If you toil around online , you ’ll get wildly unlike advice about whether borderless or fullscreen is good for your performance . Some say there ’s no conflict . Othersclaim vast improvementswith fullscreen modal value in game likePlayerUnkown ’s Battlegrounds . More stillsay you ’ll get better performance with borderless in a biz likeFallout 4.You do n’t ask to follow this advice , and you probably should n’t on a more universal basis , but why are there so many dissimilar claims about what should be one of the simplest setting in a artwork menu ?
I wanted to notice out , and I sure enough tried . What started as a data - motor dissection of borderless and fullscreen gaming , however , quick turned into a enquiry project about how images show up on your screen . This is n’t a debate or even a subject worth talk over in 2024 if you proverbially ( or literally ) trace supergrass , but if you ’ll rip your sunglasses close for a few minutes , I ’ll guide you down a dense , extremely nerdy path of how games show up on your screen .
Showing my work
I tried testing game . I really did . My original programme for this article was to run through as many advanced games as I could -that were relinquish in the last five years and benchmark them in fullscreen manner and borderless mode . I ran five pass of each game for each display style , hoping to get an average that would show even minor public presentation difference . They just were n’t there .
you could see the fistful of game I made it through above . I planned to screen far more , but take to the woods after run , biz after plot , I keep seeing the exact same results . Maybe there are a few games likePlayerUnknown ’s BattlegroundsandFallout 4where there ’s a conflict , but if I was n’t able to even stumble upon a minor difference in big game likeHorizon Zero DawnandRed Dead Redemption 2,it ’s hard to say there ’s a reproducible drift .
The only exception wasHitman 3.It ’s not a massive difference , but it is a measurable one . Hitman 3is an oddness in the game I tested — I also did one run each onBlack Myth : WukongandReturnalwithout any difference in performance — but that ’s not just because there ’s a performance difference . Unlike the other biz I try , Hitman 3doesn’t have a borderless option . Instead , it has a fullscreen option and an exclusive fullscreen choice .
That departure in nomenclature means a fate , and it ’s something most game do n’t ante up attention to .
What fullscreen means
You probably do n’t get laid what “ fullscreen ” actually think in your games . I can say that with confidence , too , because there ’s a dear chance that the plot itself is n’t clear about what fullscreen mean . In years past , the fullscreen stage setting would refer toexclusivefullscreen . That means the exhibit adapter — yourgraphics card — has full controller of the display . If you boot up an older biz and switch to fullscreen mode , you ’ll see your CRT screen go blank for a few seconds . That ’s your graphics posting taking over .
If you ’re not run an exclusive fullscreen diligence , your display is controlled by theDesktop Window Manager , or DWM , in Windows . It was first innovate in Windows Vista as a way to start the Aero feature in that operating organization . It ’s a desktop makeup service , where the intact screen is rendered ( or string ) to a place in remembering before being displayed onscreen . Previously , window would describe straightaway to the presentation .
The traditional wisdom around fullscreen and borderless play comes back to DWM . The idea is that , in borderless modality , you ’ll have to spend some amount of resources on DWM , even if the game is taking up your full exhibit . To guarantee the best performance , you ’d want to run in fullscreen mode , bypassing DWM entirely and any potential performance release it could convey .
There are two exit with this wisdom in 2024 . First is that game are n’t consistent about what fullscreen and borderless in reality think of . Games likeHorizon Zero Dawn , for exercise , do n’t utilise an single fullscreen musical mode , despite offering both borderless and fullscreen selection . And newer game , such asBlack Myth : Wukong , don’t have a fullscreen pick at all . There ’s a reasonHitman 3showed a execution deviation — it has an sole fullscreen mood .
The second issue is more involved , and it has to do with how images really show up on your display . DWM could represent a performance loss in year past , but today , it ’s a little smart than that .
Flipping frames
With the spill of Windows 8 , Microsoft introduced the DXGI flip presentation model . DXGI is the DirectX Graphics Infrastructure , and it ’s one portion in a foresighted stack of middleware between your plot and your graphics card . The impudent demonstration model , according toMicrosoft ’s own certification , “ reduces the organization resource load and increase performance . ” The estimation is to “ flip ” a rendered frame onto the screen door rather than copying it from a plaza in memory .
rent ’s back up for a moment . In graphic rendering , there ’s something love asthe swap string . Graphics are render in a back fender , and then that polisher is flipped onto the display . Imagine a diggings of steamy notes . There ’s an image being drawn on the sticky note beneath the top one . Once it ’s done , the front eminence will switch out of the elbow room , expose what ’s underneath . That ’s how a swap chain works .
It can flip instantly , too . When your artwork wit is displaying a frame , it ’s showing what ’s know as the front cowcatcher . This image has a arrow attach to it . The back cowcatcher is being drawn off screen . When the soma is quick , all that ’s take is a cursor change . Instead of pointing at the front buffer , we ’re pointing at the back buffer , which in turn becomes the unexampled front pilot . The old front cowcatcher ( now the back buffer zone ) is used to depict the next frame , and back and forth they go . you’re able to have a more tangled serial of these buffers , but that ’s how the swap string works at a high level .
It ’s important to sympathize what a toss means because it ’s the critical alteration that Windows 8 made for submit borderless game . Prior to the flip demonstration modelling , DWM would use a bit - block transfer . This necessitate copying the back pilot over to DWM where it would then be composed onscreen . The flip model appropriate DWM to see a pointer to a frame . When the next shape needs to be pen , all that ’s required is a arrow change , just like the swap chain . You quash a read and write operation .
This change has shifted how game actually work within Windows . Now , most games , even when running in fullscreen fashion , will still be composed with DWM . It enable you to quicklyAlt+Tabout of games , and secure overlays work right . Particularly for sometime games , you ’ll see some advice to “ disable fullscreen optimizations , ” which is build into Windows to give the graphics card full dominance over the presentation if any issues come up .
Settling a debate that doesn’t matter
Before the impudent presentation model , there was an argument that exclusive fullscreen was the manner to go for the good performance , even if that execution advantage was small . Today , it really does n’t count . It ’s potential you ’ll run into a special plot — especially if it ’s older — where there ’s a performance divergence . Or , you may need to disable fullscreen optimizations to fix functioning issues count on your configuration . But when it comes down to if you should prefer borderless or fullscreen , you may choose whatever your core desire .
mayhap that should be a unsatisfying result given the cony cakehole this topic sent me down , but it really is n’t . It bestow nuance to the word , and it fills in the gaps left by decades of forum posts dancing around the borderless argument without ever nailing it on the head . If nothing else , now I can just vex with borderless mood without ever wondering if I ’m leave performance on the table .
