Microsoft Bringing New “Game Mode” To Windows 10 For Enhanced PC Gaming Experience

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
Games may run better than ever in an upcoming version of Windows 10, which will reportedly come with a mode that will allocate resources to improve gaming performance. I bet the catch is that it will only work for games launched from the Windows Store.

Microsoft is working on a brand new "Game Mode" feature for Windows 10 that will enhance the PC gaming experience by minimizing resources used by running apps to almost nothing and allocating freed up resources to the game, making it run faster, better and smoother overall. …Our own sources have said this feature works similarly to how Xbox One handles running a game. Xbox OS, when a game is launched, will allocate resources to make sure the game is running the best it possibly can. Up until now, Windows hasn't had a built-in option for this that benefits games directly, but with the Creators Update that will be changing.
 
So what are the odds this is them optimizing performance on a dozen games, that's it?
 
I thought DirectX 12 was going to improve performance. Now Win 10 needs 'Gaming Mode' to help improve performance? How funny.
 
I thought DirectX 12 was going to improve performance. Now Win 10 needs 'Gaming Mode' to help improve performance? How funny.
No, this "news" is just pure speculation started by a Twitter user who found a file called gamemode.dll in a W10 new build. His original post showed that he doesn't have a clue how Windows or games work, and yet that didn't stop this from spreading.

The sad thing is it literally takes just a few minutes to understand what that file is if someone who had a clue inspected the exports and dependencies. But instead we just get this ignorant speculation repackaged as "news".
 
they brought over the sequel to shenmue to the original xbox. . .not that they had anything to do with the production of it. . .
 
Unless they have some way of either increasing the slowest non k I3/I5 or GPU efficiency truly optimized it wouldn't matter. Even then they would probably prioritize it to games in the MS store. If someone can cause existing engines to run 20-30% faster on NVIDIA/AMD cards than that would be cool, heck even similar increases on integrated would be fun to see.

pxc, thanks for the facts. Truly!
 
When has Microsoft ever did anything to benefit gamers except for closing down GFWL.
Normally I'd agree with you, but I can say that them having parity on the PC and Xbox One releases is actually a positive thing. Sure, it's mostly a reversal of their previous policies and something that would have been nice starting 15 years ago, but hey, it's SOMETHING.
 
Unless they have some way of either increasing the slowest non k I3/I5 or GPU efficiency truly optimized it wouldn't matter. Even then they would probably prioritize it to games in the MS store. If someone can cause existing engines to run 20-30% faster on NVIDIA/AMD cards than that would be cool, heck even similar increases on integrated would be fun to see.

pxc, thanks for the facts. Truly!
Oh I'm sure Microsoft knows better then the engineers at Nvidia/AMD, I assume if this does actually turn out to be a thing then it'll at best benefit people on resource starved systems.
 
Topic already in the Operating Systems sub-forum with discussion, FYI.
 
Is this confirmed? Because the original source is a tweet with a single .dll.

That's a lot of speculation for a filename.
 
Is this confirmed? Because the original source is a tweet with a single .dll.

That's a lot of speculation for a filename.

article makes it sound like they talked to other people in regards to the tweet and got more information from them. Although no word on who or what those other sources are.
 
Is this confirmed? Because the original source is a tweet with a single .dll.

That's a lot of speculation for a filename.
MS has told at least 2 sites that asked about it that it had nothing to announce at the time.

I posted in the other forum about this. MS just doesn't spring new features on developers, especially a feature like a new operating mode. A "Windows 10 Game Mode" would be well documented by now if it were coming out in the time frame speculated (ealy 2017), and would have been presented at a developer conference far in advance. The rumor is silly on a number of levels, but that never stops baseless speculation. :p
 
Serious question.

The XBox is running Windows, right? But its a stripped down and "lean" Windows. Why can't they build Windows so that you could reboot in "game mode" and launch titles from your library, and get all the efficiency and standardization of a XBox console?
 
Serious question.

The XBox is running Windows, right? But its a stripped down and "lean" Windows. Why can't they build Windows so that you could reboot in "game mode" and launch titles from your library, and get all the efficiency and standardization of a XBox console?

The Xbox is standardized hardware that runs a very limited amount of software compared to a Windows PC. Like many have pointed out, I don't think this means anything particularly on high resource systems. It might mean something to lesser hardware.
 
Serious question.

The XBox is running Windows, right? But its a stripped down and "lean" Windows. Why can't they build Windows so that you could reboot in "game mode" and launch titles from your library, and get all the efficiency and standardization of a XBox console?

the games don't run in the windows OS part. Windows runs in the base system and gives you the ability to run apps and do the multitasking. There is another OS that the games run inside of.
 
It would seem like this would be a matter of a relatively simple "shut off all services while the game is running and turn them back on after" mode.
 
I have a game mode on my PC. It's called Linux Mint.

1/3 of my Steam library is Linux native. All my favorite games are Linux native. You don't need Windows any more.
 
EnditAll2 works great at making Win 10 run games better. Little program has worked great for 20 years.
 
I have a game mode on my PC. It's called Linux Mint.

1/3 of my Steam library is Linux native. All my favorite games are Linux native. You don't need Windows any more.

I have a game mode on my PC too. It's called Windows 10 Professional.

All my Steam library runs natively on it. All my favorite games are Windows native too. :) You don't need Linux.
 
I have a game mode on my PC too. It's called Windows 10 Professional.

The Windows 10 install base has flatlined with less market share than a 7 year old operating system. Its so awful they literally couldn't give it away. Nobody wants a Phablet OS on their computer.

I was blown away by how far Linux on the desktop has come in the last two years. Anyone who hasn't tried it recently ought to. I'm running Linux Mint of all but one machine. All my favorite games are Linux native. All my hardware 'just works,' there are lots of really good games, no built in data mining or advertising, and it's a real desktop OS that respects my settings and privacy.
 
Last edited:
The Windows 10 install base has flatlined with less market share than a 7 year old operating system. Its so awful they literally couldn't give it away. Nobody wants a Phablet OS on their computer.

I was blown away by how far Linux on the desktop has come in the last two years. Anyone who hasn't tried it recently ought to. I'm running Linux Mint of all but one machine. All my favorite games are Linux native. All my hardware 'just works,' there are lots of really good games, no built in data mining or advertising, and it's a real desktop OS that respects my settings and privacy.

Linux is perfectly fine with native apps. I am glad all your favourite games got ported. Blizzard kind of ruined my SC2 experience with the introduction of their embedded browser battle.net launcher. I am fine with it throwing alerts at my face and missing a submit button but it craps on itself after an update. It's doable but deleting local instances of the launcher prior each start of the game gets old fast.

Give it at least 5 more years. Everything besides the games is there. Well, almost. Only latest distros, and not all of them, provide proper joypad drivers. Nothing is perfect
 
The Windows 10 install base has flatlined with less market share than a 7 year old operating system. Its so awful they literally couldn't give it away. Nobody wants a Phablet OS on their computer.

Yep. December and holiday sales should have been a big uptake boost for Microsoft, but once again people are dumping it and moving back to 7 in higher numbers than captive buyers ending up with 10 on preloaded retail machines. That's an embarrassment.

December Windows 10 went from 23.72 percent to 24.36 percent, a gain of 0.63 percentage points.

In the same month however, Windows 7 went from 47.17 percent to 48.34 percent, a gain of 1.17 percentage points.

Microsoft is going to have to face the fact they went too far with all the heavy handed tactics, forced-everything and privacy nightmare. They'll have to significantly dial back on the user hostility if they want to revive this turkey.
 
Yep. December and holiday sales should have been a big uptake boost for Microsoft, but once again people are dumping it and moving back to 7 in higher numbers than captive buyers ending up with 10 on preloaded retail machines. That's an embarrassment.

Not really sure if these numbers mean what you're saying. Sure, Windows 10's growth is sluggish after the free upgrade period but that was going to be the case until enterprises start their migrations which will start in the next year, at least for large enterprises that have lots of PCs that take a lot of time to migrate. I think the numbers are a little wonky in that Windows in total jump from 90.95% to 91.72%. Linux dropped from 2.31% to 2.21% and Mac dropped from 6.74% to 6.07%. I don't think that the Mac lost 9% of its market share in one month. And I'm sure Linux advocates would dispute that Linux flat lined last month as well. These numbers seem to have bad news for everyone.
 
As much as I'd like Linux to do better, I'm pretty sure most people don't want a "game mode" to run LESS games.

Microsoft has stated that 'Windows 10 is the last Windows.' They could care less about compatibility.

The market share of Linux on the desktop surpassed Vista in 2015 and doubled again in 2016. In only a few years we've gone from essentially no games to 1/4 of the Steam catalog and growing. I go weeks at a time without using Windows now. Linux is going to take over the desktop just like it took over enterprise and servers if Microsoft doesn't get it together.
 
Microsoft has stated that 'Windows 10 is the last Windows.' They could care less about compatibility.

The market share of Linux on the desktop surpassed Vista in 2015 and doubled again in 2016. In only a few years we've gone from essentially no games to 1/4 of the Steam catalog and growing. I go weeks at a time without using Windows now. Linux is going to take over the desktop just like it took over enterprise and servers if Microsoft doesn't get it together.
I'm not saying it's not better than it was, but it still has a LONG way to go for an avid gamer. We need more like 99% compatibility, not 1/3 and growing. Look at something like DOSbox. That runs ALMOST every DOS game out there. There are OCCASIONAL hiccups or rare incompatibilities now, but seriously, it runs almost every one. Linux needs THAT kind of compatibility for Windows games to start enticing gamers to switch over. Otherwise, for whatever strides it's making, it's still hovering under 1% of the marketshare for Steam (that doesn't mean all gamers, but it's a decent metric), which hasn't changed for years.

Windows 10 has lots of issues in its design and I'm trying to avoid it for as long as I can. However, I can't seriously consider switching to Linux if I'm going to have even MORE problems actually RUNNING GAMES than I would on Windows, no matter what other advantages are present for the OS as a whole.
 
I'm not saying it's not better than it was, but it still has a LONG way to go for an avid gamer. We need more like 99% compatibility, not 1/3 and growing. Look at something like DOSbox. That runs ALMOST every DOS game out there. There are OCCASIONAL hiccups or rare incompatibilities now, but seriously, it runs almost every one. Linux needs THAT kind of compatibility for Windows games to start enticing gamers to switch over.

DOSBox is an emulator. I don't expect t be able to 'emulate' a high end Windows 7 gaming environment on current hardware.

My solution to the old games problem is to keep one Windows 7 machine running with my steam library installed. I can stream to any of the Linux boxes or my laptop. Works great. Windows 10 is 'the last Windows' according to Microsoft, so no need to upgrade. It'll just be my old games repository.

Most of the time when I'm at home I'm watching my kids and playing Stellaris or Civ V/Beyond Earth on my laptop. When I actually have time to play at the desktop it's Kerbal Space Program, Cities: Skylines, or Mount and Blade. I have more, but it's at the point where I'm saturated and I have more games than I can play. KotoR II is Linux native and I haven't had time to replay it, same with a couple Total War Games.
 
Back
Top