If you play overwatch on Windows 10, consider disabling fullscreen optimizatons.
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r/Overwatchu/LovableContrarian (14552)

Some background

I play on a Dell XPS 9550 laptop, which isn't a gaming rig by any means - but it can play most modern games at 1080p on high. The one game I always had problems with was overwatch. Even on 1080p/medium/max frames 60, the game felt all jittery. I'd get a consistent 60 FPS, but it didn't feel like it.

Even weirder, even though my GPU wasn't struggling to push 60 frames, it would almost immediately jump up to 90 degrees C and throttle. Every time. No other games had this issue. It was all really weird, and I started searching for answers.

There were a lot of common "fixes" online. Most of them involved turning off "Game DVR" in Windows 10 or toggling "game mode." Neither of these helped me. So, I played for months with crappy performance and an overheating GPU.

The Fix

I finally stumbled across this reddit thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/645ukf/windows_10_cu_fullscreen_optimizations/

A Microsoft engineer was discussing "fullscreen optimization" and recommended toggling it off if you were having any sort of issues with fullscreen applications. It's not a recommendation I had seen anywhere else, but I figured I might as well give it a shot.

Night and day. I turned it off and everything in overwatch was suddenly buttery smooth. Also, rather than jumping up to 90 degrees and throttling, my GPU never got above 80 (with the same exact settings). I can now even bump the settings up to high and the GPU won't overheat. This one setting immediately fixed all my performance issues and dropped my temps by 10 degrees celcius. Pretty dramatic.

Other people say that disabling these optimizations solved issues with color, capped frames rates, etc. The default setting seems to potentially cause a huge variety of issues..

How to do it

It's easy. If you want to disable fullscreen optimization for just overwatch, navigate to overwatch.exe, right click > properties > compatibility > check "disable fullscreen optimizations."

If you want to disable it for games across the board (which is what I did), go to your general Windows settings (windows key > type "settings" > gaming > game bar > "record clips, screenshots..." OFF > UNCHECK "show game bar when I play fullscreen games microsoft has verified").

Note that you have to turn the game bar off AND uncheck "show game bar when I play..." Just doing one doesn't fully disable the overlay.

Cliffnotes

Windows 10 has a "fullscreen optimization" setting that is enabled by default. It basically allows for overlays on fullscreen applications, mostly so they can put their game bar on there. It also allows for overlays of windows volume sliders and stuff. However, it seems to cause serious issues for many people, including myself (especially in overwatch).

Disabling the game bar is a common suggestion, but alone is not a fix, as the overlay is still there. You need to disable the actual "optimization" setting to truly disable everything.

I'd recommend trying it even if you aren't having specific issues. Disabling it seems to increase smoothness and decrease input lag. Also, in my case, it dramatically decreased GPU load for some reason. It was night and day for me, and I am using a pretty popular laptop with really common nvidia/intel hardware and drivers.

That's it! I just thought I'd share since this doesn't seem to be a well-known solution, in case it helps someone else. Would be interested to know if it makes a difference for anyone else.

Comments (993)

[deleted]

That is the one downside, yeah. You won't see the little sliders for volume/screen brightness if you disable the "optimizations"

Holly fuck sign me up. This stupid ass oneclick starter and HP updates keeps fucking with me while im in game, and brings me out of the game tab by force. Ill be glad to fet rid of those shits

You just need a fresh OS reinstall without bloat ware USB what to so sounds like. Get rid of that shit.

[deleted]

money

I'm confused. If it's not a selling point, they're funding it, and there's no ads... what money are they getting? At least I've never seen a malicious battery manager from a laptop manufacturer.

Companies pay them to preinstall their software, even if its a free piece of software they usually have an option to upgrade to a paid version and customers are more likely to do this if they are preinstalled.

I found that most of the time I could get away with just uninstalling the preinstalled anti virus then disabled everything else from the startup and that was enough to stop all of this shitty stuff loading without going to the effort of uninstalling each individual piece of software.

Most of the time companies pay to join those 'pre-install' packs for 'oobe's - or out of box experiences.

Not just that, but manufacturers partner with software companies to provide a better 'experience'. You get 'free' McAfee for a year, free utility software, free migration software, ect - all selling points for the manufacturer. Good for common users, but not optimal for everyone - like gamers who just want a clean install.

Point is those are Asus own bloatwares so I'm not sure who's paying

A lot of those are part of the drivers for the computer the manufacturer has altered, or skins for things you can do natively in windows/done driver controls. Or even software's that allow you to use features better, like a secure folder fingerprint manager. It's an "ease of experience" thing that does just the opposite. ASUS battery manager might hold the profiles required to get advertised battery life, for instance. And with their logo branded in everything, some technically challenged people may say "oh well my Asus had this thing that made life easier" so technically challenged friend buys an Asus next time because of a good review.

I have an ASUS, and while it has a shit ton of bloatware, the only two that ever annoyed me were Giftbox, literally an installer for more bloatware, and ASUS update. Despite this, it was amazing compared to DeLL and Lenovo, which both provided up to 4GB of bloatware cancer

What do you mean no ads? The ad is the app installed on your computer.

If it's the companies own program, then it's installed as a selling point for those who don't know better. It becomes a selling point at the store. "This one comes with an advanced battery manager to keep your battery in tip top shape!"

Most of it is so when your grandmother calls in with a problem, they have a set of 'tools' they can help walk the user through to solve some common problems.

I wouldn't say all of it is bloatware, but a lot of it is annoying except under specific circumstances. For example, the HP messenger service that came with my laptop. 90% of the messages I got from it initially were things like "Your warranty I'd about to run out! Would you like to renew for $X?" However, about a year after I got the computer, the service told me about a battery recall for my computer due to an issue that affected some but not all of the batteries. Filled out the form and got myself a brand new battery for my laptop from it.

[deleted]

Asus utilities are fucking garbage bloatware. Lenovo, on the other hand, has some very useful utilities. Their battery/power management utility lets you change how your battery charges (to prolong its life if you use your laptop docked all day), whether you want the USB ports to charge devices when the laptop is shut off, and other detailed battery information.

Do they still have that uefi/bios spyware stuff these days?

It's Lenovo so yes

Asus utilities are fucking garbage bloatware.

Is it ?

I don't have a ASUS PC, so I don't know, but their stuff on Android phones are very useful so I'm surprised to hear they're doing shit on the PC side

[deleted]

I never registered my phone or email when I setup the computer though. How else would they have contacted me?

I mean... email works just the same ¯_(ツ)_/¯

The cool part of Asus stuff is that their driver software lets you pick and choose what software installs from the restore disk. It sucks to get on pre loaded with bloat ware, but when you do format the disk makes reinstalling everything a bit easier.

The way it works is a GUI pops up and it has a checklist. Simply unstick the stuff you don't want installed and the app handles installing everything else. It'll restart however many times it needs to but when you come back to the comp everything is done.

LPT: learn how to build your own Gaming Rig so you don't have "bloatwear" softwares installed in your new rig. Plus, it's cheaper.

If you have an HP printer you can get their "basic driver" which doesn't have the extra junk.

I as well have an Asus laptop however upon starting it up I immediately disabled and or deleting unnecessary bloatware lol. Saw that shit comin before I bought it

Cleared out a friend's cheapo computer of that shit, low end Acer and the bloatware had it running so slow they couldn't even boot, fucking retarded shit

Bloatware lol, never heard that one before. I work in IT and we get a shit ton of laptops for our staff and I've always heard it called "Freeware".. Bloatware is more fitting!

[deleted]

[deleted]

That sounds like overkill too. If you don't want to see it you can avoid messing with fiddly software and just put a post-it note over where it appears.

Seems like overkill. Just keep the PC off, that way there's no need to waste post-its.

Seems a bit overkill to me. Just stay in bed. You can dream about playing Overwatch with out any lag!

I keep falling down those fcking holes all the time tho, they just appear out of nowhere. Its bugged I tell you!

Nah, just this morning, i got disconnected from the best competitive match of my life!

Its all overkill now

Seems like overkill. You can just embrace inner peace and have no need for anything in your life.

So you want us to...embrace tranquility?

^^ nice try Zenyatta

That a pro genji?

Use PC Decrapifier

The great thing is that Window 10 has an option to reinstall without the bloatware.

I do this to so many PCS when friends/family say "its running slow" first thing I do is get rid of like all the "HP Optimization Engine, HP Beautifier Protocol, HP Protocol and Engine Optimizer."

AFAIK the "reset" now re-installs the vendor-specific bloatware. Originally when the upgrade from whatever to 10 came out it would just reinstall Windows 10 only without bloatware.

Windows itself has so much bloatware now that doesn't even really save you. Maybe if they made a skeleton performance version, which they'll never do cause Mmmmmm that meta data.....$$$

Try the LTSB. It's Windows 10 without the Cortana or Microsoft Store crap preinstalled. No Edge, either!

On older HP laptops with Beats Audio, the crappy software remains even after a fresh reinstall.

Just search for "programs and features" in your task bar and click on that. This will list all installed software, including BS you don't need like bloatware. Uninstall ALL the things!

I don't think it will help with an entire new window that takes hold of your screen… This is just for overlays on top of existing windows

That is different from what OP is describing. You need to uninstall those tools from Control Panel if you don't want them.

That is different from what OP is describing. You need to uninstall those tools from Control Panel if you don't want them.

This plus Microsoft's own bloaty stuff had me actually switched to Windows Server 2016 instead...

Heck, if it wasn't for Overwatch not having a native Linux client / not working well in WINE I would have switched to Ubuntu GNOME in a moment :P

[deleted]

what

GONNA CHECK THIS OUT, I AM WILLING TO GIVE THAT UP FOR SOME BUTTERY SMOOTHNESS...

THANKS FOR THE REPLY

WHAT?

GONNA CHECK THIS OUT, I AM WILLING TO GIVE THAT UP FOR SOME BUTTERY SMOOTHNESS...

THANKS FOR THE REPLY

WHAT?

gonna check this out, i am willing to give that up for some buttery smoothness...
thanks for the reply

How does this play with Discord Overlay?

The Discord overlay is injected, so it should still work.

Thank you! I noticed that Overwatch alt-tabbed quicker these last weeks but it came at the expense of the Discord Overlay disappearing. Will turn off Game Mode and the fullscreen optimization for Overwatch now.

[deleted]

Alright, thanks for clearing that up :)

that's actually really nice if it sets it to cpu priority as well, that way it is both faster and better than just doing it yourself in task manager or regedit

i just checked on the Game Mode setting

Where do you set that?

IDK about Overwatch specifically but the Discord overlay itself is known to cause stuttering/frame drop issues in other games. Just another thing to watch out for if you get weird issues in certain games.

Good old steam overlay still works flawless aswell, for other people wondering.

Wait... Overwatch... Steam. Am I missing something?

Was more referring to steam without overwatch. But maybe you can add overwatch as a steam game and have the overlay? :)

You need a little script to get that running. Just adding a shortcut in Steam to the Overwatch exe does not have the desired effect.

Here it doesn't work with optimization disabled...

An injection? Does it cause autism!?

[deleted]

Discord is a voicechat program (free, and great, you should check it out--https://discordapp.com/), and it has an overlay that lets you see the names of people you're voice-chatting with while you're playing a game.

By default, the overlay shows in the top left corner of the screen (though you can move it), and shows the avatars and usernames of people actively speaking, or of everyone in the voice channel with you, if you like. Or nobody, though in that case there's no point in using the overlay.

[deleted]

Click the little gear icon in the bottom left by your name, then check out the Overlay button under the App Settings header. The Games tab is also relevant, lets you pick which games to display the overlay in.

Lemme know if you still can't find it, I can post screenshots

It completely disables anything, including any type of overlay, from appearing.

Well it's a good thing I can can judge volume and brightness by other means than a slider.

I can't. How will I know how loud my volume is?! D:

downside

Unless you're 90% of users who don't want the Xbox app to even be on their machine.

Out of curiositiy where do you see little sliders for brightness and volume?!

You dont see them? They appear in the top left corner when you adjust one of the settings in windows 10

How do you even adjust brightness in windows 10?

You press the brightness up or down button on your keyboard and fn if u need to. Tbh i honestly cant tell if im getting trolled lol

Sorry I'm not trying to troll but my keyboard doesn't have a brightness button ;-;

Because you're.... on a desktop maybe?

Lol aight wasnt sure xD are you sure? Most likely 2 buttons, one is probably a sun with an up and the other would be down. My old computer had in on the f1,f2,f3, etc keys, my current has it on the up and down keys.

Can't check rn but it's probably one of those, I'm pretty sure it's not on the function keys cuz that's the usual place and I've checked it, thanks for the help!

Doesn't show up when in overwatch (if optimisation is disabled for only overwatch) or doesn't show up at all anymore?

As long as they still work idgaf

I have a question, if I uncheck the "show game bar when I..", do I need to ALSO check the "disable fullscreen optimization" via right clicking the overwatch.exe?

Can you confirm that I only need to uncheck the "show game.." (and turn off game bar of course)? Or do I need to uncheck "show game.." AND check "disable fullscreen optimization"?

Thanks a bunch if you can answer this!

one question,windows update still shows up and minimizes your game ?

Fucking update. I've heard that the creative update broke Wacom tablet drivers, and seeing as I need mine I haven't done the update.

It interrupted me mid game. Piss off notification...

Does it hide the "activate windows" text? Asking for a friend.

edit: IT DOES (in games, I meant). When I first built my PC, the activate windows text never popped up in games. Then I guess an update reactivated the Xbox settings.

Dude, install kmspico and then restore your os. Uninstalls kmspico but keeps windows activated (updates too)

Do they matter to you?

In my case, OW was the only game that didn't show the volume notification, but now, with "disable fullscreen optimizations" checked, I can finally see the volume :)

On a somewhat-related note, something that really boosted performance for me was disabling the Blizzard Launcher upon running Overwatch. To do this, go into Blizzard Launcher's settings, General tab, find the drop-down for "When I Launch A Game" and set it to "Exit the Blizzard app completely". Why this helps is not intuitive to me, but it is what it is. (Also, you will still be able to message people on Battlenet.)

[deleted]

Hey man, us programmers just do what the manager/product/UI/UX designers tell us to. More often than not it takes social media posts and other feedback to get them to change their minds.

Can confirm. In my case business analysts.

[removed]

This just made me spit coffee all over my phone... good morning to you to lmao. This seriously made me lose my shit laughing this morning, gg m8 potg right here.

Ideally it would just pause all that stuff while another application is on top, but there are a lot of potential edge cases that are hard to predict there. Easier to just let it run, and it gives the most intuitive UI to the user, but isn't optimal as far as resource usage goes.

It might seem obvious to you, but many users might go "where the heck is the launcher? I had it open!"

Video player does indeed pause when you are out of focus, but it used to not do that

a programmer isn't an idiot when he assumes that an animated video in background is killing your GPU. Especially when it doesn't get rendered anyway when you play in (real) fullscreen.

OMG THERE IS A SETTING FOR THIS?

I have been closing it down every time after opening overwatch for ages, sometimes I forget through and wonder why I cant hit anything, it completely messes things up for me and I think its the youtube video playing

just curios: have you flash installed?

does minimizing to tray have the same effect?

Actually i checked this right now, it used to eat like 10% of my cpu even when minimized but now an update made build-in player pause when you are out of focus. Just try it

[deleted]

Exiting the launcher gives more performance gain than exiting chrome, ts, discord, and spotify combined.

FWIW, when I first started playing OW (public beta), I noticed that Battle.net seemed to really tax my system and caused sub-60 framerates with my FX-4300. So, of course, I found that setting and made sure it wasn't running in the background. Since then, it looks like the game and the app have gotten some optimizations, but I didn't really do much testing until I upgraded to a Ryzen 1600X, which shifts the bottleneck to my GTX 960, even when overclocked at low settings. So I've just been running it in the background since the upgrade.

TL;DR, it'll probably help if you have a lower-end CPU that's bottlenecking your GPU, or if you're going for super-high framerates.

You the second MVP

You are the hero I needed

Yep, I got an extra 30fps doing this.

Are you sure people can still message you??

They can, while you're ingame

apparently the Launcher has some trouble with a certain release of the AMD driver, disabling hardware acceleration might help, too

I'm pretty sure all Blizzard games use peer-to-peer downloading.. so by closing the app, you're no longer constantly uploading games for others to download, so you're saving your CPU

Dude you're my new favorite hero of the game.

Disabling "fullscreen optimizations" = POTG

I'm only moderately computer savvy. Do you think this would help with an issue I've been having the last few weeks? I keep getting a pop up and my game crashed. "Rendering device lost. Closing application"

that sounds like your graphics card is not seated(placed) correctly for some reason or possible dying. what are you running on if you don't mind me asking

This is not necessarily true. There are toooons of people on blizzard forums that are getting this same error message with properly seated/healthy video cards since the beginning of the game's lifespan. I used to get this same error on a properly installed GTX 1070. I knew it wasn't my video card as every other game played fine for hours and hours with no performance issues. At the time, the 1070 wasn't actually a supported card in Overwatch (this was right when Overwatch came out), which basically boiled down to a driver issue.

/u/PortraidBird, I recommend doing a full GPU driver uninstall with something like DDU to make sure all remnants of display driver stuff is wiped clean, and then installing the latest version of AMD drivers.

That won't necessarily fix your problem, and if it doesn't, I suggest searching and reading through blizzard forums as there are various solutions (some kind of "out there", but worked for some people) people have found over the months on how to fix this error message.

best of luck.

I had a similar issue on one PC and I did DDU and everything to try and fix it, nothing worked. Eventually, after a week of trying nearly everything I started removing program after program. Finally I realized that the latest Windows Update (Creators) added an sparkly new software piece to Windows Defender, called Windows Defender Security Center. This new Security Center is not disabled even when you disable Windows Defender. After some googling and searching I discovered the only way to disable it is through regedit. After disabling Windows Defender Security Center I haven't had any 'Graphics Hardware Blocked' or 'Rendering Device Lost.' errors.

I believe my issue was related mainly to the fact that I run third party AV software, so if you don't this may not apply to you. But Overwatch was the only game giving me shit and even after disabling my Antivirus software and double checking that defender and windows firewall were off in settings, I still was crashing. Only disabling windows defender security center solved my crashes.

I believe I was also having an issue with OW crashing because of Windows Defender (after the Creators update) and my third-party AV. Can't say for sure since I did a system restore to way back when and that fixed it.

It could also be an unstable overclock.

yea, unfortunately the error applies to many causes, which is why there are so many threads about it on blizzard forums. What seems to help one person doesn't necessarily help the next, although there are some common themes at play: video driver conflicts/corruption, 3rd party anti-virus, and overclocking of the GPU (in fact some people had to underclock their card just to get OW to be stable) are the three I see pop up the most on those forums.

Yeah, it's kind of shitty so many problems give the same error message. But I guess they all sort of result in the driver crashing so that's the error we get.

I've been having this issue for the last couple months, but only if I have something like a browser running in the background. If I only have Overwatch running and nothing else, I never get the error at all.

if you aren't playing in fullscreen and instead in windowed or borderless windowed, I bet that would solve the issue as well in your case -- to play in fullscreen. Then again, like I said everyone's situation seems to differ.

I did try that, and it didn't resolve the issue. I'll have to try OP's suggestion and see if that changes anything.

Yeah, it's definitely not a guaranteed hardware issue. I've never had the game crash, but if I try to render a replay in 3x supersampled 4k I get that error every time.

/u/PortraitBird don't do a full uninstall. Try looking for a GPU Scaling option on your GPU's settings and make sure it's turned off. If it's on this should completely fix your issues. If you have a radeon card, just search in cortana for AMD and AMD Settings should appear. It will be under the Display tab :p

rendering device lost error is totally driver based and it took me forever to find that out, upvoting for real news

I don't normally surf the blizzard forums so I didn't know that was a common error, thanks for the knowledge

Windows 10

Mobo: MSI Z97 Gaming 5 CPU: Intel i7-4790k

Graphics card: AMD Radeon R9 200 series (I'm pretty sure its an R9 290)

8GB RAM

I don't play much at the moment, typically just Overwatch and WoW. Only have this issue with Overwatch.

This is relieving to read because my rig is almost identical to yours (except with 16GB RAM and an R9 390x). My game ran perfect up until the Doomfist update and now I'm getting throttling and "Rendering Device Lost" errors too. Overwatch has been the only game giving me new issues. Maybe Blizzard accidentally broke something in the last update?

Maybe. I guess we'll find out sometime soonish hopefully. It's just a little frustrating in comp :(

You should be able to reproduce this error at the menu screen if you let it sit there long enough, as it runs full speed (make sure fps cap is disabled/300 in options). Verify this and then test again with -50 MHz to both core and memory clocks on your card with something like Afterburner. If the problem goes away, try doing just -50 on the core and leave memory at stock and test again. Some people fix this by downclocking both, and other times you can fix it by just downclocking one of them (either core or memory). Shouldn't take more than an hour or two of testing to get that figured out.

This fixed the issue for me last year.

Edit: you can also test while in-game, but it generally takes longer for this error to occur when playing than it takes while sitting on the menu screen (because the menu goes full throttle with no interruptions, and when playing your card will cool down between matches/deaths/etc)

Is your CPU OCd? I got this error when I tried to push a high OC, when I got it I went directly to revert it and never had that error since.

Have you updated your drivers recently? I upgraded to 17.7.2 and have been getting it since, downgrading to 17.7.1 should help. (On an R9 270 fwiw)

Radeon Crimson 17.7.1

Yep, the most recent driver causes people to crash in OW. if you're on AMD, don't use the most recent one, something like 17.5.1 works great

Jumping on the train to confirm, went back to 17.6.2 and am no longer getting that crash

Holy. Thanks man!

Downgrading has worked (So far). Two days since I've had a crash!

That sounds like a GPU or motherboard issue, could be drivers. Can you post what your specifications are? Edit:17.7.2 drivers are broke

Windows 10

Mobo: MSI Z97 Gaming 5 CPU: Intel i7-4790k

Graphics card: AMD Radeon R9 200 series (I'm pretty sure its an R9 290)

8GB RAM

I don't play much at the moment, typically just Overwatch and WoW. Only have this issue with Overwatch.

I'm think it might be an OW specific driver issue then. What driver version are you running, I can look it up.

Software version 17.7.2 for my graphics card. tbh that would make sense because I started having the issue after I did an update. Updated it a second time and still happening. I just don't know how to fix it ;_;

I think you should do a clean install of a previous driver. Looks like there are some people on the overwatch community forums and support forums that have had issues as well. But it is a mix of issues with old and new drivers. More examples. Looks like you should roll back to 17.7.1.

^Edit: ^added ^more ^info

Thank you for sharing this. I've been getting the rendering device lost error for the past couple weeks. I'm close to getting a penalty for leaving matches because of it. I'm going to give my rig a nice cleaning and try this fix tonight.

Doing a clean install definitely helped. Haven't had a crash in two days, bless. I haven't been playing as much as I usually do but we'll see over the next few days. But it looks promising :) Thanks for the help!

I have GTX 960 and I have this issue. I've tried most of the fixes but I'm open to any suggestions.

Does it only happen on OW? Are you running the latest nvidia drivers? I just checked 384.94 release notes and there aren't any known issues with Overwatch.

yeah, only with overwatch. Yes all drivers are up to date, but I don't know the last time it happened. It happens pretty randomly.

Try this. Hopefully that will work because you get a lot hits with different solutions on google.

yeah, every thread is different because there are lots of different causes :| I just crashed while playing lucioball, my first game of the night. I went back and updated my drivers.

I've scanned and repaired my games as well as complete uninstall and reinstall.

Still no dice.

I've tried limiting fps. I've tried reinstalling windows. So many threads. The only one I haven't tried is someone's regedit fix which I think is too risky in my mind.

Try downclocking your GPU and see if it works.

I have a sneaking suspicion this game doesn't like GPU overclocks (or even basic boost clocks if you are unlucky) based on my experiences, and other's experiences. But I need more data.

I haven't tried that but I'm not overclocking my GPU. You can't with the 960.

Are you a pro with gpu and overclocking? I'm not having problems but would like to pm you some questions

Had the same issue with 17.7.2. I uninstalled AMD and did a clean install with 17.1.1 and it solved the issue for me.

Worked for me! Haven't crashed in two days :) Wanted to just say thanks for the advice!

I am having the same problem with my r9 390 using 17.7.2 IT only happened after updating.

Do you have an AMD gpu? Might want to try their beta drivers especially for their rx480

Where is the beta for rx480? I don't see anything new as of last night for an "optional" driver

Do you overclock your gpu? I have a pretty similar setup?

My gpu is still on the factory default (which I don't think is clocked at all)

Yeah a bunch of people have said that it's probably the driver. So I downgraded and haven't had an issue since.

Hey man, glad to hear it. May the meta be forever in your favor :P

If you really need help you would post your specs. But if anything, just pull your graphics card out(really easy) from the motherboard give your inside a quick dust can spray everywhere you see dust then put the graphics card back in. I would also try downloading ddu and reinstalling your drivers.

I had this when it first came out and I replaced my power supply. Mine was like 8 years old though with new hardware.

Pretty much everything in my pc is a year and a half old or so. Did a big upgrade in January 2016

Sorry, I am prodding. What kind of PSU is it?

Corsair CX750M

I have the same issue, just out of the blue. It seems like a lot of people have been getting this issue since the Doomfist update. I've tried rolling back my drivers, dunno if that will help but. It might /not/ be your hardware, it might be an Overwatch issue. It seems unlikely, but previously I was getting redscreen crashes playing Overwatch (typically power or heating issues to your GPU), which wound up being Overwatch having a corrupt file somewhere that I fixed with "Scan and repair".

The point is, don't panic thinking your GPU is busted. Give it some time, try repairing your OW install and rolling back drivers, it might just be something on Blizzard's end that needs fixing :)

This happens to me when I alt-tab just as the game is starting up. I've never had it happen any other time. I have a GTX 960.

I have a 960 as well and it happens during Comp games :|

I updated my graphics drivers a few days ago after a few months and started getting that. After a revert it fixed. Some people have reinstalled and that fixed it as well

Try downclocking your card by 50mhz while playing overwatch or reinstalling drivers clean. Some cards even at stock speeds get this issue (usually factory overclocked cards, but not always)

I fixed this by enabling GPU scaling in crimson settings, (amd).

Theres probably something similar for nvidia

I used to get that issue a ton. I don't really know what fixed it tbh. I think I updated graphics drivers and deleted nvidia GeForce experience and also play on low settings. I think I ran ccleaner too. I know my graphics settings in game got glitched once and switching settings so the restart required button came up in overwatch. Restarting solved that issue. But now I never get that device lost issue. I didn't change anything with the hardware.

me too! I've updated my drivers and everything. It hasn't happened for a while after I changed my game to full screen.

This is caused by your graphics card losing connection. I had this issue for over a year when I found out it's actually a bad factory overclock on my GPU.

Download something like MSI Afterburner and underclock you GPU by like -10hz and that solved it for me.

On top of the other suggestions here, I'll suggest cooling your GPU better. Either ramp up the fan speed, decrease the voltage (may cause instability if you don't also lower the clock speed) or just decrease your graphics settings and limit your frame rate.
I had this issue and I believe this is what solved it. I was getting roughly 85 degrees, and now it's down closer to 70 and I no longer have the problem.

If you are overclocking the GPU, roll the clocks a bit lower, Overwatch is Tempermental as hell about gpu memory clocks, a stable clock on some games crashes in OW, if you're not OC'ing and you're on AMD, rollback your drivers, the most recent one causes crashes

I've had this issue before, seems like resetting my pc to factory settings fixed it.

Do you have an AMD card? I started getting this error when I upgraded to the latest version of the drivers, but it went away when I wiped the driver using DDU then installed an earlier version.

Hey just wanted to hit you up and say thank you :) Took your advice (And the advice of a few others) and haven't had the issue since. Still TBD if it's still an issue, but it's been two days and no crashing.

Hey, that's great :D I had that same problem for a while, rolling back my drivers was the last thing I did and I wish I did it way earlier :P

When overclocking my gpu it did that a few times. I just turned something down.

/u/LovableContrarian main btw

You said you tried disabling game DVR and then your solution is exactly the switch to disable game DVR LOL

cue POTG music playing on a video recording of desktop settings, with "NERF THIS" playing as Full screen optimization is turned off

My GPU always turned into a radiator as soon as I started Overwatch. Thank you very much!

If I have Anni version still, do I have to worry about fullscreen optimization? Should I update to Creators so I can disable it?

I just got my XPS, and was noticing something odd happening with the framerate from time to time.

I would have never fixed it (or known how) without seeing this post, thanks so much

Pretty sure this means you have to change your flair to Sombra.

Does switching to borderless windowed also do this?

I'd just like to point out, that if you have nVidia graphic card, I think OP has the same exact GPU as me, disabling in-game overlay for Geforce Shadowplay/Share also helps.

Is there a way to disable the overlay while keeping the actual shadowplay recording active?

I am not sure, I never tried it myself, but I'd say no.

[deleted]

That's weird, I don't have any microstutters due to shadowplay. Might be worth doing a clean install of the nvidia driver and GFE, and check your recording settings. I keep mine on low (15 Mb/s) and the quality is still really good at 1080p60.

how do you disable the geforce overlay?

No, and even if there was, there wouldn't be much point. The nvidia overlay has an absolutely minor effect on system performance compared to the actual recording. If your system isn't running so well when recording then it's the recording function you need to turn off, really. The nvidia overlay sure doesn't help, but it's the recording which is really eating up your system resources.

Yea that's what I thought. The performance hit is so minor I leave it on. But the way that comment was phrased made me think maybe there was a way to kill the overlay and keep recording enabled.

Didn't overwatch just add their own version of shadowplay? Or do you prefer to just keep it all in one place?

Well that's just for random highlights, sometimes I like to record full games.

Settings > In game overlay > HUD > Status (and Camera)> off

On a similar note, if you're using G-Sync, you'll have noticeably higher frame rates if you use fullscreen instead of borderless windowed.

on windows 10 borderless windowed forces vsync because of desktop window manager, so fullscreen is always better. dont know if theres a way around it

What you're saying is generally true for non-gsync displays, but fortunately, IS NOT the case for gsync-enabled displays.

In the case of gsync (enabled for windowed and full screen), Windows DWM syncs itself to the refresh rate of the monitor displaying the 3D-rendered game.

Still, there are usually two downsides for running in borderless windowed mode with gsync: (1) DWM usually introduces a single frame of input lag in borderless windowed mode; and (2) there's a 5% or so decrease in fps in borderles windowed mode.

As for the first issue, some tests have shown that in Overwatch, borderless windowed mode does NOT introduce the 1-frame input lag with gsync enabled. The second issue may or may not matter to you depending on how robust your graphics card and graphics settings are.

The above has been true to my experience, having recently purchased a gsync monitor.

More important, however, the linked text above is far more trustworthy than my personal experiences. The entire article can be found here: https://www.blurbusters.com/gsync/gsync101-input-lag/

Pretty sure it doesn't force vsync, just triple (double?) buffering, which doesn't cap your framerate... this might be only for g-sync, but I've disabled all g-sync stuff and get 250+ FPS in borderless window mode... which is about the same I get in fullscreen.

i get capped to the refresh rate no matter what i do in borderless window D:

i can definitely feel the input lag too

well that was a waste of a paycheck

don't worry bro; it wasn't a waste. see my comment below (link).

to be honest, i always thought gsync was a scam (especially given the insane mark-up in price as compared to freesync), but i decided a few weeks ago to take the plunge and see for myself. i've been pleasantly surprised to have been proven wrong; gsync is pretty damned sweet, especially in games like PUBG where nobody can push 165fps (gsync requires you to have fps below your monitor's refresh rate to work).

But... alt tabbing Is so easy with borderless fullscreen. Otherwise you get a black screen and have to wait like a second of 2

How do I disable this?

Near your clock, you click on show more, so you will see other icons, right click on the "Nvidia Settings", you pick "Geforce Experience" from the list. In the upper right corner you click on the cog wheel labelled "settings". There you will see option "In-game overlay", which you will turn-off by clicking on the circle next to it.

It seems like this option never stays disabled. Everytime I reboot my PC I have to disable it manually. Any way around this?

I seem to have the same problem. Sometimes it even switches on after I turned it off without rebooting.

No idea how to fix it.

how to disable?

edit: found it - open GeForce experience, Setting, toggle off in-game overlay.

That's two fucking overlays out of my life. ffs.

[deleted]

My compatibility screen only shows this. Any idea what the issue is?

same, I don't have the option to disable fullscreen optimiations.

edit: seems we need to update windows 10 to the recent creators update.

huh, i updated my pc and i still dont see it

same. Its odd, i dont have the "gaming" options at all even after updating.

Report back if you find a solution

If you don't have the gaming options then you only did a Windows update. You need to update Windows 10 manually to the Creator Update until it's ready to be pushed via Windows Update.

You can get the Creators Update in a few different ways. If you already have a Windows 10 PC and have automatic updates enabled, the update will be delivered to you when it’s ready. If you are an advanced user and would like to get the update manually, visit this blog post to learn how to get the Creators Update.

If you want to force update, you can do that here.

Do we have fullscreen optimization right now? If not then whats the point in downloading it just to disable it?

Do we have fullscreen optimization right now?

Not as far as I know.

If not then whats the point in downloading it just to disable it?

None, other than to be on the bleeding edge of Windows10.

Yeah so i actually just went a big thing with support. I tried all of their recommended upgrade procedures and it wasnt working.

What it came down to was their was some windows services i had turned off this spring, that were preventing the updates from installing correctly.

So actually right now im just doing a clean install. It was about that time anyways

What did you end up doing to fix it? I just manually tried to update and it restarted and everything but I come back and I still don't have the proper disable message and I went to retry updating and the Update Assistant said I was still not running the newest Windows. How do I fix it if the update itself won't actually go through?

Okay, i had the same problem.

What i ended up doing was contacting windows support. They then used windows helper to access my computer and they restarted soe windows services. So you may have to go that route.

Also, im not sure the problem is confirmed fixed as i opted to do a semi clean install of windows again.

I would say the best option is to get into a chat with windows support. They actually got me sorted out pretty fast and fixed some underlying issues that needed to be fixed anyways

Thanks for responding to me, man. I appreciate it.

I didn't get the creators update either. Not real sure why, you should download it and manually update. Then you'll see what everyone is talking about.

This probably means you have the gaming bar disabled.

If a short YouTube video doesn't have loud EDM and show you how to do something with text copied into Notepad, is it actually a YouTube video?

The real LPT is in the comments.

isn't a gaming rig

play most modern games at 1080p on high

mfw

Yeah like hold on there mister what kinds of games are we playing here. Witcher 3? Minesweeper?

I have the same laptop, it's got a 2gb GTX 960m, so it's a capable enough machine, the newest version (9560) has a 4gb GTX1050m so it's even better. I've played OW, Rocket League, Ghost Recon Wildlands, R6:Seige; and once it comes out I plan on playing Destiny 2 on it as well, until I build a VR Ready rig after Christmas.

I had an older ASUS ROG laptop with a 660m in it, I played most of my library on high , I have since upgraded to a desktop but still, gaming laptops have come a long way.

For sure.

I'm rocking an msi gt73re Titan. 7700hq, GTX 1070 (8gb vram), 16 gb ram (will toss in more when needed), 17inch 120hz gsync monitor, and 3 SSDs. It's quite nice and stays cool. I run OW on very high settings and have yet to see my gpu hit 70 celsius. And it's got a great steelseries RGB keyboard to boot.

A 960m is definitely not going to run w3 at 1080p high

That made me jealous. I play on a Lenovo Y50 which is supposed to be pretty decent for gaming but I can't play OW on anything higher than the absolute lowest graphics quality without dropping to below 30 fps

[deleted]

idk which one he has, but I have the i5 model of the Y50 - which means it's dual core. Still a decent cpu otherwise, but eh...

Honestly this seems kind of weird. My old Thinkpad T430 (from 2012) plays OW at 30 fps, absolute lowest settings. It has an i5 and no dedicated GPU.

I'm sure you've tried this already, but have you updated your graphics drivers (or other fixes)?

I had a Y50, great laptop after I re-imaged all the lenovo boatware off of it. It definitely struggled with most new games though. I'm not a huge fan of Lenovo in general but I just upgraded to a Y720, they definitely know how to make a good gaming laptop.

How do you like it? I'm planning on getting a laptop for travel gaming and editing. Ideally I just need this pc to run rocket league and csgo and I'll be happy.

I've been looking at the yoga710 and was thinking if it's good enough.

I have the Lenovo Y50.

But I can't really say that I recommend their gaming laptops. First of all, the bloatware is insane. You can get rid of that by doing a clean windows install though.

Second of all, quite a few people seem to have a recurring problem with disk usage always being at 100%. Doing a clean install of windows for a second time did seem to somehow fix this for me though.

And lastly, if you're going to do any kind of color grading, just know that the laptop has a TN display that isn't all that great.

It's been nice to have a gaming capable laptop, but there's just been quite a few problems with this one though. But I mean, that being said I'm typing this from my laptop at a cabin while I'm on vacation, and it has allowed me to play a bit of video games during my vacation to keep me sane. So in the end, after dealing with all of the problems it had initially, it is currently fulfilling its duty.

I don't know man. It's okay. It was quite expensive for me though, which might be why I don' really feel like it has lived up to my expectations.

I can confirm the colour display is not vibrant . I use a second monitor as the main screen so it doesn't affect me, but OP may re-consider.

however, i can say it runs both RL and CSGO at 60fps + perfectly

I'd recommend the Y720 simply for the display. It's leagues ahead of the Y50. The i5 options may be worth it as you don't need a ton of power to rock those games. I'd actually take a look at the Y520, I do t know about it's display but if it's good that would be my pick for what you're doing.

i have the Y50 and i can play everything i throw at it 1080p 60, what are the specs on yours? I have the one w/ 16 gb ram, 4gb 960, SSD, i7-4720HQ

Something is wrong with your computer buddy I can play ow on i7-7200u on pretty shitty settings but relatively smooth frame rates..

Weird, 860m or 960m I get 60fps with dips to high 40s with a ton going on, on high. I'm running a 960m

I'm fairly certain it's a 960m

Hmm update drivers, let Nvidia optimize, use 1xAA I don't see why you couldn't run at 60, especially if you disable AA, you should be able to break 70, I'm going to try everything in low tomorrow, make sure your power options are on high performance let me know if you are still having issues

LOL HAL_INITALIZATION_FAILED

All I can think about is this

60 fps in 1080p resolution

It's really not a gaming rig. Especially not very good performance for $1800.

For a laptop?

There's not really such a thing as a gaming laptop.

There's not really such a thing as a gaming desktop either. But there are desktops and laptops with components that make them exceptionally suited to play games.

The one this post is talking about, however, doesn't have those components.

If your goal is gaming, you should never get a laptop. For the same price as a decent 'gaming' laptop you can buy a better laptop (for anything other than gaming) and a much better desktop (for gaming).

What if you want to game with and have portability? I have both a desktop and laptop and let me tell you I've had ITX and ATX builds. None of them were fun to lug around to friends houses or LAN parties.

I just picked up a Y720 with

  • 7800 i7,
  • 1060 6Gb,
  • 128Gb SSD
  • 1TB shitty HDD
  • 8Gb of DDR4

For about 1100$ (Lenovo sale price)

Working in good deals on a desktop build is close but arguably a lot more work.

I love my desktop build and I primarily play on it but having to move it to go hang out with friends or whatever is a huge bonus for the laptop.

That's a pretty black and white way of seeing things.

I live overseas as an expat so I move countries a lot. Would be impossible for me to have a desktop, as I have to bring everything I own on commercial planes pretty often.

Since my laptop can play games, it works for me.

I move every 4 months, sometimes planes, sometimes not. Scrapping the gaming laptop in favour of a real laptop and real desktop was the best thing I ever did. A mini-stx has only very slightly larger volume than your typical gaming laptop (and can be significantly lighter), for a monitor I made room for a good monitor, but I did consider getting a eDP panel (a laptop panel). Also while I haven't tried it, I have friends who have sent their mid-sized towers through airports, without cables they are more or less their own thing. Others disassemble their computers, sell the case and rebuy/reassemble (cheap cases are only $30 and dont depreciate much) at their destination (I would not recommend this).

The laptop you mention in your post isn't a gaming laptop though, it's a business laptop (marketed as such) that has enough juice to scrap by, as you yourself mention in your post. What I'm talking about is the 2hr battery life $2k machines marketed as gaming laptops when they are really niether good at gaming nor good at being a laptop.

The laptop you mention in your post isn't a gaming laptop though, it's a business laptop (marketed as such)

Well that's not true. Dell markets their latitude line as business laptops. The XPS is marketed as a powerful studio laptop.

That said, I see where you are coming from. If your concern is performance per dollar, laptops make no sense. I also think big chunky gaming laptops are silly.

For my needs (keeping things light, simple, and portable with light gaming), the XPS line is pretty great.

I have a "gaming laptop", and while I agree it is nowhere near as strong as a desktop of equivalent price, I cannot use a desktop since I have divorced parents (don't worry everything is a-ok, and has been for an extremely long time). I would basically need to buy 2 gaming desktops in order to have the opportunity to game everyday. Once I get out though, definitely going to be PC part shopping.

The new dell Inspiron gaming laptops have 1050ti and like 8 hours of battery life for one grand ...

Jesus Christ id consider that a gaming rig for sure. Not everyone has the $$$ to game at 4K or 144fps

But the laptop OP has cost $1000+...

How much do you think a PC that runs OW with 144+ FPS costs?

Cause you can build one for a lot less than the price of the "gaming" laptop.

[deleted]

yeah it's not that important to me.

Didn't mean to sound defensive, don't downvote me into oblivion reddit

I'm guessing proper format on reddit is how you get the girls huh?

[deleted]

<3

Wait if everyone thinks your love able don't you have to convince them that you're un-loveable?

You mean loveable. :)

Oh you... get off his "contrary."

Not an particularly practical comment but I'm upvoting because you seem like a nice person too.

r/Wholesomememes is leaking

I believe you mean /r/wholesomeoverwatch

I play on a toaster; have these problems.

Will try and report back! Thanks for the detective work!!

Edit/Update:

(I play on a pOS Lenovo ideapad 1080p - it is literally a toaster - if I placed bread on the exhaust port, it would be ready for butter in 8-10 mins)

Couldn't find the settings as described. Doesn't seem to be available in the compatibility menu.

However; I did find three things:

1) In that same compatibility menu there is a "disable automatic scaling" for full screen - which has noticeably improved the quality of my display and seems to have reduced he GPU load as well

2) pressed "win +G" to bring up the game bar; found two settings and disabled them:

1- record in background. (Fuck you xbox app for defaulting this on!)

2- show game bar when I play full screen games

I am now able to run graphics on medium at 60fps whereas before I had graphics quality set to low and limited fps to 30 or 40!

Thank you OP for the leads!!!

You fucks never come back..

[deleted]

What if it made his pc explode and left him dead or worse: unable to play overwatch? I wouldn't be so quick with assuming he bamboozled us.

Like my father after his trip to get milk

Are we brothers?

Cause it actually fixes their problem, then they don't want to leave because they're enjoying the game.

A la xkcd

Original Source

Mobile

Title: Wisdom of the Ancients

Title-text: All long help threads should have a sticky globally-editable post at the top saying 'DEAR PEOPLE FROM THE FUTURE\: Here's what we've figured out so far ...'

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 2136 times, representing 1.2932% of referenced xkcds.

^xkcd.com ^| ^xkcd sub ^| ^Problems/Bugs? ^| ^Statistics ^| ^Stop Replying ^| ^Delete

/u/dr_doctor_doc pls

Have updated my original post...

Thanks so much!!!

Well if his username is an indication he's some kind of doctor, maybe he's out saving lives? Wait, a doctor playing on a toaster? Maybe a young doc with heavy education debt or still in school?

I mean it is possible they might be at work and then try it later. Give em a day and see what happens. (But yeah usually they don't come back lol)

Busy playing overwatch with new settings

This fuck always comes back...

Also try disabling the streaming option from Blizzard's launcher.

My performance tanked one day, I tracked it down to that feature when they added it. Now, after it updates occasionally it forget's I've disabled it and it turns on again...

I did this too! Thanks!!!

Also disabled Xbox app / game bar recording my games automatically.... fking joke!

IT'S BEEN 8 HOURS

8 HOURS OF LUCIO BALL!

This guy fucking died

F

Did you mean "disable display scaling on high dpi settings"?

Yes. Seems to have helped too!

Thanks dude, tried to install the creator update but it takes like 4 hours and furthest has got is 75% so ill make do with that!

this also helps other games. CS:GO being a big one that is having major FPS issues even on the most godly systems.

I'm wondering if this will give me a little boost on PUBG. Need everything I can get right now.

Right? I have no issues running Overwatch as my system is pretty new, but does this adjustment help fps across all games -- without any downsides? Always happy to add more frames to PUBG...

I get 300 fps on a r9 270 on max

ya, but what resolution? 1920? Also CS is much more intensive on the processor than the graphics card.

I'm on a 4790K overclocked to 4.4 Ghz and a 970 GTX. 2133 BUS speed on my RAM. I'm in the mid 200's just running around the map. Mid 100's in firefights or smoke.

You have something fucked. I have a GTX 970 and a 4670k that will only max at 4GHz and only 667 MHz on my RAM. I never got less than 250fps at full 1080, even in windowed-fullscreen.

i'm not alone in my complaints though, lots of other users on systems similar to mine are having the same issues. It was also an issue at the last CS:GO major. Even after PGL switched out the i5's to i7's the players still complained about FPS dropping into the low 200's in firefights or smoke

Maybe I'm out of the loop but why would low 200s be an issue if running at 60hz or even 144hz? Genuine question.

Edit: thanks for your answers. I suppose I won't worry about having 200+ fps in games as I'm not in the competitive scene.

https://youtu.be/hjWSRTYV8e0?t=1m45s

I remember seeing this video on csgo subreddit giving an explanation

CS GO tends to feel more responsive at higher frame rates, and as mentioned below, some people find it reduces input lag.

The biggest thing is drops. If you can stay locked at 144 FPS then great, but if you're at 200, but drop to 120 then back up to 190 when a smoke and Molotov are near you that's a huge issue if you're trying to be seriously competitive.

It sounds a bit excessive, but do not underestimate how extremely poorly optimized CS:GO is.

server rates are different than view rates. The short version of it is simply bullet registration. Guns shoot pretty fast. Combine that with moving models and you need really high frame rate for consistent bullet registration. Its not actually a problem with the visuals in the game as the game will look okay on even a 144 hz monitor.

what the hell are you talking about, server tickrate is constant 64 on official servers and all of hitreg is server-sided, your fps has literally no impact on it

How does this work in overwatch then? Should I not be capping my fps at my monitor refresh rate?

No, about double+1 your monitors refresh rate is what is common.

So if mine is 60hz I should cap at 121fps? Is that for the same reasons as in csgo?

you shouldn't cap it really. Why limit your performance. The 2x+1 rule is the FPS you want your game to have at all times to perform effectively. If it goes higher, great!

Thanks, will try!

Reduced temps.

You don't need to cap it at all, I don't think. Why would you want to cap it? But yes, I've people who do cap the fps do it at 121, 145, 289, etc.

My understanding is that monitor refresh rate limits the performance since that's all it can actually display, so there was no point in having it higher. If it actually lowers input lag to have it higher then it might be worth, though I kinda like having it at 70fps 200% render scale

https://youtu.be/hjWSRTYV8e0?t=1m48s

Limiting your frames does not help you in any way. It doesn't let you raise settings higher. It just limits you.

It demands less from the CPU and GPU and therefore gives lower temps.

Didn't think of that. I can see gpu, not as much cpu I would think. Temps are the cheapest thing to fix, though. Reapply paste, improve airflow, or add a fan or two for <$20 or so. Unless it's the case or positioning of the pc, which might be more difficult to accommodate or fix.

more fps means less input latency, this isn't just for source games, its for all games

Input is tied to fps in the source engine (which CS uses) so more fps = less input lag.

I know most of these words

I just want above 30 in Rocket League’s water map.

Who cares? That's probably way beyond your refresh rate of your monitor.

because of bullet registration on moving models

And you think that 1/250th of a second is really that much different from 1/150th of a second in CSGO? Lol.

not for my eyesight, but for bullet registration. Absolutely.

... lol do you have any idea how far a character model can move in 1/250th of a second?

if you can explain to me why 786432 rate in CS is the optimal rate despite the servers being 64 tick, then I'll listen to you. Until then, I'll go with the articles I've read and video demonstrations I've seen that I"m not well versed enough to repeat, but they made damn good sense at the time.

Same. I can't figure out what is going on. While complaining about over 100 fps performance seems trivial, I have always wondered why this is the case. My system has the same setup without the overclocking, and I'm sure we have different mobo-ram manufacturers, but I get the same performance.

On overwatch or counter strike? I wish I could hit that number with my 270

Counter strike, the target fps for the best experience is 300fps

That's because csgo is heavily cpu intensive for some reasons. I recently swapped my 980 for a 1080ti and got no improvements. I have a 4790k and I'm upgrading for a 7820x. I bet when I swap it it's going to get improvements

Will this help rocket league?

[deleted]

You dont have the latest update

Lol. This comment made me realize I hadn't updated Windows since January :D Thanks!

Thanks! I was only seeing the same options and couldn't figure out why!

it isn't even worth it. I've tried to update multiple times but every time it breaks 90% of the programs on my computer and I can't do anything anymore, including simply launching overwatch.

While windows updates can be unstable at times, if you can't use any programs there's likely a much bigger issue. It might help to run a chkdsk. If your hardware is healthy, a fresh windows install might be a big help.

No, it's literally just the update. As soon as I revert it every time, everything goes back to being fine. Other people have complained of similar issues. It's just a shitty update.

/u/nyy22592 that's usually the case and the suggestion is still valid and helpful.

However I'm in the same boat as /u/Kitch404 . My USB drivers become corrupt with the update Creators Update for Win 10 and my Drobo.

My machine is custom built by me, new gear goes in at least once a year (usually storage and RAM updates). The tower is dusted every month. All cards are checked for correct seated connections when there's an issue, etc...

The update is affecting people differently, but as I said before your advice is still valid and helpful so thank you.

Damn. Hopefully MS fixes whatever part of the update is breaking drivers. Fortunately I haven't run into any issues yet.

This is the first time I've ever run into a Windows update or upgrade issue myself. I'm not even mad, I run Avid Media Composer for work which is never compatible with the most up-to-date patches anyway, so I'm used to living without the newest updates these days.

My graphic drivers broke with this update, it won't even boot past login screen, it just flashes white.

/u/dodo9715 what CPU and GPU are you running?

FX x8320, R9 270x 4 GB all stock freq

Interesting, I'm on totally different hardware but we're both having issues.

Core i7 2600k Nvidia 980 4GB 32 GB RAM

No overclocking on my end either.

Only solution I found was to safe boot and rollback the update.

Yea I roll back those updates too. It makes me real thankful Microsoft got its act together with system restore options.

[deleted]

If it wasn't there you shouldn't have messed with it... I had a lot of issues with CU.

However my brother is using it since release and to be fair he doesn't have any issues. Though it's not worth to update, there's barely anything useful and the nasty bugs are still there.

[deleted]

Yep, you can rollback using the recovery menu. Took me a couple minutes only in a SSD.

Ugh, you shouldn't of updated. The CU is a mess for gaming atm.

shouldn't have*

[deleted]

I have the Creators Update and it's working perfect for me. Updated a few months ago.

That is not the creators update, you are still on anniversary build. You can manually update to creator's by clicking yes, show me how, but it is not being rolled out to everyone on windows 10 yet.

[deleted]

You survived?

I have waited a long time for this moment, my little green friend.

No it's not. I'm running it flawlessly.

Mine's exactly the same and I'm fully updated but not on the Creators Update.

Are you on creators update? I think the per-app option was implemented in the CU.

Disabling for all games should still work, though

I also dont have the option, Im not on the creators update

Since i disable to updates to reduce lag ill run the updater and see if it works after

I hope the guy who came up with the Creators update gets fired. This single update caused so many issues and added nothing of value.

It wasn't there for me under Overwatch.exe, but it was there for me under OverwatchLauncher.exe. That that instead.

Did the missing options show up for you after updating?

[deleted]

Awesome, thanks! :)

Are you in the preview program? No matter how many times i try installign the CU build it doesnt actually update. I wonder whats going on for me.

[deleted]

I got it all figured out

Euugh i had this same issue, I don't have anymore updates to do and still don't have the option....

Sounds promising, I'll give it a go and see if I have any improvement

[deleted]

This pleases me

Man I gotta try that tomorrow myself!

How much fps do you get? On low, medium, high settings? Do you overclock your gpu?

As much as I love Windows 10, they filled it with some really shit features.

Thanks OP, gonna try this on my laptop now. I play on my PC mostly but I have a laptop that can only run it at around 30fps that I use occasionally and I haven't been getting the performance I was expecting at ALL.

As much as I love Windows 10, they filled it with some really shit features.

Yeah I agree. I like Win10 better than 7 or 8, but some of the stuff they do is just weird and unwanted. And that's when it works, sometimes the "features" don't even work at all.

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I'm just annoyed by the fact that onedrive is shoved up my ass every time they do a system update.. An application that's not necessary to the function of the operating system shouldn't be forced on the consumer. Moreso, I shouldn't have to edit my registry to remove it.

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It still periodically reinstalls and that doesn't remove the folder from windows explorer, which you can only hide through registry edits.

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I just tested it on a computer that's running an up to date copy of windows. It still requires registry edits.

And then they put ads in goddamned windows explorer.

You can turn that off, but yeah certainly questionable.

I don't understand why people keep talking about ads in windows explorer. I've never seen ads on windows explorer, and I never had to change any settings to prevent that.

Looking at these "ads" it seems like if you have one drive installed or edge on your taskbar it'll tell you either to use onedrive or something about edge. Removing edge from the taskbar seems like it'd solve that and I uninstalled onedrive as soon as I installed.

I only get them when a software opens the window file explorer when I need to select a file.

I get one little targeted news story box in my start menu, but that's it. I rarely ever use the left click start menu except to search, so I couldn't really care less. Right click start menu is basically old school start menu and I don't really care if my OS has news tidbits built in.

Same here. I open explorer a lot and I've never seen even one ad in there.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/245553-microsoft-now-puts-ads-windows-file-explorer

I saw this one. Had to tweak some settings to make it go away. I paid for my copy of the OS.

It depends on who you ask, some people still prefer windows 7. But I think we can all agree its better than 8

As much as I love Windows 3.0, 3.11, NT, 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 they filled it with some really shit features.

Bullshit. Nobody loved ME.

C'mon, that bitch introduced 16-bit high color icons in the notification area, shit was 🔥🔥🔥

Even Vista was more popular. That's saying something.

In my memory it was identical to Windows 98SE, but with System Restore and Microsoft Agent.

It was a buggy mess is what it was. Everything crashed and half the apps I needed at the time either wouldn't install or didn't run properly. It was basically meant to be Windows 98 third edition, but I suspect it was where Microsoft really started to ramp up system security and got it horribly wrong. Vista was better in that regard, though still not great, and XP an improvement on that.

Forgot 98se...

Something that helped me lots was going into the nvidia settings, go to manage 3d settings and find overwatch and scroll down till you see threaded optimization and turn it on :)

As much as I love Windows 10, they filled it with some really shit features.

My main gripe is how each update is a roulette about what it breaks, reverts, cripples..

I stopped updating my desktop since regular updates randomly stopped working (stuck on infinite downloading, even though data seems to have been actually downloaded), and doing an upgrade to the latest version just soft-bricks my installation which forces me to do a user format to be able to use Windows again.

Even my laptop which I keep hands-off of anything related to settings has issues with updates not installing sometimes.. So horrible. I never had issues like that with any other Windows version, but my Windows 10 installs have had issues since literally day 1.

As much as I love Windows 10, they filled it with some really shit features.

I call bullshit on this. I'm in the Insider program and have a new build (not just an update - entirely new images of the OS) installed weekly and never had an issue.

I agree, Windows 10 can be very complicated for gamers

At least it's not like a Mac where the new features are permanent and can't be turned off or reverting to the old way causes other compatibility issues.

As much as I love Windows 10

I don't love Windows 10.

As much as I love Windows 10, they filled it with some really shit features.

How so? Limiting the ability for applications to take over the display should have been done plenty of years ago.

In any non-ancient hardware the cost of DWM compositing the desktop is irrelevant, and forcing every application to comply with more proper APIs and work within properly managed systems is a vastly better design for what ultimately is a general purpose OS, if you want a machine with an OS that is (mostly) designed for interactive 3D applications like games Nintendo still sells those.

Hell, on any modern Linux distribution running Wayland applications can't even access pixels drawn by other applications because that's a massively huge security flaw, but most people just takes it for granted.

The issue is that desktop composition in fullscreen applications adds lag and doesn't benefit the user at all.

adds lag

Yes, less of a milisecond when properly implemented.

We're talking nothing more than placebo here, the hardcore kind.

doesn't benefit the user at all

I'm pretty sure that vastly more secure and stable OS architectural patterns very much benefit users in the long run, this is not even up for debate at this point, it's simply consensus.

Not to mention the ability to have more features right now, like secure, non-hacky overlays for a start.

Yes, less of a milisecond when properly implemented.

...and 17+ milliseconds of input lag.

DWM's compositing pipeline does not need anywere near 17 miliseconds to do its thing lol, such hardware would not be able to boot any version of Windows beyond 3.1 in the first place.

The only actual impact in response time comes from the V-Sync, which is also irrelevant considering that:

1 - People who do not care about responsiveness use it on exclusive mode as well.

2 - People who do care about responsiveness will have a 120Hz+ monitor and not be able to actually percieve it.

If this fixes the crashing/overheating problem I've been having, I'm buying you a summer lootbox (if you can gift them).

Edit: So far no crashes!

Like the "rendering thing has been lost" that threatens to give me apenalty?

Yeah that's the one.

Blizzard likes to pretend that it's my hardware causing the issue, but this issue started the instant the Doomfist update came out, and I've heard of around 6 people who have this issue now.

I've been having this issue far longer than doomfist, or even the tanky robot chick. I'm hoping this setting helps.

Thank you! For many months I've been thinking that my game is bugged or something because even in fullscreen the game feels in windowed mode. Just tried and works perfect. I had this problem only with Blizzard's games or Blizzard APP Games, weird...

Their engine may not cooperate totally with this Windows 10 feature. They may be doing something that the windows feature is duplicating, or accessing computer memory/RAM too often when this feature is enabled.

Heya, I'm a Microsoft engineer working in the Windows graphics department. Just to clarify our position on this, I'd just like everyone to know that this type of performance problem is unacceptable to us and we'll be doing what we can to investigate and fix this issue. I'd also like to mention that we have seen a very small percentage of people who are actually impacted by this. That said, a very small percentage of Overwatch players can still be a good chunk of people! I point this out because while we want to fix any performance problems, we are actually quite happy (at this time) with the fullscreen optimizations feature and the benefits it provides (such as faster and more reliable alt+tabbing, preservation of color settings such as color calibration or nightlight mode and support for overlays such as the Game bar). So to sum up that bit, we like how the feature is working and the low rate of problems we're seeing, but that in no way will stop us from continuing to fix problems as they come up.

I've asked the OP specifically for logs of his/her problem so we can investigate, but I'd like to open that up to anyone else who is having performance problems with Overwatch if you have a problem that is solved by disabling fullscreen optimizations. If you are willing to collect logs for us so we can fix the root problem, please temporarily re-enable fullscreen optimizations and then follow the steps below to collect logs. I'll also point out that if you have a similar problem with a game that isn't Overwatch, logs for that are also appreciated.

You can do this in the built-in “Feedback Hub” app in Windows. The key steps to provide detailed feedback are:

  1. Press Win+R and paste this in: windows-feedback:?contextid=23

  2. Select Add new feedback, mark it as a Problem (important).

  3. Launch your game and get to the issue area.

  4. Click the "Start capture" button.

  5. Reproduce the problem for 10-15 seconds.

  6. Click the "Stop capture" button.

  7. Provide any further information about the issue and the captured trace (i.e. first half shows X, second half shows Y) in the details section.

  8. Click the "Submit" button to send the bug to us.

If you do file a feedback, comment me a share link from the Feedback Hub and I'll make sure it gets in front of some of our performance experts.

Hi John. I just submitted a separate feedback report for Heroes of the Storm (another Blizzard game) here: https://aka.ms/Fzfwos . In my experience, the full screen optimizations actually impact that game much worse. Pressing the volume keys causes the screen to stutter black violently, and my monitor reports it's running at 60 hz (rather than the 144 hz it should be running on). Sent a full capture.

Thanks silentcrs. I've sent the logs off to one of our performance analysis experts. Displaying at the wrong frame rate is one of the rare errors we've seen before, but the black screen stutter when you press the volume keys is totally new to me. Hopefully your logs can help us address both of those issues.

I would also like to see you guys change how it works though, like if you disable game bar, it should ALSO disable this box automatically.

Getting the bug fixed is great and all, but this is also something that in my eyes should happen out of necessity of how things usually work when you disable the master control....

I totally agree with you and I've forwarded that feedback to the right people. This problem is something we've been thinking about for a bit already and we have some potential solutions we've been considering (including your exact suggestion). I can't make any promises that this will change though.

Hi. For me fullscreen optimisations caused washed out colors. Some other people also have this issue. You can find it in web by searching for "windows 10 washed out colors fullscreen" or something like that. My gpu is rx 470 but most people report this on geforce forums. I can't record video with this issue, because recorded looks just fine. The colors aren't washed out in video. I noticed the difference for first time when I switched from windowed to fullscreen mode in overwatch. The difference wasn't very noticeable in bright areas but dark areas looked brighter than they should.

Good news with this issue. We've known about this one for a while. We attempted several fixes for this issue and we've found one that has successfully passed several stages of validation internally. There's always the possibility that something could come up that would cause us to have to start over on this issue, but there's a good chance that we'll have this fix shipped soon.

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It won't make a difference for a lot of people. Lots of people on here likely have really sturdy gaming PCs and already have Overwatch running as well as it can. These kinds of 'fixes' are more for the people who are getting choppy performance running the game on the family computer or an insufficiently-cooled laptop. If you've tried this and it makes no difference, good for you, you likely have either a beast of a machine or at least a well-optimised and clean system. Still worthwhile for every individual to try for themselves.

I play in borderless windowed mode and this changed nothing for me either.

Wow, seriously guys. I was bringing this up because not everyone knows the difference and they may be set up this way and not know it. Chill yo downvotes and look at the big picture here.

Borderless windowed is not fullscreen.

Thank you captain obvious. But I mention it since it has the appearance of full screen and some users might not understand the difference or think that doing it this way counts as full screen. Some games even refer to is as “Fullscreen (Windowed)” so yeah.

MVP MVP MVP MVP MVP. I need to try this when I get home to see if it fixes the issues I have.

I cannot find these gaming / game bar settings. Happen to know where they might be?

(windows key > type "settings" > gaming > game bar > "record clips, screenshots..." OFF > UNCHECK "show game bar when I play fullscreen games microsoft has verified").

There is no "gaming" setting within Settings. I used start menu and settings search to search for game, gaming, game bar, etc. No results anywhere.

Sounds like your Windows 10 isn't up to date.

Same, can't find "gaming"

You dont have the latest Windows creators update.

Link to it

http://prntscr.com/g5x9zu

When I go to settings there is a Gaming section right in the middle. Sounds like there is an update you didn't get.

Edit: I believe you still need to be getting the Insider Preview builds to have received gaming mode.

Edit: I believe you still need to be getting the Insider Preview builds to have received gaming mode.

Not true, you just need to download the latest Windows Creator Update.

Link to it

That's not true as of a while ago... It was that way until MS officially released the Creators Update though!

Try scrolling down, I didn't see it at first because my window wasn't fully expanded

God bless you stranger! May our framerates be high and temperatures low, thanks to you!

A question that more than a few people in this thread might have:

So looks like the option to disable is only available in CU Windows 10 update. But does that mean people without CU are already not affected by this? Or does that mean people without CU are affected, but have to get update just to get an option to disable it?

I just updated from the anniversary update and applied the fix, there is definitely a big improvement. Input lag and frames are definitely much smoother, so it does affect.

I mean, I haven't played in a couple months, but I never really had trouble on my PC. I ran Overwatch at 1440p on Epic settings (one thing on medium) at around 115 FPS on my 144 Hz monitor...it always felt very fluid. Maybe it would have netted a few FPS but after a certain point it's not crucial if you're not hardware limited.

you should change your setting a bit to get at least 150 fps...

Getting a 144hz monitor then purposely getting below 144fps makes me sad

But muh graphics!

It’s okay, I’m almost done building a watercooled 1800X/1080 Ti behemoth, so I’ll be using my monitor fully.

Short, simple video for anyone having trouble finding it like I was

I play on a bottleneck(i7 6700 and GTX 745) GPU temp's highest was 89C, never went to 90. I'll try this when I get home.

Edit: Tried your suggestion and temperature is lower and FPS isn't dropping below 60

I have the gtx745 too but it never goes above 75C, you may want to change the thermal paste on it.

Dude I had like 90+ temp until I vacuumed every hole and now it's 75.

Maybe he actually overclocked it and raised the power limit. Either way that gpu is the bottleneck so it will be maxed out at sub 1080p. Even a 750 ti struggles. I'd recommend a 770 or 960 or 1050 ti or rx 470 or higher only for true 1080p with proper headroom.

My rx 480 on stock runs at 60c but I have this baby cranked up to max sitting in the high 70s. Memory strap mod+power limit unlock+undervolt+heavy overclock= 40 to 60 percent higher fps if done right.

Please tell me more about how u got ur rx 480 to run like that. Is your room always cool? It usually turns purple when playing PUBG and sometimes Overwatch.

Lol if you're looking at the rgb on after market cards as your information into how it's running, you'll probably get lost if I wall of text you here. Nor do I want to take responsibility for failed vbios modding.

It's a long and dangerous adventure into modding the firmware stored directly on the card, testing how low I can set the voltages, and how high the clocks of each state.

The easiest thing for newbies is to just raise the power limit in wattman, so it doesn't power throttle below what it actually can handle.

AMD cards typically run hotter and it's perfectly normal to see several of their cards hitting 85-90c without issue or throttling. Now I wouldn't recommend it but the thermal limit on most of those cards is in the 95c range.

The 400 and 500 series run way cooler

Somebody make a video of the Play of the Game animation where it just shows somebody sorting through their windows options and disabling this please!

Haha, I don't have the skills to do this, but I enjoyed the mental image.

WOW. thank you so much for this. I also disabled Game Mode and everything's running so much better now.

I have an XPS 9550 and this has been one of the most frustrating things about my computer. Overwatch is my favorite game, and the fact that it's unplayable 80% of the time (including random blue screens, visual lags, throttling the GPU, 10 FPS, et cetera) when the computer should be able to run it FINE has been endlessly frustrating. Thank you so much for this tip!

Edit: My compatibility bar doesn't seem to have a "disable fullscreen optimizations" option, and my settings application doesn't seem to have a "gaming" tab. Do you know why that might be?

Have you updated Windows 10?

This option was implemented in the creator's update, so if you don't have that, it won't be there.

I haven't been able to update since March bc of OS complications, but before that I updated as soon as they came out.

Oh, well. I'll do some research and see what I can find out. I'm building a computer at the end of the month, so I'll remember this tip if I encounter issues there, too. Thank you so much for sharing! It really is a big help!

did you reinstall the OS? if so, are you using the Samsung_NVMeDriver_2.0? this fixed my blue screen issues.

im on xps 9550 also btw, and i agree, for such a high priced machine, it required way too much work to get it running correctly.

I thought it would last at least five years, but the battery overheated and swelled so much it damaged my graphics card :( Definitely not what I was hoping for at that price point.

And no, I haven't reinstalled it. I tried restoring it, but that function seems to be corrupted, too. It always fails. I think a full reinstallation is my only option, but I'm not sure I want to go through the trouble before I build a new desktop at the end of the month and the XPS becomes a productivity machine.

But if I do, I'll remember your advice. Thanks for the tip!

funny enough, my battery swelled, and i had to buy a new battery to replace it, which cost an extra 110.

im not exaggerating when i say it took me MONTHS to figure out how to get the machine running smoothly so i understand your frustration. lmk if i can be of help cause dell is useless.

Thanks so much. I'm glad you got it figured out in the end!

I had the XPS 9550 i7 for about a year and had most of the same problems you describe (except no blue screens). You should check out /r/Dell for some potential solutions. I have the XPS 9560 i7 now, and it suffers from the same issues.

There are a bunch of different solutions to both Thermal Throttling and Power Limit Throttling, but the ones that worked for me were:

  • Undervolting to -125 on CPU and -75 on GPU (I use Intel XTU, but the rest of the internet swears by Throttlestop)
  • Uninstalling/Disabling the Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework (but be REALLY careful to watch your temps)
  • Using some thermal pads per this [guide] (http://www.ultrabookreview.com/14875-fix-throttling-xps-15/)

I will look into all of these options. Thank you so much for the tips! It looks like we have the exact same build with a lot of the same issues.

Holy shit....it's like I'm playing a whole new game. You've shown me the light dude, thanks so much. (I have the same laptop as you btw! Really helped)

Hey I use the same laptop.

Does it improve borderless windowed?

I hate full screen because for some reason, I can't alt tab without having a black screen for a couple seconds, then it finally goes back into the game. Do you have this problem btw?

I mean, that's literally the difference between borderless windowed and fullscreen. Borderless windowed just puts a window like any other on top of your desktop. Fullscreen grants the application direct control of the screen, freeing up video resources from having to worry about anything else. The black screen is your video subsystem having to reload that desktop back into video memory every time you tab out.

So, yes, everyone else has that "problem," because that's what "fullscreen" is.

Yeah but it flickers in a black screen a shit ton unlike other games, and it's abnormally long.

Other games just go black for a split second, overwatch flickers for some reason

I tried it and this thing happened, I couldn't bear it for more than 10 minutes since I alt tab very much when I play. Is there any solution?

No clue if this is the proper secondary fix but if neither of these option are available to you and you have the XBox Windows 10 app, launch it and you can change the settings on there similar to OP's. Best of luck

i don't see a gaming settings in my windows 10 laptop. how do i do this guys? can i get an exact step by step to find and disable the fullscreen optimization?

Someone higher up made this for fullscreen optimization. If you don't see it or the gaming section under settings, then you don't have the creator's update. You can get that here by clicking download update assistant.

Anyone know if the bug caused by the update, and this is a fix, or the update fixes the bug on current windows that you just don't have the option for?

I.e. will updating to CU cause the problem this fixes?

wondering the same thing, I'm on the older version I guess (don't have 'gaming' in settings), and I'm not sure if I should even bother getting the update to disable this shit?

Thanks! Finally I can play without V-Sync in fullscreen mode

Luve ya OP <3

I'm currently at work and have been wondering why games run micro-stuttering without v-sync. Does this really solve it? Please, please say yes.

Is this only relevant for laptops?

If you're having issues on a desktop it is at least worth giving it a shot

I tried it and initial impressions were it's a lot smoother. However it had a knock on effect to my mouse, it doesn't seem to track the same as when the setting is left off. So whatever full screen optimisations are they seem to be related to mouse tracking in some way.

I couldn't get used to it either, it didn't feel like 1:1 tracking like it did before. Specifically moving vertically was very out.

Anyone knows if this is a thing in Windows 8 too? I'm asking because my PC is quite lame but anything that could possibly slightly increase my performance would be very welcome

It's not. They added this recently in 10.

Yeah, I want to know too :/

When i go to compatibility check disable fullscreen optimizations isnt there, And when i go to settings gaming isnt there.

holy shit is this why youtube gets all jittery for no goddamn reason on fullscreen too?

I'd ask the dev from the /r/Windows10 thread op linked

Hmm, going to try this and see what happens.

I will have to try this! I'm running a pretty powerful core and processor with a 1050ti and my GPU jumps all the way up to 70 degrees when I start a game.

I feel like I have the same problem you described. Only difference is I am using windows 8. Does windows 8 have the same or a similar function to help fix the problem?

Thanks so much -- I could not for the life of me figure out why Overwatch was brining my system to it's knees (not a great system -- 2 year old Alienware X51).

I went from 89-92 degrees on my GPU while playing to about 73-75 degrees.

I'm not seeing a lot of things you're talking about like for example in compatibility there is no "disable full screen optimizations" and in settings there is so gaming tab, there isn't even a gaming thing in the settings search. I'm running windows 10 latest update on a laptop

You are most probably not in creator update?

I'll try this, and hopefully it will fix the FPS issues I've been having. God windows 10 is a piece of shit.

Don't you just love all of its "just lay back and let it happen" moments?

This actually boosted my fps by 40. What the actual duck?

Can someone please show me how to disable it for all my games, I just can't find "gaming" or "game bar" in any settings

You have the creator's update? If not, it's not there yet.

If I don't have them, does that mean I have no problem with fullscreen already?

Just a note for everyone. This only applies if the creators update has been installed. I didn't have these options regarding full screen optimisation until windows installed the creators update today.

I don't see that option in the compatibility tab at all.

What about game mode? On the game settings there's a game mode and I always wondered if it actually does anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVNRNOcLUuA&feature=youtu.be&t=8m54s

Seems nice on my computer.

Buttery smooth, thanks op <3

I'd also recommend turning off the game mode that's under the Window's game settings as well. It's hit or miss depending on the game - and even if it does improve performance, it's so negligible that it not even worth it if you play multiple games.

Also, make sure you have all the game DVR stuff turned off under the Xbox app. That causes tons of issues as well.

I have a 950 and I just cap my framerate at 60 (the refresh rate of my monitor). Never had any issues.

fyi even though you can't see more than 60fps on your current display, rendering more frames allows for less input lag, best to keep your fps as high as possible. if you want to avoid tearing to some extent, keep it at around 121 iirc

I have a 950, and an 8320, so when I occasionally stream, the 60 fps lock helps me not drop frames on the output.

I had the same problem (60fps and felt really slow), I put borderless window on to get more frames and it worked (I like borderless window more anyway) will definitely try this if I want play on full screen again. Cheers for the info!

Doesn't borderless windowed lower frames? my fps drops about 20 compared to fullscreen

Doesn't borderless windowed lower frames?

Not on any properly working installation on less than 10 years old hardware.

I mean my laptop is only 8 months old and it's the same as op's

Get around 120 fullscreen and no more than 100 on borderless

99.99% of people tell me that borderless causes frames to drop because it has to render the desktop

99.99% of people tell me that borderless causes frames to drop because it has to render the desktop

In the same way that wearing a shirt tires you more than walking around naked, it has a non-zero weight.

I did this and turned off game mode and I'm going to try it for a week or so. Lately I have been getting random quick freezes, usually less than a second, and I wonder if it has to do with getting the update for gaming mode. Otherwise I need to start troubleshooting hardware.

Edit: So far no problems, and some input delay I've been noticing lately is gone. Will have to run it for a while to see if these issues, return, but so far, so good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVNRNOcLUuA&feature=youtu.be&t=8m54s

Game mode appears to reduce input lag.

Didn't watch the whole thing, but that might be while using FreeSync or G-sync. On my machine, there is a noticeable reduction in input lag with it disabled, where I use neither. Like I said, playing for 30-45 minutes isn't enough for me to call it conclusive, but at the moment, my performance seems better without gaming mode.

but that might be while using FreeSync or G-sync

It's not. I've watched the whole thing.

On my system, the delay was bad, and now it isn't. No high-speed camera required. I am 3 generations back compared to his CPU, and one generation back compared to his GPU, and a 60Hz monitor.

Fair enough. I tried Game Mode after watching that video and on my computer, it feels better. The difference is subtle, but it's there. I have an i7 6700k.

Slight FPS boost for me. Thanks!

Not really having issues other than a second of FPS drop very rarely. Might try it out to see if it helps at all.

Don't really have temp problems, but do have the occasional jitter I can't seem to chase down, I'll try this tonight.

I can run overwatch at 720p at 20 god :(

Even weirder, even though my GPU wasn't struggling to push 60 frames, it would almost immediately jump up to 90 degrees C and throttle. Every time. No other games had this issue. It was all really weird, and I started searching for answers.

My god...my other laptop did this all the time. I assumed the damn thing was overheating, but it was only for this game. I tried hundreds of things (underclocking, extra cooling, new thermal paste, etc) before finally getting a new laptop (it was time anyway).

I still have it...I'm curious if this would fix that problem.

I really need this! My computer runs most games fine but OW is on low settings and runs horribly (20 FPS seems to be the max). Maybe this will help it

as an xbox one player that just started playing on PC - i look forward to trying this when i get home. i'm still new to having to optimize games and stuff, but OW just seems like it wants to run like shit most of the time. i did get it to a decent place recently (general gfx settings on high, AA on and turning off the display based FPS and setting it to custom), but i'll try this too.

Any idea if disabling the volume bar on win8.1 would help? I know it doesn't have the gamebar thing sinces it is only on win10.

Not that the volume bar even shows up in Overwatch in win8.1 so I wouldn't lose anything by disabling it.

This might be a dumb question but here it goes, Windows 10 in general default or you talking about the creators update (Because I avoid installing any sort of updates of Windows and I think I don't have creators installed yet despite I got the notification for it.) Thank you in advance and dor the heads up.

creative update

I'm definitely going to try this. Recently on my 1070/6700 I've noticed weird frame rate "hiccups" where it seemed like a frame would skip every second or so. I don't know when exactly it started but it definitely was recent. It's not really noticeable in the heat of action but when things are calmer and all you see is the screen moving it sticks out like a sore thumb. Also I doubt missing frames are good in a game like this.

I suddenly started having my volume bar pop up in fullscreen but I have no issues in OW or other games. Should I be worried or no?

Thank you very much dude. It doesn't matter if the change is small, if it's going to make it better then im doing. Thank you for sharing!

I didn't notice a performance increase but I could be wrong. I'll try it with optimizations on and then off, fire up a benchmark tool and test it out. Thank you.

Must be a version of Windows 10 I don't have since the setting isn't there for me. Kinda sad since I've been getting unexpectedly low performance on Overwatch for a 1070.

Same, there is no gaming settings for me in my settings

I'm gonna try this when I get home. I get between 90-130 fps but hopefully this gets me more.

Very informative post. Have an upvote :)

Weird... "gaming" under settings doesn't exist in my windows 10 and the "disable fullscreen optimizations" does not either...

You might have a professional version of windows 10. it does not have the game bar.

edit: however if you hit windows key + G you might be able to get into it. just tried it on my work laptop and while the settings area does not exist i can get into the game bar if i load up something and do that. you should be able to see the settings from there.

You might have a professional version of windows 10. it does not have the game bar.

Windows 10 Pro has absolutely everything that the Home version has.

It appears to be if you have the creators update or not. It would appear that my work laptop does not have that which is why I'm missing the options.

I've has a similar issue with my GPU overheating (and shutting down when exceeding 90degrees due to afterburner). Really hope this fixes that issue. Sucks when you crash in the middle of your 5th comp game :(

I have exactly the same laptop. Thank you a thousand times OP!

YES. I found another post like this on this sub actually, but it is great that you are spreading the info. After a update overwatch literally became unplayable. The game was not only jittery, but it was spazzing out, and this fixed it

Recently I've begun to notice, for lack of a better word, "stuttering" when in game. Like I have lag and when my client catches up the server puts me someplace where it expected me to be, which usually translocates me 1 or 2 yards. But when I look at my ping times, it's always low.

Going to give this a try to see if it helps.

That is usually from an unstable connection. You might have low ping, but the packet loss means that the server has to correct your position often. It happens to me if other people on my network are downloading files. Sometimes if you're on a university connection, or another network with lots of traffic and different users, you will experience this.

could be....i gotta get off my lazy ass, and get my homelab finished out. My plans are to put in traffic shaping rules that will prioritize my traffic above the rest of my families....

Thanks for this! Just got my new laptop for college yesterday and it's also not built for gaming, but hopefully this will atleast make it somewhat playable so I don't miss out on any limited skins while in college.

Would anyone happen to know any other tricks to making overwatch run smoother for shit computers? I remember there was another post a week or so ago about turning off some useless feature that didnt do much, but I forgot what it was called..

Anyway to do this with steam games?

Someone help me out. I have a terrible laptop for gaming but I have been able to play OW on it for the last year fine with low settings and a bit of air circulation for cooling but recently, OW has gotten unplayable. It will play fine for about 2 minutes into my first game and then provide lag spike that last 3-8 seconds every 10-30 seconds. Its very consistent and I've done everything I can think of. Cclean regularly, resolution down to 1024x768, windowed, 47% rendering, all low settings, everything unnecessary off, battle.net closed, no programs open, etc., etc. and still, I get these huge lag spikes. Suggestions? or is my computer just getting old and am I screwed? it is a Satellite C55 with a 512 GB ssd

Get GPU-z: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

get it running and go to the sensors tab. when you see the issues check to see if you have something OTHER THAN pwr, or vrel for the perfcap reason. That can help lead you to what might be your issue.

Will this cause issues with third party overlays like Discord, or is it only windows overlays that this setting is tied with.

Hey playing widow is now smooth as silk

I have no problem like that but a upvote for helping people with the problem

My ow runs fine, though i use low settings cuz i killed my old computer playing league (got it before i started gaming) but it always freezes my computer on startup and always lags when i try to tab. Hopefully thisll help. Bless you. :v

Commenting to come back

Anyone else get really high ping upwards of 200ms, after disabling fullscreen optimization? I do push out some more frames after disabling, but it's at the expense of really high ping :(

That's super weird, and I can't imagine that they are related. Probably just a weird coincidence.

For some reason I can't find gaming settings on W10?

If you don't have a "Gaming" menu in the Settings app then you're not on the newest stable Windows 10 version.

will only be on "home" editions. If you have a professional edition of win 10 the gaming stuff isnt' there.

edit: apparently its because of creator's update. if you don't have the settings you can hit windows key + g while having a game open to view the game bar and get to settings there.

This is false, I have Windows 10 Pro and I have gaming settings.

Yeah was looking for this comment to edit it. right after i posted that i found the game bar on my work laptop. we just haven't gotten the creators update which includes it in settings. hitting windows key + g will pop up the game bar if you have a game running.

I'm currently at work, but I'll try this when I get home and let you know. :)

I had game mode disabled as well as the bar. The record clips was still enabled for some reason. Not sure if I'm going to gain any performance, but thanks for the info anyways.

Edit: Came back to say I sure did gain performance. This is legit.

thanks for that bud!

Do you do this to overwatch.exe or battle.net.exe?

[deleted]

Not true. In the thread I linked to, he specifically said to disable the game bar and uncheck the box.

It worked for me anyway.

Nope. I had bar disable and not the optimizations. I disabled the full screen optimization and there is a FPS gain.

Thanks! Thought my GPU was failing on me since the temps had gone up from 65 degrees full load to 75 and fans sounding like a jet engine and previously the custom fan curve held the GPU @ 65c and was silent....turns out it wasnt my GPU failing but microsofts fuckery.

Shit this might be what I need.. Can't wait to try it tonight. I use a 144hz monitor and even though my FPS runs at 120, myself and all who look at it see 0 visible difference from a standard 60hz running 60fps.

I'll report back if it works!

I met someone in a random custom game once complaining that his pc was doing this, 60 fps but jittery and being weird whenever he played, I asked if vsync was on and if it was to turn it off, his game play only went up to about 76 fps on med but he said it wasn't jittery anymore and could play normally vsync was doing something weird and it helped vsync will try to sync your FPS to your monitor or screen so I'd say try that if you haven't already

So this increases the fps?

Didn't lower or increase FPS for me.

Not on any properly working system.

I'm really surprised that something as simple as fullscreen optimizations would cause such bad performance but it's Microsoft and I'm done being surprised as the shit this company puts out.

I dont have this option, is it for the creators update only?

.

I play on "All Low" so anything helps, and I'm pretty sure I have disabled it already.. Then again that might have been for a different game. Even then, thanks for reminding me at least that, that is a option that I can check to see if I did leave enabled to then disable.

Edit: I didn't have it disabled so I must have done it for something else... Probably it was for TF2. Thanks again for the reminder!

Commenting so I remember to do this later

Oh my god. This might fix my full screen issues with Guild Wars 2 (random black screens for a second). Windows is becoming an even bigger pain in the ass...

Question, isn't 80 degrees Celsius too hot? I always get nervous when mine gets above 60, is it safe to be up that high? I can run high settings at 1080p and 30fps at around 45 degrees but if I go up to 60fps it jumps like 20 hotter.

Mines always ran at 75-80c at peak. Though, I have a shit rig so my GPU is a single fan, and doesn't cool as well.

I usually have to strip down to my boxers by the end of the night of playing.

So your system isn't gonna fry running at that heat consistently?

Probably not good for it, but I ran in that way for over a year now.

isn't 80 degrees Celsius too hot?

Depends on the hardware.

Manufacturers release specifications for all these things.

I'm not even home to test this but you get POTG.

Also try turning down max CPU frequency. Something weird was going on where overwatch was tasking my CPU a lot and the high temperatures made it throttle everything including my gpu.

I just bought a Dell 15 7000 and it fucking shreds Overwatch on Ultra 1080p at 60fps.

Although, sometimes it caps itself at 30 fps, and I have to restart? Anyone know what thats about?

Sadly that fix doesn't work on my laptop. I thought that this bug was fixed by now, but the system still crashes when tabing out.

That windows dude gets flaked like he is Hanzo main in the post.

I sometimes have frame drops out of the blue even though my rig can handle 150fps on a 144hz monitor, will this make everything much more stable?

I get 120 FPS when I start but after a few games my FPS starts to drop to 80 - 90 and gets jittery. I'm going to try this "fix" when I get home and see what happens. Thanks for the tip.

Maybe this will fix my issue of being unable to go fullscreen on overwatch.

Saving for later when I get home.

This is also the culprit with all games if you're experiencing screen tearing even while in borderless windowed mode.

I am guessing this will not apply to borderless window.

Thanks for the tip. I play Overwatch through Bootcamo in my late 2015 Mac Book Pro. I can always use an edge to get it running better!

Uh, Windows 10 here, I don't have anything like "disable fullscreen optimizations". Closest thing would be "disable display scaling on high DPI settings".

For some time now, and I'm unsure why, because this thing came with W10 preinstalled, I'd been getting very low framerates on the title screen and hero select. Like 30fps, going up to 45-60 depending ingame. After this change, boom, main menu and HS is a solid 60. Can't wait to try ingame. Thanks!

The hero we need, but not the one we deserve. Thank you so fucking much, you have no idea how happy I am

IF YOU CANNOT FIND THE GAMING/GAME BAR SETTINGS IN WINDOWS YOU ARE NOT UP TO DATE.

Here is a Link to the Creators Update from Microsoft

How do you turn it off in 8.1 & 7? Cause I'm on 8.1 and can't find the setting anywhere.

Do you know if this exists in the server version? (Windows Server 2016)

TFW you already had this disabled but the game still almost immediately jumps up to 90°C

I only recently upgraded from Windows 7, but where can I find Overwatch.exe? Program Files doesn't seem to exist in 10 and the only thing I can find is the short cut to the actual .exe file

This won't make a difference if you play in Borderless Windowed Mode right?

u/Lovablecontrarian , any idea what would be going on if this setting doesn't even show up?

This "fix" reduced my average and minimum FPS with about 5 - 10%.

Is this part of the creator's update? I followed your instructions but I don't see "full screen optimizations" anywhere in the Overwatch compatiability menu.

I wonder if this is why bastion kept crashing on me the other day.... (the video game, not the hero)

I got a same experience at Win8.1. Instead of online game, that time my all pc game can't run in full screen, every game I should optimized they to full screen OFF. win8.1 sucks.

Here all loading process become slow, very slow. To open a box I had to wait a lot, to choose a character in the begining of the match it took a lot of time, but in the game I noticed a little increase of FPS and it runned very smooth, I only tryed once, I'll try more to see if it worth, but aparently it does. I have an AMD processor and a R7 graphic card.

Thank you for this post. My Overwatch plays much better now!

I'm going to try this with other games, maybe it will fix my Forza issues (doubtful). Fingers crossed!

hot damn I have the exact same laptop as you and I have just been living with this performance because I just figured it had to do with the GPU (even though I knew XPs should be powerful enough to play a game like overwatch smoothly). Thanks!

Will Win10 game mode stop working? I know some people don't think it helps, but I've noticed an improvement.

Dude my screen started tearing hardcore and I couldn't figure out a fix for it. I also noticed when this issue started occurring, suddenly I was able to see stuff like Windows volume slider and such. I wonder if they are related, need to test this later.

My computer crashes constantly when I play overwatch, and never for anything else. Hoping this works.

Might be related/not related... but my most recent issue (other than the occasional graphical lag... especially on comp) are sounds. Some of the voice lines aren't playing when I toggle them, especially if the character is doing another action. And when I announce ulti status, sometimes it just doesn't display on the chat feed. It's like 1 out of every 4 times I do it, I'll see it scroll by.

Where is the compatibility setting?

I'll give it a go.

My PC is good so it can handle Overwatch with no problems but I will still do it because extra frames is only a good thing. And I will definitely do it on my laptop next time I'm on it.

I won't know if it helped until I start a game but even if it helps even 1 person, you deserve an upvote

i play bordeless window and its really cool, fast alt+tab imba

Well i already disabled them long ago because i don't like Microsoft shit, well i was right :)

Holy shit that upped my FPS by like 30! Thanks!

I play on Windows 10 but I play on Windowed full screen, think it'll affect us too?

I don't see it here

Something I'm missing?

I'm not on a laptop by the way. I'm pretty sure that's the issue.

Click on the start button > Click on settings > Click on gaming > Follow what OP said to turn off. Make sure you're on Win 10

I'm trying to do this with all games, and I get to windows settings and I don't see "gaming" anywhere. pls help a poor boy such as my self

I want to take this time to also bring up an issue with the latest Radeon update for AMD users. Currently Radeon 17.7.2 is giving issues with games. For me I would get a message of how my rendering device was not found in the middle of a match in Overwatch. I reverted to another version, 17.7.1, and the issue went away. So that's my warning/advice for others with similar issues.

This is really Intriguing to me. Does anyone know exactly what the setting does to help performance?

Thanks for the share. I don't really have problems in OW but some other Games feel weird in Fullscreen even on my fairly powerful Rig. I will definitely test it out. Maybe it will help!

Another big one is going into your GeForce control panel and setting the maximum pre rendered frames to 1, makes it feel like a proper fps.

This actually improved performance on 3 games I've just tested...interesting.

is it "game mode"? cause I've disabled the game bar, the game "DVR", and a 3rd option is game mode. Do i turn this one off as well?

When I go to Settings I don't see anything labeled 'Gaming' or anything that sounds like it would lead there. And I can't find anyway to just go there through search bar. Halp?

i have windows 10 but i dont have the option to disable fullscreen optimations. Weird

sweet, worked great! went from like 70 to 110.

!RemindMe 7 hours

I dont see this option. Anyone know why that could be?

A smidge late to this party, but it doesn't look like I have the Windows 10 CU update. So do I not need to bother with this? There is no option to disable fullscreen optimization on any .exe at all, and if I go to the Settings option in Windows, there's no Gaming option either.

I usually disable the Windows 10 auto updates because they're a pain in my ass and have rebooted my PC mid-game several times in the past. Fuck that shit.

But I'm kind of confused/concerned because the comments in this thread lead me to believe I shouldn't bother updating to be able to do this, to begin with?

TIA.

Thanks for this, I have disabled it for Overwatch, I don't know if it's just the placebo effect but it feels a bit more responsive. I'll have to do more testing for my machine, but it was unable to keep 60, and just barely did 50 without heating up. But it seems to be doing well at 60 now cooler than before. So it would seem that it's reduced the GPU usage, similar to your case. Thank you for sharing this, it may have just improved my experience.

I know this is a different game but do you think that this could be an issue with DOOM? For some reason whenever I play online games in DOOM I get the stuttering and overall terrible computer performance, whereas in the campaign the game runs much much better but still not the way it should. Thanks for the info, I literally was gonna play DOOM after work today.

thank you so much for this amazing suggestion, ill be checking it out on other games as well! <3

I'm not seeing that option. Only disable display scaling on High DPI settings

So that's why all my color calibration settings get reset every time I open OW in fullscreen...

Side item. I recently did this and it helped. If you are having FPS issues and dont think you should, run DDU to clean all old versions of drivers off your machine (especially if you never did after upgrading a card).

Have a 1070 and 144hz monitor and was struggling to get frames and did this. Massively helped.

I am going to disable the features OP mentioned. Maybe it will help even more.

I've found Nvidia fast sync to not work unless fullscreen optimizations is turned off.

It only works on the creator's update though. If you blocked the update so that it doesn't fuck up your entire system you won't be able to disable it.

Gonna try this when I go home ty op

I'm having the same temperature and performance problems on my Dell XPS 9560 2017. The only way I can play overwatch with stable fps is by blowing a fan directly on the laptop with a cooling pad underneath. Definitely gonna try this out.

You should check out /r/Dell for some potential solutions.

There are a bunch of different solutions to both Thermal Throttling and Power Limit Throttling, but the ones that worked for me were:

  • Undervolting to -125 on CPU and -75 on GPU (I use Intel XTU, but the rest of the internet swears by Throttlestop)
  • Uninstalling/Disabling the Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework (but be REALLY careful to watch your temps)
  • Using some thermal pads per this [guide] (http://www.ultrabookreview.com/14875-fix-throttling-xps-15/)

Sometime the games does feel jittery.
Does your fix also work on borderless fullscreen?

That sounds like a pretty good gaming rig to me! I specifically built a budget gaming PC and it struggles with 1080p high.

There's no "Gaming" option in settings anymore. That was removed a few updates ago

I can't even find that option when I open properties and I think this is the same issue I am having. My laptop runs most games at max settings but overwatch is still iffy at lowest settings.

Mostly a laptop problem because they are terrible at keeping the enternals cool during any kind of load. A laptop chiller would be a good idea for anyone with a laptop even if you dont game.

Just bought this machine, and I'm planning to play a lot of ow on it. This is a great tip, thanks!

Replying so that I can come back to this once I get home. Can't wait to try this out, thanks man!

I turned it off and everything in overwatch was suddenly buttery smooth. Also, rather than jumping up to 90 degrees and throttling, my GPU never got above 80 (with the same exact settings). I can now even bump the settings up to high and the GPU won't overheat. This one setting immediately fixed all my performance issues and dropped my temps by 10 degrees celcius. Pretty dramatic.

Is this like, preliminary April Fools Day material?

Thanks you, you have saved my gaming career

i removed the xbox and gamebar stuff, but I'm getting SOME windows notifications when playing fullscreen games. does anyone know if removing this also disables the optimisations?

I see not Gaming option in Settings....

I've noticed Overwatch has felt REALLY jittery for me, but I can't seem to find the "Disable Full Screeen Optimization"?

I literally stopped playing this game because of the heat issues. Going to try this tonight, hope it works!

Thanks alot OP, now if only I could fix the rendering device lost bug...

Thanks alot OP, now if only I could fix the rendering device lost bug...

Saving for future use

Maybe someone can help me with a similar issue. I have the same laptop. On overwatch I get massive throttling. I play on Windowed fullscreen, low settings. I have been using Throttlestop to try and keep it from throttling much but it barely seems to help. I've undervolted in throttlestop as well but it also seems to barely help. I just tried to do the OP's tip and it seems to kinda prevent it from reaching full throttle but still, it feels like this laptop shouldn't be having issues. Temp readings on Overwatch don't go over 60, readings in TS dont go over 70.

Anyone have any ideas?

You should check out /r/Dell for some potential solutions. I have the XPS 9560 i7 now, and it suffers from the same issues.

There are a bunch of different solutions to both Thermal Throttling and Power Limit Throttling, but the ones that worked for me were:

  • Undervolting to -125 on CPU and -75 on GPU (I use Intel XTU, but the rest of the internet swears by Throttlestop)
  • Uninstalling/Disabling the Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework (but be REALLY careful to watch your temps)
  • Using some thermal pads per this [guide] (http://www.ultrabookreview.com/14875-fix-throttling-xps-15/)

From what I can tell reading threads about this issue online, the problem stems from the fact that the Voltage Regulator Module doesn't have any real way to keep cool, and will cause the machine to throttle even if the CPU and GPU temps are totally acceptable. I've even experienced Power Limit Throttling with the GPU/CPU sitting at 72/75 degrees.

Thanks for the info/help. I'm using throttlestop because that seemed to be the response on many of the threads I've read searching about this issue. Not even completely sure if it's working sometimes.

For undervolting the GPU, does that work since in TS is says intel GPU but I thought the laptop is using nvidia for overwatch.

Thanks for the link. I figured I was gonna try redoing the paste one day since this laptop was a refurbished model so I thought maybe they didn't do it so well, but adding padding might be a good idea too.

I haven't used TS so I'm not sure how to set that up, but I'm able to undervolt both the CPU and GPU in IntelXTU, and I'm sure you can do the same in TS.

I may have had to force Overwatch to use the nvidia GPU, but don't remember if I did or not.

If you want to check, just open the nvidia control panel, go to Manage 3d Settings, then Program Settings, then select Overwatch, and make sure it's set to use the nvidia card.

Will this affect those who do not have the Creators Update?

I don't have it installed for good reasons, and don't plan to-do-so, yet I have no "Gaming" setting available within "Settings" to access this tweak OP is referring to.

so disable game mode too or not?

YES! Thank you so much, i had this issue with so many games.

CURSE YOU WINDOWS 10

CURSE YOU WINDOWS 10

Fantastic, thank you op!

Still have the old w10, can i also disble the fullscreen thing?

I don't see gaming

!RemindMe 7 hours

I will be messaging you on 2017-08-09 01:49:09 UTC to remind you of this link.

1 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.

^(Parent commenter can ) ^(delete this message to hide from others.)

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Mad props to that Windows engineer dude in the thread OP linked for how he deals with the guy who's very obnoxiously incorrect in the comments.

I wasn't having any issues with overwatch, but stuttering and low fps in titanfall 2 and I tried this and it fixed it completely! Thank you so much for writing this out

My biggest problem with overwatch is I can't get it to stay fullscreen - it'll freak out after a while, so I just use the faux-fullscreen option. I know that's hell on my system so would LOVE a fix for that.

Definitely will try this even tho i'm semi-retired from overwatch currently

This solved my Rocket League random lags thank you!

I play Rocket League this same way. I can hardly play the game in fullscreen

I'm gonna try this as soon as I get home. I just got a new gaming PC yesterday and when I started up OW I noticed that aiming seemed...idk, "jumpy." It's hard to describe. I played around with in-game settings and mouse settings, I tried a bunch of different DPIs from 400 to 3000, but it still didn't feel "smooth." TBH the aiming felt smoother on my PS4. I'll give this a shot though, see if it helps.

!RemindMe 6 hours

Thank you so much!

Blizzard, can we have a linux version yet?

THANK YOU, I have had this problem for over a year, searched for days without a solution.

So if I'm using the free version of Windows 10 with no plans to pay for the upgrade, will this prevent the "Upgrade now" stamp in the corner from showing up over games? I don't think it shows up in Overwatch but it does in other games

If this stops me from crashing out of comp (and only Comp, because why not) I will be so fucking happy.

If it doesn't... If anyone else has an issue with crashing to a white/blue/red/pink screen (seems to have something to do with what's on the screen at the time of crash, and with two screens it's two different colours), but find it's only in comp... please halp. I'm not overheating (barely hit 70 at the hottest) and I can run just about anything at ultra, but some games just crash me out.

How do you like that laptop? I'm looking into a new laptop and am leaning towards Dell. My last one was a 2012 MacBook Pro and it's just not performing like it used to :(

Love it.

It is a dell so you get some occasional annoying issues you have to work around, but nothing major. The screen bezels, "rubberized" keyboard area, and overall thinness/build... I love the damn thing. Best laptop I've ever owned by a significant margin.

I've had it for like 7 months and I still think "damn I love this thing" everytime I open it.

It's not really a gaming laptop. And it's not really an ultra book. But, it's the perfect amount of both IMO. Gaming laptops are huge and heavy and ugly. Ultra books are nice but lack performance. The dell XPS really hit the sweet spot where performance is solid but it feels ultra premium and portable.

Thank you for this.

You've just made Modern Warfare: Remastered playable. I love you.

Thanks so much for this post, this made a big difference for me :)

Is this worth the slew of other issues that arise?

What other issues?

Right on fucking TIME yo! Thanks for this! Prolly made my GAMING LIFE much better homie! Cheers!

OMG I have the same problem with the same laptop and this has been driving me crazy. I sent mine to get repaired by Dell thinking it was a bad motherboard and it helped a little but this fixed it completely. Dude you are my hero.

Commenting for later

DEBIL GDZIE TL DR

This seems useful in the future. Thanks for the info OP!

Hey... I don't really play overwatch anymore, but I'm going to give this a shot for my other games. I'm currently working my way Through Mass Effect Andromeda. I'm getting around 95fps at 1440p on ultra but there is a lot of micro stuttering. I'm hoping this might help.

Please post if it fixes it. I run overwatch at 120 fps constant but I get weird micro-hitches every few matches

I'll let you know. Also... why are some games stuttery when I play them with a mouse and then ultra smooth when I play the same game with a wireless xbox one controller?

I've never heard that before, that is weird as hell. I have no idea why the input of choice would affect game stability.

not sure either. In the Witcher 3 the framerate when I look around is ultra smooth when I use an xbox one controller. If I switch to a mouse, it's not as smooth when I look around and is pretty jittery.

Definitely need to give this a try! I have no need for windows to show me that stuff. Granted I don't normally see slowdowns, maybe can eek out a few more FPS :) Thank you friend!

Thanks for this I am going to do this tonight!

I hadn't thought to look for software I wasn't using, but I can see the lack of lag in everything I do now.

Thanks for the tip.

This has changed my life

commenting to come back

Man playing most modern games on high sure sounds like a gaming rig to me 😂

Haha, yeah, it does okay. It just doesn't have the best ventilation and the card is pretty mid-range as far as gaming GPUs go.

Does this also prevent things like Discord's overlay?

Saving for when I get home.

If you're on old update you don't need to do that. Only for those who have CU installed.

I'm at work and can't get to my PC at the moment, but I have a question:

When I'm playing Pharah, things get all fucky while flying around. Will this fix that?

Max graphics. Ewwww. There's your real problem.

RemindMe! 1 day

Anyone know if this will help my near inability to hear anyone in the in-game chat? It worked like the first few days I played and everyone has been whisper-quiet since then.

Holy shit this is why I decided to not buy overwatch after the free week. The graphics bugged out like crazy.

If you haven't already posted this over at r/gaming, this same solution also helped me with another game that was having issues. I'm glad yours made it to r/all so I'd see it!

Made a huge difference for me. TY!

I don't actually have this option when I go to compatibility under properties but I'm on windows 10 (MSI ge72). What do?

I think this option (and the whole game bar thing) is only there if you are running the Win 10 Creators Update.

Does that mean I should upgrade to creator? Or does staying in anni mean I wont get these problems anyways?

Honestly, I do not know - I do not have the creators update yet myself (Windows Update does not offer it yet on my machine). If I had to guess, you won't have these specific problems if you are not yet on creators update. If you upgrade, you probably should disable these settings, though, unless you really need the game bar/game dvr etc. functionality, just to prevent any chance of these problems turning up.

Ok thank you!

For some reason this gives me error loading the rendering device, or so it says

What the fuck, this actually worked. 0_0

This also fixed the Dark Souls 1 problem I was having. Thanks!

Has anyone with a high end rig tried this? If so, what kind of performance jump did you achieve? All my games perform just fine with a 1070, but I'm curious to see how much of an improvement this can be.

Thanks OP! Hope you get more upvotes, this is great info!

Also just wanted to point out, this fix requires the latest update otherwise the overlay options won't even be there.

Leave it to Microsoft to push buggy, unoptimized, and unwanted features onto their users.

I wonder if this happens with other games cuz when I play Pubg my video card (290) is at 95c with the fan @ 70%

Thank you so much

Huh... I need to try this out tonight. I was trying to play two or three days ago, but was getting crazy weird stuff going on. Might have been lag, might have been this.

(My PC at the time was running a bit warmer than usual just because my whole apartment was... A/C has been acting up all summer, and while some days it's fine, others it just won't push air and the apartment heats up horribly.)

Is this possible for other games? I've had issues with CSGO and this might actually solve my problem. I just don't have access to my pc ATM. But commenting this in hopes of finding it later.

Doing this definitely made an impact on my framerate. It wasn't exactly night and day, but it's overall much smoother now. Thanks so much!

Wow I actually did this the other day just because I happened to stumble across this setting while trying to fix a completely unrelated problem. I have always had issues similar to yours in high-res fullscreen games. Haven't played any of them since changing that setting. I'm going to boot something up tonight and see if the problems are gone! Thanks for sharing your awesome tip on here.

Trying this later, thank

As I said in the linked thread, the Fullscreen Optimizations and Game Bar will mess up ULMB on G-Sync monitors. If you're not a habitual alt-tabber, turn those settings off.

[deleted]

Steam Overlay or borderless windowed from in game settings should work.

Think this will help with pubg?

So do you think this will work with other games? I play pubg and have the same issue as you, says 60fps but still very jittery, gpu not being pushed to its limits, etc.

[deleted]

I also think that PUBG is a very poorly programmed game so there may be some degree of it just sucking no matter what.

You said it brother...

I'm 14 and this game is so tits. Doesn't matter how mundane the post is, gilded and straight to the front page!!!1!!

For people with good PCs but get weird micro-stutters and micro-hitches (like the system hangs for a split second randomly) did this fix it for you? I have that issue with a few games, including OW, despite having a poweful PC and game running on SSD

I love you

Thanks!

Dude, I love you....I've went from struggling to keep 60fps+ to hitting 90fps

First saved post ever. Ty.

!remindme 1 day

Saved.

Sometimes, despite having 60 fps in the corner of my screen and relatively low ping (20-30 ms) characters seem to jump about. Even in the practice range, a character going in a straight line will occasionally 'warp' a few feet in front of them. Anyone else ever seen this? Is it due to pre-rendered frames or something?

I was also getting 59fps but sometimes gittering while playing. Trying this now. Thank you!

Who runs games in full screen mode?

BORDERLESS WINDOW FTW

My computer has no option in the settings labeled "disable fullscreen optimizations." I'm using Win10, too. Odd. Oh well, the game seems to run well enough as it is.

Windows 10 you never cease to amaze me at how abysmal you are. Just when I thought I'd heard all the horror stories, another one pops up.

I am going to do this later today (at work right now). I hope this fixes my other games too. This one game I spent so many hours trying to fix but couldn't, hope this does it.

.

Where's the tl;dr? You sir are a monster.

I wouldnt recommend doing this as it gets rid of all the benefits of using fullscreen such as lower input delay. What you really should do is sign up for the windows insider program and download the latest windows insider update which fixes all the issues brought up with the new windows creator update.

Is there a downside to downloading windows insider updates?

Not as far as Ive seen, they fix quite a few things.

Thank you, I've been running the game on borderless window (at 150 fps) because full screen (60 or less fps) would lag and weird thing would happen

Close battle.net client after loading the game. That will also give a fps/stability boost

[deleted]

I wish I had stuck with 7, honestly. Considering rolling back to 7 with a fresh re-install.

Interesting and saving this for when I get home.

My inspiorn 15 7559 has been struggling with this issue. I see a little bit of an improvement!! Thanks!

For some reason the input into overwatch has been more laggy than most games, I guess this was issue thanks!

I love you

Dear god the guy who was responding to the Microsoft employee was a dick.

Doesn't that disable the actual 144hz though? Since I get only 60hz even though OW is at 130-160fps when not running exclusive fullscreen. And yes my monitor is set to 144hz and the mouse does always look to be 144hz even when the settings in main menu says 60fps with or without fullscreen.

I disabled this long ago not because of performance issues but because that game bar was irritating

I'll try this since my gaming PC won't even reach 60fps but only when it wants to.

Well, disabled it, although I never had any issues with it. But for some reason Nvidia G-sync now works with Dark Souls 3. So ty OP :)

Seems like you're talking about the game DVR, I'm pretty sure anyone who games on PC regularly has disabled it.

Wow thanks for this. I'll have to try it when I get home. Might fix my overheating problems with both Overwatch and No Man's Sky!

This was introduced in Creator's. I'm currently on the build prior to it, and have no option for "Fullscreen Optimization" in compatibility. Just letting people know.

Does this apply to people on Fullscreen Windowed?

What’s the improvement like for Mac Bootcamp?

Can confirm, now I can play at higher res AND have stable 60 fps! Thank you!

Can anyone check if Shadowplay still works and displays the FPS/Recording overlay?

Does this also apply to the "game mode"?

Worked for me. Removed input lag.

How about Borderless Fullscreen?

I tried using your instructions but I don't see, "disable fullscreen optimizations" in the compatibility tab and when I try the general approach there isn't any "gaming" option in settings.

Well this helped me solve an issue I was having with freesync, when I would use the volume option and would get huge stutters ingame and this only happened on fullscreen applications. Thanks again OP! :)

I'm going to pretend this is why I've been bad....

"If you want to disable it for games across the board (which is what I did), go to your general Windows settings (windows key > type "settings" > gaming > game bar > "record clips, screenshots..." OFF > UNCHECK "show game bar when I play fullscreen games microsoft has verified"). Note that you have to turn the game bar off AND uncheck "show game bar when I play..." Just doing one doesn't fully disable the overlay."

This will make it impossible to use Game Mode, right?

Yes, but Game Mode is useless anyways.

I feel so dumb. I was so excited to download the CU back when it hit and all this time have had these features on. I have a good PC, FPS was never a problem, but little micro-stutters/hitches were and since disabling these settings everything is so much smoother.

Sigh.

If MS ever releases an update that fixes game bar and fullscreen optimizations will it be worth turning everything back on, or should everything just stay off no matter what?

Yep same as me. Unfortunately marketing hype doesn't mean that the real world results are good.

Windows 8.1 wins again! Seriously, I hated 10, so much bloat & ugly as hell.

Where do you see a gaming option in settings?

Thanks! Lowered my temprature by about 5-8 degrees and made my input lag lower significantly.

this was happening to me but then i realized my watercooler died

jump up to 90 degrees C and throttle

Wait so I didn't have to spend 100 euros on a watercooling system for my processor, while never having issues with higher settings on other games including mods with my standard cooling fan?

Bless you man, bless you.

I can not thank you enough!

Can't find gaming in settings?

This helped reduce input lag for me. Thanks, OP!

there is no .exe folder, am i doing something wrong?

Dude I think you just fixed my current fps problems ty ty ily

Thanks for the fix. My laptop is supposed to be decent at playing games, but always had unexplained frame-rate lag and overheating with Overwatch (and some others). Now games seem to play the way they should have from the start.

Holy shit! Fuck you Game Bar!

I know theres a million responses in this thread and no one will see this but I felt compelled to share that disabling this universally (not just doing it per game) and also disabling the geforce overlay has eliminated micro-stutters/hitches that have been plaguing me forever despite having a good PC.

Wow...what a fix.

Windows 10 seems to have so many issues it seems beneficial to just stick to 7 or 8 at this time.

What if we play in Windowed Fullscreen mode?

Thanks for the info, but i can't seem to have the option. anyone knows why? Also, you wrote "If you want to disable it for games across the board (which is what I did), go to your general Windows settings (windows key > type "settings" > gaming > game bar > "record clips, screenshots..." OFF > UNCHECK "show game bar when I play fullscreen games microsoft has verified")", i typed settings, took me to the settings window, but there's no gaming? Any help would be appreciated!

Always wondered what caused this. I fixed it by playing with my charger in

Never had any issues in overwatch at 1440p.

Smooth 150-160 fps while in game and solid 60 in menus

Is there any way I can turn this off universally, aside from individually turning it off game by game?

(windows key > type "settings" > gaming >

there is no gaming

You have to update Windows 10 to the Creator's update before it will show up. Had the same problem but after updating, it appeared.

i also have no overwatch.exe

Window borderless fullscreen is where it's at!

The option isn't there for me.

So are there any potential risks or downsides to turning off this feature?

I don't have a "disable fullscreen optimizations." button

You might have finally found the root cause of that aggravating in-game framedrop whenever you get an IM in various programs outside of it!

Even on 1080p/medium/max frames 60, the game felt all jittery. I'd get a consistent 60 FPS, but it didn't feel like it.

That exactly describes my issue! I have Windows 10, and cap the FPS at 60, but sometimes it'd feel like 50 or 40 frames. For me, going full screen would eliminate that but at times I'd rather use windowed while I browse the net.

I'll edit this post once I get results.

сс /u/JohnMSFT

So is there any of this that can be done if you don't have the creator's update? I'm not seeing any of these options.

Is this the same as opening XBOX App and disabling Game DVR? or is this something else?

Commenting here so I can come back to it later.

There is no gaming section in my settings. Is it somewhere else? I'm using the settings that I got by pressing windows key and typing settings into the search bar.

Thank you so much for this. I could not figure out with Overwatch kept overriding my PC color settings every time I went full screen. It looks so much better now. Was so washed out before.

i don't understand, in my settings typing "gaming" brings nothing up?

Fucking perfect to know right before my new 144hz monitor shows up! Thank you SO much for this!

Can someone help me with this please? I'm doing all that is being said to be done, however, when I get to the compatibility tab, there's nothing of any sort looking like "Disable fullscreen optimization"

is this for the creator update?

I heard this works with playerunknown battlegrounds

Tried this earlier, and the game loads a bit faster for me than it did before. Will have to spend more time playing for any more noticeable changes.

It doesn't surprise me at all that the way to optimize a game is to turn off Microsoft's optimizations in Windows 10.

Win10 stinks on ice.

Every day I find more reasons not to upgrade to Windows 10.

Yeah no kidding. Malware is becoming the new normal.

Omg thank you so much. For months I've been plagued by this dumb issue where windows would change nvidia color settings the moment I launch a game full screen; alas it's no more! <3

Just after creator update?

Wow. I didn't have tons of issues, but that was a drastic improvement. Thanks!

I think I'm the only guy who uses Borderless Windowed for easy alt-tabbing. Would this apply to me as well?

How much did you pay for your PC?

150 avg fps to 250+ fps wowowow THANKS!!

Did that and I still don't go above 59fps even when changing other settings and even if I don't turn off my other screen :(

This worked wonders for me. Overwatch has always made my laptop get ridiculously hot. I've never had my PC crash from overheating but when I play OW for an extended period of time, the keys get so hot I can't even touch them and this fixed the problem entirely. Performance bonus is just icing on the cake.

Will this help windowed mode?

Man this sounds like what I have. I noticed the game just jitters and lags even though my ping was good and my fps was good. Definitely gonna try this

Will this prevent video recording overlays from popping up?

I love you. Can't wait to try this when I get home.

I uninstalled dvr and the rest of the bloatware via RegEdit, anyone got any idea whether it could still be an issue?

Commenting to say that on an MSI QE-2QF apache pro (nvidia 970m) laptop, I had the same effect. Laptop running way cooler, framerate stuck at 60 on higher settings in overwatch, dota2...testing more.

This seems like a huge performance oversight for microsoft =(

Thanks OP, you da best.

OMG, thanks. I've had this problem also. Cheers

Cool

Nice one, commenting so I remember to try it out when back at my PC.

Can't find "gaming" in settings?

can you keep me signed up for any more overwatch optimizations?

Fixed all my frame stuttering.

Bless OP.

placeholder to find it again at home

Insane I stumbled on this to find out I also have same issue on my 9550 and just assumed it was normal. I play on medium settings cause of all the throttling even on a laptop cooler.

This really really helped. I wonder if it will improve my other games.

good thing I never play on fullscreen cause everytime I'm in que I just go true reddit.

tfw you have the overheating problem, but you already have that option checked, so it's just your dumb laptop overheating/throttling like normal :(

Omg I love you. Tested with PUBG first and had my first solo victory haha

RemindMe! 8 hours

I've had the game bar settings turned off for a while, but the volume and music player overlays still work just fine in games for me..? Game DVR and "Game Mode" are also turned off

I think this made a real difference for me.

!RemindMe 8 Hours

I'm running a GTX 1070, i6600K, 16gb ram rig and lately (as in a couple months) I've been having these random drops in FPS and feels like the mouse goes unresponsive for a few seconds. Yesterday I followed your advice and was able to play with none of these sudden drops of frames or input lag happening, I think this fixed it, I also went ahead and mark the Overwatch executable to be ran with administrator rights so that may have helped also. Very sound advice, thanks dude!

thank ya <3

I don't have the option to disable it whenever I get all the way to compatibility. Anything I might be able to do to get it there? I have Windows 10. . .

i don't have windows creators, is it worth it to update just for this?

Does this affect the Discord Overlay?

I don't have those options are those only for laptop.

(windows key > type "settings" > gaming > game bar > "record clips, screenshots..." OFF > UNCHECK "show game bar when I play fullscreen games microsoft has verified").

It doesn't show up in my localization but you can find it by pressing win-key + g, activate it for the current program and then go to the settings.

!Remind Me 5 hours

I have windows 10, but I don't have this option when I go to compatibility. Any ideas?

I'm wondering if this is more common on low end or prebuilt systems.

None of my custom rigs have this option. Xbox app was disabled at install. Maybe that's why.

Holy shit dude I love you. I can only play on my SP4 so I run the most garbage settings with all min settings, min screen resolution, and frequently <60% resolution just to manage 30 fps with occasional lag still happening when a lot of effects go off all at once. Now I am able to play min resolution at 100%, throw in MSAA and hover sub 60s. I literally have no need to want to buy a gaming PC anymore! You saved me ~$700, thank you so much!!

Is there a way to do this globally? Or only per app?

For those who have had the Windows Update for awhile, does this setting often caused trouble in games?

I can play 1080p 60 instead of 720 on my little budget machine cause of this. Thanks!

BIG

The box for "disable fullscreen optimizations" doesn't show up on my properties for overwatch, anyone know why?

Thank you!! I usually got a consistent 90-120fps in games, but this let me get a surprisingly consistent 144fps with reduce buffering enabled. OP you're the bomb

my game is still running strong/loud and laptop gets quite hot =///

  • i7-6700k
  • Win 10 Pro 64 bit
  • GeForce 1080
  • 32 GB RAM
  • Win and OW are on a
  • M.2 SSD

Not sure what else is relevant... but anyways.

With Ultra settings everything would look beautiful but there'd be a tiny bit of input lag, maybe 100-200ms behind.

When you're an ADHD, autistic, Mongoose, Ninja, Offensive Jedi like myself, this is just too annoying. So I'd have to play on Epic or lower and reduce shadows...

With these settings turned off though, I don't get input lag anymore and my FPS is synced with my eyesight now.

Just did this today, huge improvement. Thanks!

Thank you, this helped me, not in Overwatch as I don't play it, but in Age of Empires II: HD Edition. I can play the game at a solid 60 FPS with 1080p resolution. I had no idea why it was lagging horribly all of a sudden.

same thing can be done for the nvidia overlay here http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4228/~/disabling-the-geforce-experience-share-in-game-overlay

Will give it a try, thanks!

How do you do this for a steam game?

This did wonders! I was confused why my brand new PC could only run the game at 720p on Medium, but after doing this I can run the game at 1080p on High (max settings for my computer). Thank you!

Play on the exact same laptop, ran into the exact same issue. Will definitely give this a shot.

There isn't even an option for "disabled fullscreen optimizations." ?? I'm using the latest windows 10 update.

Glad I found this!

commenting for later

Before getting the creators update this sounded like nonsence to me but after reinstalling windows overwatch felt very laggy even thou I was getting good fps it's good I saved this post I was about to think my pc was broken

hi im from csgosubreddit i had similar problem to yours. i solved problem by use your tips. Thank you, finally i can enjoy the game!

Disabling game bar also disables fullscreen optimization. You don't need to go to your game's exe properties

god bless you

You are the real hero. MVP CARD APPEARED!

anyone have a eli5/tl;dr of why this mode even exists if it doesn't seem to effect any other settings but fixes a bunch of other crap?

So windows can put their overlays over your gaming experience. It's really that simple.

I guess it was implemented to allow for Microsoft game bar/game DVR/game mode, and it just accidentally breaks stuff.

Thanks so much for posting this my friend.

posting to see later

OP what is your build?

I'm having the opposite issue: my GPU sometimes randomly becomes underutilized and my framerate tanks. I'd rather run at 100% with 160 not 55% with 75 thanks

Doesn't your CPU bottleneck your GPU?

It's a recent issue. I have an i5-4590, not the best but far from bottlenecking a 390 to the point of severe framerate fluctuation.

Maybe you have some power saving feature/setting enabled somewhere? Check windows/driver settings.

I'm on high performance.

Since you have an AMD GPU, maybe Radeon Chill is turned on? It lowers your frames when standing still to limit GPU usage for some reason. I had it turned on for a bit and there was a lot of jitter at times. Completely fine when I turned it off.

http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/radeon-software/gaming/radeon-chill

Nah, it's not on.

Have the same issue, my GPU is new but the PC is quite old.

Holy shit, thank you dude. This literally doubled my FPS from 120-140 (going up and down all the time making the image strain my eyes) to almost 300!

I always play on windowed settings because during the waiting period I check Reddit and YouTube, like right now I am In a match.

It only gives the option to disable display scaling on high DPI settings for me under the compatibility tab

I jsut wanna say thank you so much. I've been playing at like 20fps forever and its literally night and day. YOu are the best

For your "90 degrees C and throttle" problem, I found a simple fix to that,( also own the same laptop ) can easily push 130 fps consistently and low of 125 . All you have to do is download Intel Extreme Tuning Utility . The Undervolt that works for me and doesnt crash is -0.140v on core and -0.70 on graphics. Temperature only stays at 60-65

For your "90 degrees C and throttle" . I found a simple fix. Download Intel Extreme Tuning Utility. ( btw i also own the same laptop with max specs ). The undervolt that works for me, without crashing, is -0.140V on core and 0.70V on graphics . Temp stays at a constant 60-65C . I can easily achieve 130fps on overwatch low settings and 75% render scale, lowest dips i get is 120.

Is it safe to undervolt? Any downsides?

None that i have found , been doing it for a month now with that settings, haven't crashed yet.

I've been undervolting almost as much on both the XPS 9550 and 9560 (both max stats) for about a year now, and I've had the system crash all of twice.

On the 9550, it seemed stable up to -.150 and -.80. My 9560 is stable at -.125 and -.75.

I usually go -0.125V on the CPU and -0.75V on the GPU, but I'

My rig's an MSI GL72 6QF. Pretty solid machine all told, most modern games I've tried (where modern is defined for me as 'two years ago or newer') run at 1080p/60fps at least. Sometimes, however, temperatures make me uncomfortable in longer sessions. Especially when my CPU (i7-6700HQ) hits ~69-72 deg C according to Afterburner I physically can't game for more than one or two matches because the place I rest my hand gets too hot.

So, I try everything that has a chance at reducing the running temp of my CPU (already got a cooler stand that shaved off four degrees or so, is pretty nice :D), regardless of whether it's supposed to affect only GPU temps (when running overwatch at a hybrid of low and medium setting my GTX960M never gets above 62). So I tried this.

The temperatures of my CPU over an extended overwatch session went down from 71-72 to an average of 61, not counting menu's.

Thanks :D

Wow, I've got a similar rig and not really any frame rate issues but if it can bring down the heat then it's worth it. It's never gotten too hot for my hand but definitely warm and the room gets hot until the AC kicks in..

The default setting seems to potentially cause a huge variety of issues..

Microsoft's default settings fucking with basic operations?

Colour me surprised.

I don't see an option for disable full screen optimization.

Fuck w10

That option doesn't show up for me? Only option is "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings"

The option is only there if you have the Win 10 Creators Update.

Win 10 here. I hate Win 10. I now have more reason to hate it.

Wow. I also noticed my GPU would run really hot only on Overwatch even though it crushes other graphically intense games. Have to try this out when I get back to my PC.

I use borderless windowed for this reason

Does this happen when you play in borderless windowed

Good questions need advice

"disable display scaling on high DPI settings" for me

You lost me at

windows key > type "settings" > gaming

DUDE my GPU always melts and it annoys me to no end!! Thank you so much if this works!

Why on God's green earth would there be a setting in Windows that does this, though?

Trying this once I get home from work. I think you finally solved the problem I've had. My 1080ti would skyrocket to 90c easy in overwatch even when I turned settings down to 1080p low settings. If this works, I'm gonna have to gild you, mark my words!!!

I'm so freaking happy I could literally cry.....

Wow you saved my game experience. While I didn't get a performance boost this FINALLY fixed my screen tearing issue that surfaced a few months ago. I've tried everything and had pretty much given up but that did the trick, holy shit.

There's also something called game mode? do you know hat that is? Should I turn it off?

MFW I built my pc and don't know wtf these guys are talking about. I was relieved to see no bloatware when I installed a fresh OS as my impression of computers until then was that all OS came loaded down with shit software. That shit should be illegal to install into an OS if you're already purchasing their hardware. It's absurd that manufacturers do that.

I play on Windowed Full Screen. This probably doesn't apply to me but upvoted anyway just in case I decide to play on Full Screen.

If you have windows 10, consider uninstalling it and using Windows 7 instead kappa ;)

"I play on a dell" Well theres your problem

Commenting for later.

Overwatch has a godlike performance for me, coming from CSGO and playing PUBG at the moment. Can run it in windowed fullscreen without big fps losses.

i did this the very first second the CU came out. Baffles me to see not many of you guys knew this :)

That's kinda condescending. But ok.

Even Microsoft suggested disabling it, in the very first days of the update the internet was full of instructions of how to disable this.

The internet is full of a lot of things. That is like saying the universe is full of stars. I never heard of this until today and I am a frequent computer user.

It happens. No need to judge people.

In fact, I would challenge you to provide a link to something proving that MS suggested disabling this universally. And, if that really is the case, has the issue been fixed with updates since? As in, even today is it still necessary to disable this feature

Steam has a popup when you start cs:go, telling you that the game bar and shenanigans are activated and that it causes issues.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6239-DZCB-8600&l=

The internet was literally full of posts containing things like higher inputlag, sluggier frame times, etc. This steam article that I linked is pretty well known tbh.

5 years later this is still a huge problem btw - just built my new computer and have the same problems now that I did with everything I played back in college when I first installed windows 10. Infuriatingly poor quality

helped slightly, my game still runs like shit though.

I miss ow1 140 fps... now i play at 20.

Where is this in the Xbox menu?

> fullscreen applications
> fullscreen
> current year

Fullscreen is far superior to windowed fullscreen for everything but quickly tabbing.

Or just dont buy prebuilt turdmachines? Laptops are one thing, but thats what you get for buying from shit companies.