Game Mode is found on the Gaming page of the Windows Settings app, and Microsoft's documentation says it gives a game exclusive or priority access to hardware resources, but no official page states how many FPS it adds. Whether to keep it on or off therefore depends on how much else is running on your PC, and the honest answer is to check its current state and compare on and off yourself. Everything here was checked against Microsoft's official pages on September 30, 2026. The location comes from Microsoft's description of the Windows Settings app, while the feature description comes from a Windows 10 developer article. If your frame rate drops mainly while you are recording, see how to fix FPS drops while recording games as well.
The short answer: no official page promises a speedup
Three things are confirmed in official documentation. First, Microsoft's Windows support article says the Gaming page includes settings for the game bar, game mode, and game streaming. Second, the Game Mode article on Microsoft Learn says the feature gives a game exclusive or priority access to hardware resources, which helps it hit performance targets more consistently. Third, the same article says the performance increase is directly related to the number and impact of other activities running on the device. What you will not find in any official page is a percentage or a guaranteed FPS gain. So on a PC with little running in the background the difference may be small, and it can matter more as more things run at once. The second and third points come from an archived Windows 10 developer article, so I will not claim Windows 11 behaves identically. If your worry is control responsiveness rather than frame rate, how to reduce input lag in games covers other factors.
How to check Game Mode in Settings
- 1Open the Windows Settings app — Open the Windows Settings app. Microsoft's support article Exploring Windows Settings describes how this app is organized, and the gaming options are part of it.
- 2Go to the Gaming page — In Settings, open the Gaming page. The official article says this page includes settings for the game bar, game mode, and game streaming, and that statement was checked on September 30, 2026.
- 3Read the current Game Mode state — Find the Game Mode item on that page and see whether it is on or off right now. The exact toggle label and its help text could not be checked on a dedicated Microsoft page, so go by what your screen shows. There is also no Microsoft page I could open that confirms the Windows 11 default, which is why looking at it directly is the safest move.
- 4Record a baseline before changing anything — In the same game, the same map or scene, and the same graphics settings, note how the frame rate behaves using whatever method you normally use. Because the documentation gives no fixed figure, the only way to learn the difference on your PC is to compare before and after yourself.
- 5Change it and compare under the same conditions — Switch the item and repeat the same check. Microsoft's article says exclusive resources require the app to be in the foreground with focus, and CPU resources can be reclaimed when focus is lost, so keep the game window in front during the comparison. If nothing changes, that is a valid result and you can simply set it back.
Claim-by-claim evidence and how far this article goes
| Item | What the official documentation says | How this article uses it |
|---|---|---|
| Where it is | The Gaming page in Settings includes settings for the game bar, game mode, and game streaming | Directed only to the Game Mode item on the Settings > Gaming page |
| What it does | Gives a game exclusive or priority access to hardware resources so performance targets are met more consistently | Description comes from an archived Windows 10 developer article |
| Size of the effect | The performance increase is directly related to the number and impact of other activities on the device | No FPS gain figure exists in the docs, so none is given |
| Condition | The app must be in the foreground with focus, and CPU resources can be reclaimed if it loses focus | The reason to keep the game window in front while testing |
| Default behavior | On Windows 10, it works by default for most Windows games with no user or developer action | The Windows 11 default was not confirmed, so check it in Settings |
| Related setting | Optimizations for windowed games (Settings > System > Display > Graphics) is a separate setting | Applies to DirectX 10/11 games in windowed mode and is not covered in detail |
If you cannot feel any difference
- Check that you actually found the Game Mode item on the Gaming page and read its current state
- If menu names on your screen differ from this article, confirm the wording in Microsoft's support article in your Windows language
- Check that before and after were compared in the same game, the same scene, and the same graphics settings
- Check that the game window kept focus during the comparison and you did not switch away often
- If the game is DirectX 10/11 in windowed or borderless mode, also look at the separate Optimizations for windowed games setting
Where Game Mode meets game recording
No official source I could check says Game Mode changes recording quality or load, so I will not claim that. What is clear is that Microsoft ties the effect to the other activities running on the device, and a recording app is one more of them while you play. DOR is a free Windows desktop recording app: it detects supported games automatically, saves the full match as an mp4, and uses NVENC hardware encoding by default on NVIDIA graphics cards. It can also capture game audio and your microphone together. For example, if you record Sudden Attack with Game Mode left on, it is supported for automatic full-match recording only, without automatic highlight clips for kills. If your frame rate wobbles while recording, how to reduce GPU load while recording helps you separate the causes.
Official sources and check date
Checked on September 30, 2026. The statement that the Gaming page holds game mode settings comes from Microsoft Support: Exploring Windows Settings, and the description of the feature comes from Game Mode on Microsoft Learn, an archived Windows 10 developer article dated May 31, 2018. For the separate windowed-games setting, see Microsoft Support: Optimizations for windowed games in Windows 11.
