Game Mode: Too Good to Be True?

Game Mode is perhaps the feature that generated the most amount of buzz ahead of the launch of the Creators Update. So much so, that Microsoft actually had to downplay expectations, worried that people were getting their hopes up too high.

So, what is Game Mode? It can be toggled from the Game Bar (Windows-G on your keyboard brings this up), and it tells your system to reallocate CPU and GPU hardware resources to prioritize the game at hand when it’s the active, full-screen application.

The results, as Microsoft claims, are steadier frame rates than before, notably with games that particularly tax a given system’s resources. The idea is that if you’re playing a game and recording it in the background—or you have another intensive task running while you play—Game Mode tells Windows 10 to prioritize your game, so you don’t see major dips in frame rates. Unlike what some people were hoping—that Game Mode would strip down background apps and tasks while you’re playing, to give you hefty boosts to FPS—Microsoft was keen to stress that the results are about stabilizing frame rates, not boosting them. Microsoft also warns that Game Mode brings the most benefit to systems that aren’t absolutely optimized for gaming, so if you have an all-powerful rig packed with Titan Xp GPUs, you won’t see much difference.

Both Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and Win32 games support Game Mode. Microsoft keeps an internal list of games for this feature, and others related to gaming, which we’re told is updated more frequently than Windows itself.

There’s no word on how many games— Win32 or UWP—support the feature, but we get the impression that the number is enormous. A select, growing number of games—regardless of whether they’re UWP or Win32—will see the feature automatically enabled. Of course, disabling Game Mode on a game is as easy as enabling it.