PSA: Windows 10 Game Mode

I stumbled across an article that detailed a microsoft engineer admit that the creator update that introduced windows game mode was seriously flawed. With game mode on it would induce stuttering and frame skips.

https://www.bit-tech.net/news/gamin...ws-10-creators-update-stuttering-game-bugs/1/

A quick google search revealed multiple articles and videos that discuss this as well. This epiphany seems to be about 3 months old. I'm not surprised I missed it. According to the article:

"Posting to the Windows 10 Anniversary Update Feedback Hub, which is available only to members of the Windows Insider beta-test programme but the contents of which has been shared on Imgur as part of a Reddit thread"

Us common folk, not apart of the insider beta test would have never have seen this information.

I turned game mode off and the result in SoTA was very noticeable performance boost. Less skips and stutters.

I did a quick forum search to see if this has been mentioned, and didn't see anything; so I thought I would pass the word.

 

For what it's worth... If you're on Windows and want the maximum performance of games you should revert to build 1607 (the build of Windows before the CE). All the Creator's Edition created was problems. As it stands there really is no fix for a lot of the problems the CE introduced as many of them are driver based issues from NVidia (dunno about AMD).

 

The Dev's posted a while back to make SOTA run in win8 mode on win10. Since I did that a few months ago, my hitching has dissapeared completely (and it looked completely sounds derived).

 

Good to know, I will try this. Thank you.

 

I just "upgraded" from Windows 7 - where I got pretty good frame rate and overall no performance issues - to Windows 10 and now I get extremely bad performance, around 10 FPS and it took me about 30 minutes to get from Desolis to Celestis.

Also, I can not use a recall scroll. It's almost like the performance is so bad that it doesn't register the double-click on the scroll. Even right-clicking on the scroll doesn't work; I don't get the context menu. Fun.

Just tried running in Windose 8 and 7 comparability mode and ... no real change.

It's like the OS is just not giving the process enough CPU cycles.

Can't even use emotes.

Oh, and I have no audio now.

 

Updated drivers when you upgraded?

 

Yes, I updated drivers. I also just did a full Windows 10 "reset" that required me to reinstall Shroud along with all my other apps. Did not help at all, except that I have audio again. Tried adjusting my Nvidia settings specifically for Shroud, but also made no difference. The performance is about the same as my cheap little laptop with only 6GB of ram and 2 cores (also running Windows 10).

Under Windows 7 I effectively only had 16GB of RAM. Now have a full 32 GB. So, not a RAM problem. Task manager says it's only using about 20% CPU. Tried setting the program priority to "high" and "Realtime". Also, no difference.

Even in my basement I get no more than 10 FPS and it takes about a second for any mouse or keyboard activity to "take effect". Scene loads are about the same as under Win 7. There's little to no disk activity except during scene loads.

... Just now on a whim, I checked (again) for updated video card drivers. It actually found newer drivers. Just after the Windows intall I did the same thing but it said I had the newest drivers. Maybe it does pay to repeat the same actions over again.

 

if you do the /bug command in game, it'll put a report that includes what the game thinks your system stats are on your clipboard, so you can paste it. it might be worth checking if what the game is using is what you think it is; perhaps it's defaulting to an in-built gpu?

 

Yes! Downloaded drivers direct from Nvidia and am now getting 34+ FPS
I can see tree blowing in the wind again and actually run!

Don't actually have an "onboard" video. I never buy motherboards with onboard video unless it's for a server.

Moral of the story ... don't rely on Windows to say "you have the latest drivers available". Get the direct from the "source". I shoulda known that.

 

Oh. Kinda thought it was common knowledge that Windows Game Mode is pretty mch the worst thing Microsoft released since Vista.
Sometimes I am forgetting what a tremendous nerd I am Oo

 

Awesome, welcome back

 

Thank you! Went straight to turn Game Mode off!

[Edit: Didn't seem to help much.]

 

This is great information to know, thanks. I played a considerable amount yesterday, and it ran pretty smoothly overall, but still had a few hitches here and there. I'm interesting to see how it goes with Game Mode off and running in Windows 8 compatibility from here.

 

I saw this and turned off the game mode. So far, my daily crash has yet to happen since doing so. It's been five days. The big test will be after I spend some time in Upper Tears.