Why Do My Games Lag in Windowed Mode But Run Smoothly in Fullscreen?
Asked by
PixelProwler29
I've been experiencing some frustrating lag issues with my games. When I run them in windowed mode, they lag significantly, but when I switch to fullscreen, everything runs perfectly. This issue started recently, and it's also noticeable when my volume slider is visible on the screen—the frame rates drop. I have an RTX 4050, 16 GB of RAM, and an AMD Ryzen 5 processor, and I'm using Windows 11. I enabled G-sync, which seemed to help at first, but it stopped working after a restart. Any suggestions on how to fix this?
Answers
It sounds like you might be dealing with a DWM bug. This can happen if different applications and UI layers are trying to run with varying DPI or HDR settings. Have you tried turning off HDR completely from your system settings? That could potentially solve the lag issues in windowed mode.
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First things first, make sure your Windows is up to date. Keep running updates until everything is installed. After that, you should use Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) to completely remove your current graphics drivers, then download the latest ones from Nvidia's support site. It can really help clear up these kinds of issues!
FixItFelix77: I actually found the problem! I had the optimization for windowed applications on. Turning that off fixed the lag!
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CuriousChris92: Thanks! How do I go about disabling HDR?
FixItFelix77: I found the issue! I had the optimization for windowed applications on. Not sure why it caused lag, but turning it off fixed everything.