Has anyone figured out why borderless window fixes framerate stuttering in many games

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce Drivers Section' started by adrock311, Nov 17, 2012.

  1. adrock311

    adrock311 Guest

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    [fixed] figured out why borderless window fixes framerate stuttering in many games

    Has anyone figured out exactly why borderless window fixes framerate stuttering/drops in so many games?

    The problem I'm describing looks like low fps even though a framerate indicator shows 60fps -- for instance in darksiders 2, when i stand still and move the camera around, the scenery that is in motion sort of moves in a slightly jumpy/stuttery way, rather than perfectly smooth, as if frames are being skipped , resulting in a low fps look to the motion.

    It seems like there must be something wrong with the way windows 7 handles fullscreen games , because so many games framerate drops and stuttering are fixed by using windowed mode and d3doverrider to force vsync?

    Two examples are : 1) skyrim, the camera panning would not be perfectly smooth unless i ran it in windowed mode, and same thing happens with 2) darksiders 2, the game was extremely choppy until i ran it in windowed mode, using a borderless window app to make it look just as good as fullscreen mode and forcing vsync on , triple buffering off , with triple buffering on forced in nvidia control panel,
    as described here:

    http://bitmapstudios.com/?p=1584

    lots of people reported doing this trick to fix stuttering in sleeping dogs and dark souls, also.


    my question is, what is the real reason so many games have this problem with full screen in win 7? is it a problem with directx and win7 fullscreen mode, and could we inform microsoft of it so they patch it?


    btw, this guy wrote a nice borderless window app here:

    http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2675769

    edit: since I posted this , i bought sleeping dogs on steam sale, and this title definitely suffers from the same problem of fullscreen stuttering, even worse than darksiders 2. running it in fullscreen windowed makes a huge difference. you can read about it here:

    http://forums.sleepingdogs.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1596

    update : FIXED!

    adaptive vsync helped but did not completely eliminate the stuttering with my GTX 670 4gb SC card, the final solution was to download an tiny program called d3d antilag from here:

    http://www.kegetys.fi/dl.php/d3d_antilag101.zip

    the game is smooth as glass now!
     
    Last edited: Dec 6, 2012
  2. I've never encountered this issue myself, in fact, windowed mode runs slower for me than fullscreen in games, esp. Sleeping Dogs. I notice it the most if I'm maintaining close to my monitor's native fullscreen res when in windowed mode. I picked up on it when minimizing a game to do work in other apps. Windowed would often cut fps in half until I went Fullscreen again. This usually is the same scenario with all of my other games. Maybe you just think it's fixing stuttering because you aren't noticing the fps fluctuating as much? Have you seen if windowed mode caps fps? If so that could explain it fixing "stuttering" if setup(s) struggle to handle whatever graphical settings the games are playing on.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 17, 2012
  3. adrock311

    adrock311 Guest

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    hmm, interesting, so what you are saying is that running the game in windowed mode could be having the same effect as using a framerate limiter , and thus increasing smoothness... if running a game in windowed mode effectively caps fps, it could be it, I"m not sure if it does though?
     
  4. I'm just speculating, but yes, that was my theory.

    Update: Found this thread which has some info reg. your issue with windowed mode. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/354343-33-weird-fullscreen-windowed-issues-games

    Quote taken from it,

     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 17, 2012

  5. NeoandGeo

    NeoandGeo Guest

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    It is getting annoying to me that almost every new game I play has the same stuttering and jerkiness when panning the camera.

    Have you found a solution for Sleeping Dogs that gives a fullscreen borderless window without stretching the image out? I tried a program by someone in the Steam user forums, but it never gave a full unaltered picture. The game is too distracting for me to continue playing in fullscreen.
     
  6. adrock311

    adrock311 Guest

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    yes, exactly, stuttering and jerkiness when panning the camera, in so many games. sorry, I dont know how to fix sleeping dogs, i just know a lot of people were saying borderless window helped
     
  7. Mineria

    Mineria Ancient Guru

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    Have you tried Process Lasso on gaming mode while running full-screen?
     
  8. adrock311

    adrock311 Guest

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    I gave it a try, it didn't make any difference, thanks anyway
     
  9. The Goose

    The Goose Ancient Guru

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    Sli...or the lack of it might be the reason
     
  10. drewho

    drewho Master Guru

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    Ive been noticing the same thing for quite a while now, ive posted this before that i'd read an article pointing out a serious bug in the nvidia full screen buffer, but try as i might i cant find the article anymore.

    if anybody else can find it or knows the link its an interesting read.

    also has anyone played "age of empires online"? Its a total stuttering mess in full screen but smooth in windowed mode.
     

  11. RecluSe

    RecluSe Guest

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    Only thing that works for me is to download Afterburner or EVGA precision and use the on screen display tool to cap the game at 60. Same thing happens in Borderlands 2 if I don't use the in game frame limiter. Dead Space 2 and the Darksiders games are the same too. These are the only games I have had problems with so far.
     
  12. SLI-756

    SLI-756 Guest

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    If you have 60fps movies you'll know the same bug happens with video playback too ie. drops frames when going fullscreen, i suspect a v sync issue, at least that's how to sort it with movies unless you go full dx11 mode with it (talking about mpc 64 bit).
    In games the bug gets sorted by capping frames it seems, of course sometimes it's game engine related.
    Basically a general framerate / v sync conflict i guess.
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2012
  13. OrigamiZor

    OrigamiZor Guest

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    I also notice that. More since r306 drivers. It's worth posting this on nvidia forum.
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2012
  14. adrock311

    adrock311 Guest

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    the only problem is , i was having the same problems with ATI too, which leads me to think its a windows bug
     
  15. NeoandGeo

    NeoandGeo Guest

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    A bit off topic, but went to play some Just Cause 2, and it runs perfect in every respect. So smooth without any judder. Wish that carried over into Sleeping Dogs, they both look like they are on similar engines?

    I talked to a community manager for Square Enix of London about the stuttering and performance issues in full screen mode and suggested they implement a proper full screen windowed mode and to review this thread for many people with the same issue and the only way to fix it was running a full screen window.

     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2012

  16. NorysLintas

    NorysLintas Guest

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    From many many years (at least 6 years, but can be over, my memory is lacking) playing game in windowed mode was "the" trick to boost fps and do alt+tab without crash or freeze of the videogame (alt tab is used to back to the desktop in order to reply at any im software or surfing in a webpage during the game) without waiting loooooong time...(because back to the desktop in fullscreen mode in past was very slow).

    The problem exist indeed since windows xp... in windowed mode a lot of games (old and not) freeze and crash less than fullscreen mode, like all bethesda games or all valve games...

    I don't know why because in these windowed mode, the games goes faster than fullscreen mode, but it's true.
     
  17. RecluSe

    RecluSe Guest

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    I had the same issues with ATI too so yeh something to do with windows I think.
     
  18. -Tj-

    -Tj- Ancient Guru

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    I think its something with fullscreen buffer and the way driver grabs the screen when it switches to fullscreen..

    Some games ie Skyrim, AVP2010 make a small screen on the upper left corner, some make a small 640x480 most Dirt series and then it can sometime conflict with it.

    btw none of these games produce stutter, although Dirt3 is a big buggy with build in triplebuffer and it can leak cpu usage which makes stutter - they didnt fix it still.
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2012
  19. Penal Stingray

    Penal Stingray Banned

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    Never had this issue but there could be other things that's causing the issue.
     
  20. Wagnard

    Wagnard Ancient Guru

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    for darksiders 2 , alt-tab out and then in.
    Stutter for me went away
     

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