Does Game Mode Make A Difference

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Placebo-Button like most of that things labeled with "gaming"

Thanks for doing these benchmarks. At least someone took the time to do this for us. Great video!

Wow. I haven’t been on this channel in years, I’ve been subbed for years and i last saw you was on 10k, now almost 150k congrats!

An awesome video as always . Keep up the good work :)

This is really timely. I was just in a reddit discussion with someone defending game mode as a benefit. Nice to see a methodical comparison. Thank you.

Very interesting! I didn’t expect a negative affect from game mode but I will still try to see if it works for my pc or not

An awesome video as always sir, I always wanted to know if it really does makes a difference thank you

I think Game Mode is for non-tweaked systems. If you already removed the bloatware, you optimize the power plan, unpark cores, have correct drivers in your system, etcetera, then i think Game mode could actually hurt performance more because it may try to "help" Windows when it doesn't need it anymore. I am gonna try with it off for a while.

Lowering thresholds may not quite be enough unfortunately. Your clock speeds are still the same and that may actually matter more than core count (depending on the game). Also there wasn't a way to drop gpu performance if that matters for game mode. Still probably doesn't help performance though lol.

I've suspected game mode is mainly used for the Intel p-cores and e-cores and I've heard it helps on Wndows 11 but most of the time you really don't need to use game mode.

In other words, 'Game mode' does exactly the same as 'Focus assist'.

I was testing out the Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling (HAGS) setting along with Game Mode, but I only tested in Minecraft, with and without a shader mod (really impacts the performance) and the results were interesting... Both HAGS and Game Mode on : Without shaders : max. 1312 / avg. 1285 / min. 1243 With shaders : max. 208 / avg. 205 / min. 204 Both HAGS and Game Mode off : Without shaders : max. 1382 / avg. 1363 / min. 1344 With shaders : max. 219 / avg. 215 / min. 214 Only Game mode on : Without shaders : max. 1354 / avg. 1333 / min. 1233 With shaders : max. 217 / avg. 215 / min. 214 Only HAGS on : Without shaders : max. 1443 / avg. 1416 / min. 1362 With shaders : max. 220 / avg. 218 / min. 217 The Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling was the winner. GPU and CPU usage stayed fairly the same throughout all tests, but game mode made the gpu% increase by quite a bit. I would love to see this being tested in other games too👍 I7 10700K (3.8 / 5.1 GHz) RTX 3060 12Gb MSI MPG Z490 GAMING PLUS

Hey Rich, one question regarding Windows 10: is there a way to set up specific colums of information to be shown in File Manager's folders everytime? I happen to have to change them all the time because Windows change the ones I've enabled to the system default.

Idk if I am facing a placebo effect but I have noticed a pattern with the game mode on windows 11 (not sure about Win10 but I fear it will be the same or worse). What happens here with me is that on my current setup of i5 10400F with RTX 3060 12G (windows 11 of course and HAGS on or off didn't feel the difference but for me I kept it on) on cpu bound games game mode off seems to be working ideal and performing the best as it can and the difference margin is hugely noticeable but when it comes to gpu bound games, game mode on seems to take away the winning trophy. So with that being said, the conclusion for me on my system is: CPU bound games = Game mode off GPU bound games = Game mode on This worked for me but I would love to see others test my theory as well and hoping to see good results. My system: Core i5 10400F 6c/12t paired with Evga RTX 3060 12G OC equipped on Msi B460m Mortar Wifi

Good video. I always kept it off because I just debloat Windows 11 and that is my game mode lol

great video

the video we needed

It's all within margin of error lol, it always felt like a placebo button.

Was this tested on 23H2 or which version of W11?