Forum Discussion

New Scout

5 years ago

Solved

PSA: Use fullscreen mode, not borderless (performance issue)

I only just now realized that switching to fullscreen mode gives me way better performance than borderless. I jumped from ~60fps to 100+. My CPU and GPU utilization hovers at about 30% which is weird...

technical issues

NostriIdumas
5 years ago
Ok, it appears that the dynamic resolution scale option only works in fullscreen mode, and that's what was boosting my framerate in fullscreen mode. Disabling it yields the same framerate between borderless and fullscreen mode, so that must be it. I guess I'm satisfied with my current performance with the assumption that it'll only improve going forward.

XxKrazymagicxX

5 years ago

This type of jump, and the mention of "60 fps" windowed suggests it is more a vsync issue more than anything. What is the refresh rate of the monitor you are using? Going from borderless to fullscreen will not yield this kind of increase unless something else is at play. In windowed mode, games tend to often times be restricted by vsync sometimes. For example, I have BF 2042 set in the Nvidia control panel to run without any cap on framerate. If I play in windowed mode however, my framerate will in fact cap to my Gsync set limit of 117FPS. This is true in any game I play. The point here is that there are a lot of caveats to this. Your increase is likely due to you just not understanding how this works and little or nothing at all to do with the game actually performing better in full screen.

Full screen though is typically recommended in games, not just because of the above issue but because some games get less input lag in fullscreen as well. For competitive play, fullscreen is always recommended.

NostriIdumas
New Scout
5 years ago
144Hz, and no, it's definitely not VSync causing the 60fps, it's off both in game and in my NVIDIA settings for the game profile and globally. Believe me, I understand this, I've been learning game development using Unreal Engine for ~2 years now. The exact same issue was present in Sea of Thieves and they patched it. I'll add that the issue was specific to the Steam version of Sea of Thieves (Microsoft store version was fine). Are you running 2042 through Steam? I'm aware it still "uses" Origin, but Sea of Thieves still "used" XBox Live and the issue was specific to the Steam execution of the game. The builds are not necessarily totally identical because of the SteamWorks API integration.
- XxKrazymagicxX
  5 years ago
  @5moothassWallaceI am running the steam version. I have ran the game in windowed, borderless, and in fullscreen. I have not seen the behaviour you mention here. Ive never had a game drop its FPS by half just going to borderless. Every instance Ive ever seen this occur it was due to refresh rate / vsync type issues, where the game was being artificially capped by some process while in window mode. The fact that you say 60fps is telling. 60FPS would be one of those expected capping points where a vsync issue would be at play.
  Have you verified the monitor is in fact running at 144hz in the control panel?
  - NostriIdumas
    New Scout
    5 years ago
    Digging around everywhere but I'm not seeing anywhere where a configuration would be causing this specifically with BF2042. Works fine in Sea of Thieves, BF4, PUBG.