Hi, after moving to Windows 8 I noticed a performance loss in many video games. After doing some testing I came to the conclusion that it is caused by the DWM(Desktop Window Manager) stealing CPU cycles from the games.
In order to make completely sure DWM was the culprit I tested the same games in Windows 7 with DWM on and off and the results with Windows 7 DWM on were impacted very much the say way as they were in Windows 8. While running games in Fullscreen rather than windowed mode relieved some of the loss in Windows 8, Windows 7 with DWM off still performed better regardless of how the screen mode was set.
In Windows 7 it was very simple to temporarily disable DWM by editing the shortcut of a game however from what I understand it is not possible to disable DWM at all in Windows 8. I can't understand why Microsoft didn't bother implementing a way around this issue fully knowing it had caused the same problem in their previous operating system.
Has anyone come up with a way to eliminate the issues caused by the DWM in video games? I'm afraid if there really is no way to get around this issue I will be forced to go back to Windows 7.
In order to make completely sure DWM was the culprit I tested the same games in Windows 7 with DWM on and off and the results with Windows 7 DWM on were impacted very much the say way as they were in Windows 8. While running games in Fullscreen rather than windowed mode relieved some of the loss in Windows 8, Windows 7 with DWM off still performed better regardless of how the screen mode was set.
In Windows 7 it was very simple to temporarily disable DWM by editing the shortcut of a game however from what I understand it is not possible to disable DWM at all in Windows 8. I can't understand why Microsoft didn't bother implementing a way around this issue fully knowing it had caused the same problem in their previous operating system.
Has anyone come up with a way to eliminate the issues caused by the DWM in video games? I'm afraid if there really is no way to get around this issue I will be forced to go back to Windows 7.
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Windows 8.1/7
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop