Fix game stutter on Win 10 1703-1809

If you shoot me your address I can send you some happy pills

Chill bro hehe

 

Standby is used as cache. Ayayay... Guys! Seriously! Guys! You can't even figure this out but you absolutely have to poke it manually!? Jesus...

 

Those experiencing stutter, are you on 8 or 16GB RAM?

 

Where's the 10gb ram usage games?

 

Check the other thread, you'll be quite happy with the findings!

 

There is a list of supported games for Creators Update build
https://forums.xbox.com/en-us/thread/8d058178-2329-4513-bc0a-1506c2942dad
Obviously most of them are not UWP ones.

It is not clear whether "supported" means "game mode on by default". I tend to believe that it means "game mode on by default" because I re-play one of the game in that list and noticed stutters after upgrade to CU, and stutters were gone after I disabled game mode (by official and unofficial means) and checked "disable full-screen optimizations" for exe-file. Though it can be that the latter compatibility setting alone did the trick.

 

Nah, the number of such games is very very small. This list is for Game bar support which was greatly extended in 1709 anyway so it's not accurate anymore.

 

Game bar =/= Game mode ?
Anyway I have impression Ital wrote "game mode" but meant "game bar" (plus full screen optimizations implicitly). He wrote about per game on/off, so I tend to assume he meant "game bar".

 

When I wrote "game mode", I meant "game mode" and not "game bar" or "fullscreen optimizations". Those 3 are different things.

Game bar is a utility program to control certain features (such as Game DVR) while playing a game, whereas Game mode is a setting to optimize CPU resource allocation when playing a game. You can toggle the Game mode setting through the Game bar utility on a per game basis, and that's really the only official way to enable/disable the Game mode setting.

That list of supported games contains games which support Game bar even when running in fullscreen mode. That means you can press Win+G in those games and the Game bar will show even if the game is in fullscreen mode. If you run an unsupported game (such as Batman Arkham Knight) in fullscreen mode, pressing Win+G won't cause the Game bar to pop up. The Game bar will show if you run the unsupported game in windowed mode (either border or borderless).

Fullscreen optimizations is also another different thing, as it is a presentation mode which combines the best of both Windowed and Fullscreen Exclusive modes. This setting is tied to the Game bar in that if you turn off Game bar in the Windows Settings, then fullscreen optimizations is also disabled for all games. If you still want Game bar support but not fullscreen optimizations for a particular game, then you can disable fullscreen optimizations via the compatibility tab in the game's executable properties.

 

Yeah and as a bonus it will do something to screen gamma, making it brighter or more bloom

 

A lot of steps for something that should work out of the box.

 

You need to use Game bar to switch Game mode on/off but otherwise they are not connected.

 

I am not entirely sure about that, though I can't prove otherwise, so I will assume that's correct. (Thanks for iterating my knowledge).

The only time I tried benchmarking FSE-v2 it seemed to work (with whatever unrecorded Game Bar settings I had at that point) because I saw a little but significant drop in the average fps after disabling FSE-v2 on the /exe basis with the "disable fullscreen opt" property. Thus, I had a hard time understanding why >50% people have problem with it (even with hardware and games similar to what I have and tried).

 

LOL yeah, nice bonus feature from Microsoft. It's as if MS is saying, "Sorry we can't show the Game bar in this game, but let us make it up to you by brightening the screen a bit for you instead."

What I can confirm (at least on my PC) is that Alt-Tabbing during a game when fullscreen optimizations is enabled behaves differently than when fullscreen optimizations is disabled (both with Game bar active). I can say that the Alt-Tabbing behaviour when Game bar is not active (regardless of fullscreen optimizations setting) is the same as when Game bar is active with fullscreen optimizations disabled. So that's why my conclusion is that disabling Game bar also disables fullscreen optimizations.

By the way, I retract my statement about Batman Arkham Knight as an example of an unsupported game for Game bar. In FCU it's now a Game bar supported game. FCU got pushed onto my PC only about a month ago, so when I tested BAK again in fullscreen mode and pressed Win+G I was surprised that the Game bar popped up. Disabling fullscreen optimizations in the compatibility setting reverts BAK to regular FSE where the Game bar won't show.

Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age is an example of an unsupported game where the Game bar won't show when in fullscreen mode. This may change in the next Windows SCU or whatever MS names the next Windows release update.

 

What was the difference in behavior?

 

With fullscreen optimizations enabled (and Game bar active), Alt-Tabbing is always fast, smooth, and consistent even after doing it several times. Also when holding down Alt-Tab to get the Task View to show, the screenshot in the preview window always shows up correctly no matter how many times it is Alt-Tabbed. In other words, the game is not running in regular FSE mode even though the game is configured in FSE mode.

With fullscreen optimizations disabled (Game bar active) or Game bar deactivated, Alt-Tabbing is not as fast, smooth, nor consistent especially after doing it several times. Also after Alt-Tabbing several times, the preview window eventually gets messed up where the screenshot becomes tiny or more than 1 tiny screenshots show up inside the preview window. This is typical behaviour of games running in regular FSE mode when Alt-Tabbing to the windows desktop.

 

Interesting... I've been mostly using fullscreen windowed mode lately due to not having alt tab/second monitor issues. Sounds like benchmarking all these options could be useful.

 

You may not find much in benchmarking, but what you will find depending on the game:

• SLI requires Exclusive Fullscreen to scale properly - i.e 'fullscreen optimizations' disabled
• DSR resolutions may not always be recognised with 'fullscreen optimizations' enabled -- i.e, again, disable it to get this to work

Which is why I've disabled it globally, as I use both

While I can't confirm this, as I don't use FS optimizations at all, but other reports have noted in-game stuttering going away when Exclusive Fullscreen is used -- remembering this was the default before Creators Update. Unfortunately, some games these days -- because of the bizarre obession for Alt-Tabbing (incidentally -- why do people do this? are you playing the game, or not playing the game?) -- default to Windowed Fullscreen, and don't let you set Exclusive Fullscreen at all. Assholes.