designed for the older hardware, which is fair enough, but unfortunately the user installed an OS that was unsuitable. Calling me "delusional" only reflects on yourself since reality argued otherwise, and is really just a cowardly way of calling me a lair if you think what I wrote does not reflect what actually happened.
Perhaps think a bit before handing out insults when someone is doing no more than providing an anecdote of where the right tool for the job is different to the right tool for your maxed out gaming rig or whatever the only computer you are using is.
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.
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.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
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 board instead of just having experience with one gaming rig with specs good enough for MS Windows 10.
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).
So no examples? Not even one?
Deluded fanboy detected.
When you are asked to work on somebody else's computer other than your gaming rig you'll understand this thread.