 Let's face it, adding more graphics power to your system is expensive. So it shouldn't come then as a surprise that there is no shortage of software solutions out there that promise to enhance your gaming experience without an investment in more hardware. And there have been a lot of flavors of software secret sauce over the years from nonsense like basic programs that just close the stuff you have open in the background to more credible solutions like driver updates, new APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan and now Windows 10 game mode. But is this a truly tasty addition to your gaming smorgasbord or is it 2017's version of blast processing? Let's find out. INTRO G-SKILLS KM780R RGB mechanical keyboard features a brushed aluminum top plate, on the fly macro recording and different Cherry MX switch configurations. Learn more at the link below. So the second major update to Windows 10 called the creators update has a plethora of new enhancements. But we're going to be laser focused on game mode. A feature that Microsoft bills as providing a better and more consistent gaming experience on Windows 10 by dedicating more system resources to your game. Sounds interesting, but how does it work? Well using game mode is simple. It can be enabled with one click from the settings app. Then when you load your game, you open the Windows game bar by pressing the Windows key and G and ensure it's enabled for that specific game by clicking the little gear icon. Neat. But can something this easy really make your gaming experience better and more consistent? Well, since Microsoft seems to be making two separate claims here, we decided to test each one of them individually by looking at average frame rates to determine if the experience was better overall, as well as 99.9% minimum FPS to judge the consistency of the experience. For our game suite, we went with Deus Ex Mankind Divided, Ashes of the Benchmark, and Gears of War 4. We were particularly interested in the latter, as it's a universal Windows platform game, and we wanted to see if its supposedly tighter integration with Microsoft technology might make it behave a little differently. For our testbed, Z, we actually used three different hardware configurations, which you can see on the screen right now. The goal here was to represent modern high-end, mid-range, and budget-oriented gaming setups. So let's dive into the results and look first then at how game mode affected average frame rates. Hmm. Not very much. The difference between game mode and non-game mode benchmarks was only a frame or two per second across the board, and sometimes not even that much, with the exception of Gears 4 on our high-end system, though I can't imagine why the vast majority of you would notice or care about the difference between 145 and 154 FPS. But as the college-educated among you well know, dips in performance can actually be more impactful than average frame rates. So did game mode prevent or lessen slowdowns? Well, we actually did see a difference in our minimum frame rates here. But unfortunately, it wasn't in the direction that you, yes you, Microsoft PR rep, may have been hoping for. Both Deus Ex and Ashes performed noticeably worse in DirectX 11 mode, and the minimums on Gears 4 absolutely tanked on our high-end setup. Switching APIs to DirectX 12 didn't do us many favors, except in Gears, which did at least improve by 5.5 frames on our Core i5 GTX 1060 system. But still, that precipitous drop on higher-end hardware left us scratching our heads a little bit. So what exactly is going on here? Did Microsoft management decide that the release of Windows Vista was far too long ago, and they were overdue to give us another astonishingly poorly implemented piece of software? Well, it's hard to say for certain, but our hypothesis is that the problem actually isn't at least entirely the poor execution, but rather that the overall concept as a whole is just kinda s***. At its very core, Game Mode is purportedly trying to divert more of your system resources to your games without answering the all-important questions of, 1. What resources are we talking about exactly, and 2. Are games really starved for them? So the largest single defining factor in how modern games will perform is how powerful your graphics card is. And I think it's pretty safe to say that no self-respecting gamer is putting a secondary load like Bitcoin mining or neural network simulation on their GPU in the background while they're playing Metro Last Light. And then even for games that are considered more CPU bound, they still usually don't use up so much CPU time that they're going to be seriously affected by other programs running in the background. Partially because reasonably modern versions of Windows, going back to 7, already do a pretty darn good job of deciding on the most sensible way to divvy up CPU time between all of your different tasks. So why even bother releasing it then? We've got a couple of ideas. First up, it could be that Game Mode was developed for users that have so many junkware applications or even outright malware like viruses running in the background that system resources are constantly tied up. But we would suggest that in that case, you probably have bigger problems than a few FPS in League of Legends. And number 2, maybe they were going after lower end or older hardware. But then even our budget setup that included a dual core CPU and a graphics card that doesn't even need an extra power connector didn't benefit from Game Mode. To be fair to Microsoft, our testing wasn't comprehensive. So with the literally millions of combinations of hardware, games, and game engines out there, it's possible that there are folks out there having better luck with Game Mode than we did. And we'd love to hear from you guys in the comments below. But for our part, especially in light of Microsoft's recent push to force Windows 10 users onto newer hardware platforms, Game Mode really feels like a solution seeking a problem for the moment. Skillshare, in a nutshell, it's an online learning community for creators with more than 15,000 classes in design, business, tech, and more. Everyone can take a class, try a project, or even teach a class themselves. Premium membership begins at around $10 a month, which gives you unlimited access to learning. You can learn from anywhere, download the mobile app on Android or iOS, and tap into classes even when you're offline. We checked out a few of their classes about video editing with Adobe Premiere, but there's tons of other stuff on there, and it's worth giving it a shot. Check it out today. The first 200 viewers to click the link in the description will get a two-month free trial. So thanks for watching, guys. If you disliked this video, hit that button. But if you liked it, hit the like button, get subscribed, and maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description. I mean, what would we even put down there? You'd buy Windows 10. There you go. Also down there is our merch store where you can get cool shirts like this one, and our community forum, which you should totally join.