Did Microsoft or Nvidia Recently Add Downscaling in Borderless Windowed Mode? (Win11-Image Attached)

This is with DSR, DLDSR, and NIS disabled in the Control Panel and these options do not appear in Fullscreen mode (1440p is the native monitor resolution):

I noticed this recently after updating Windows 11 to latest and enabling the "Optimizations for Windowed Mode Games" option under Windows Graphics settings. I don't recall ever seeing this in the past.

Did Microsoft add this in a Windows 11 update (I found nothing on this Googling round, perhaps my search terms weren't sufficient though)? There is one unique advantage I've found in using these downscale options over Nvidia's (assuming these aren't from the driver that is) -- namely that in Borderless Windowed mode overlays like RTSS don't get wrecked like they do in Fullscreen mode using DSR / DLDSR for example. Not sure why that is.

As an aside, typically I would never use Windowed mode for games but in the case of Elden Ring it seems to lock my 144 Hz monitor to behave "as though" it were a 60 hz monitor which gives you V-Sync level input lag even with G-Sync enabled -- Borderless Windowed mode fixes this issue and the game caps internally to 60 while the monitor refresh is kept at 144 so G-Sync works correctly and you don't incur v-sync level input delay. For that, in prior From games (DX11 ones -- maybe that's why the solution no longer works in Elden Ring) you could get around this in Fullscreen mode by in the Nvidia control panel turning on "prefer max refresh rate" then disabling fullscreen optimizations on the exe (as well as enabling control panel v-sync for the profile), but that no longer works in my tests. There is a noticeable reduction in input lag switching to borderless windowed mode and I believe it is for this reason (monitor refresh overrides the game telling it to be 60 and operates as it should -- g-sync/144 hz with an in-game framerate limit of 60).

Anyhow, just wondered if anyone else had noticed this and if the source was the recent nvidia driver or windows 11 itself. If it's windows I wonder what kind of downscaling algorithm they're using (it might just be a basic bilinear filter or some such -- or, if it works like Nvidia's old DSR with a Guassian filter, I wonder what strength they went with, etc). Thanks,

 

Have you tried any other game?

 

elden ring that have this ability ... basically when you put borderless windows and set a lower resolution they perform a sort of stretching of the image. tombraider render in bilinear, enden ring is a little better.
I've been using this trick for quite a while, works on all games that render in a texture.
it is enough to force the resolution in the window, a tool did it but I don't remember the name.

update specialk SpecialKO/SpecialK: Lovingly referred to as the Swiss Army Knife of PC gaming, Special K does a bit of everything. (github.com)

i was using this to force borderless window and resolution.
combined it with reshade to apply additional scaling/sharpening filters.
es. desktop 1080p game 720p reshade 1080p

 

yes, the "Optimizations for Windowed Mode Games" was added in Windows 11 build 22557 https://www.elevenforum.com/t/turn-on-or-off-optimizations-for-windowed-games-in-windows-11.4943/

Supposedly it helps with VRR and autoHDR, among other things. The description in windows says it helps by using flip presentation model in compatible games.

(i literally just googled "Optimization for Windowed Mode Games" and it was like the 3rd result, lol)

side note: Elden Ring will not let you play online if you have custom dlls like reshade or specialk being loaded. This doesn't bother me because I prefer to play offline anyway, but if you want online features, you probably don't wanna do this.

 

Thanks, I had read that article but I don’t recall them mentioning adding “downscaling options” in windowed mode — that’s mainly what my thread here is asking about as I don’t recall ever seeing downscaling options in windowed mode unless DSR or DLDSR was turned on.

One thing that I also found a little confusing in that article is they say “compatible games” so I’m guessing it doesn’t do anything unless a game is using certain API perhaps?

 

Thanks that’s good to know

 

Nothing to do with downsampling, just a promotion of any DX9-DX11 game window to DirectFlip model.

 

I’ll test this when I get the chance, it should’ve but didn’t occur to me this might be as an ER thing. Seems odd if it is an ER thing that it’s only available in Windowed modes.

 

Many early DX12 games has this, from MS specifically. They thought for some reason that it's a good idea to decouple monitor output mode and game's rendering mode so that you can set some resolution in-game which will be higher than your monitors and it will just downsample from that.
The problem with this is that a) downsampling there is really low quality usually and b) you're forced to change Windows desktop settings if you want to run the game at a different resolution and/or refresh rate.

 

Thanks good to know -- yeah, I could barely tell any difference in quality from borderless windowed at native 1440p (+in-game TAA) and the dowscaled 4K option provided in windowed mode.

I also verified that this downscaling option doesn't appear to be available in every other game so it seems its limited to certain DX12 titles as you say. Thanks!