Last week Microsoft confirmed that it is working on "Game Mode" for Windows 10.
More info about Game Mode was shared by Microsoft Partner Group Program Manager, Kevin Gammill. Without delving into much technical details Gammill explained that Game Mode basically prioritizes CPU and GPU allocation to the currently running game in order to achieve overall higher framerates with a more consistent performance.
"Right now Game Mode is about biasing the game from a GPU perspective so it gets more of the cycles if it’s in the foreground, and from a CPU perspective both biasing to get more CPU cycles as well as avoiding what I’ll call thread contention for the game," he told Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
"I have come more from the console side of the business. Those machines are dedicated gaming boxes, obviously, and we have a learned a lot in fine-tuning the operating system for the original Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One and soon to be Scorpio. We’ve taken some of those best practices, and we’re starting to apply those more broadly across more Windows devices. Game Mode’s an incarnation of that."
Game Mode is not limited to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games, so all old and new games would benefit from it. At the start Microsoft will whitelist a few games that would run in Game Mode by default, but gamers will always be able to turn the mode on and off by pressing Windows + G while playing.
Game Mode is currently available for members of the Windows Insiders program and will be made available to everybody with the release of the Creators Update later this year.
