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[Craig of War]

Windows 10 is getting a modern Task Manager for your games

Microsoft is working on a new feature for Windows 10 that will help you free up resources when your computer slows down or become unresponsive entirely in the middle of your gameplay. If you’ve ever experienced performance issues during gameplay, you’ve probably pressed Ctrl-Alt-Del command to...

www.windowslatest.com

"Microsoft is working on a new feature for Windows 10 that will help you free up resources when your computer slows down or become unresponsive entirely in the middle of your gameplay.

If you’ve ever experienced performance issues during gameplay, you’ve probably pressed Ctrl-Alt-Del command to access the Task Manager and examine if all those background processes affect the gaming performance.

That’s the most common and practical approach, especially on a device that includes a lengthy list of apps and processes. If you’re unable to access the Task Manager in the middle of the game, Windows 10 is getting a new feature that lets you monitor resources and background processes without leaving your game.

This new resources monitor will roll out to users as part of the Xbox Game Bar update on Windows 10. Once the Game Bar is updated, you can see the resources monitor by pressing Windows Key and the G key together.

Windows 10’s new resources monitor comes with a modern design and it helps you decide which apps and services to kill and which to keep running when you notice FPS drops in the middle of your games.

If you’re not familiar with processes and services running in the background, you can view the actual resources used and percentages of apps/services.

To discover what apps to keep running, you can filter the processes by resources percentage and kill the extraneous processes by clicking on the ‘X’ button.

It’s also worth noting that you can use the modern Task Manager replacement to free up resources when you’re not playing games.

The addition of a built-in resources monitor to the Game Bar comes after Windows 10 was updated last year with the ability to monitor the FPS during gameplay. Last year, the tech giant said that these new features are just beginning and you can expect more gaming improvements in the coming months.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Lol, you aren't going to fool me into using Game Bar, Microsoft.

 

[Arkam]

Can we get the current task manager to actually come up first? Just did the fall update (which took hours). When I was able to log back in i was basically dead in teh water for 10-20 more min while it was doing SOMETHING that was eating all of my HDD I/O. Tried to pull up the task manager, and per usual it was "not responding" for the first 30-45 seconds.

Win 10 is not a bad OS, but it has been getting worse and worse with each update. I could care less about new features, I want stability and speed.

 

[lastmessiah]

Lol, you aren't going to fool me into using Game Bar, Microsoft.

What's wrong with the Game Bar?

 

[jonnyp]

I don't get it, it looks worse than the current task manager

 

[Pagusas]

I don't get it, it looks worse than the current task manager

my understanding is it will overlay ontop of the game when you bring it up instead of taking you to the desktop like the current task manager does.

 

[TeKtheSanE]

I kinda like this idea, but dunno if I would utilize it.

 

[Fake]

Is this just like the famous Game Mode?

 

[jshackles]

With all the threads on GAF lately, at first I thought this would be some sort of save-state and resume feature for games and got excited.

This is boring work stuff type news.

 

[Soodanim]

I suppose this is more of an issue if you’re an OEM customer and not someone that installs windows and keeps things relatively minimal.

How’s Game Bar these days? I don’t think I’ve ever used it.

This also seems to be the right thread to ask if the option to force Variable Refresh Rate for unsupported games does anything.

 

[nemiroff]

What's wrong with the Game Bar?

Nothing.

 

[lastmessiah]

I suppose this is more of an issue if you’re an OEM customer and not someone that installs windows and keeps things relatively minimal.

How’s Game Bar these days? I don’t think I’ve ever used it

I use it and find it quite useful.

 

[SCB3]

What's wrong with the Game Bar?

Aside from a few times where I literally could not change audio output, I've not had any issues with it other than Steam big picture also activating (it also uses the xbox button)

 

[zeomax]

What's wrong with the Game Bar?

In the past it caused stutter and lags in games.

 

[Bonfires Down]

Game Bar is good. It allows for easy access to web browser and some performance metrics etc in non-Steam games and without extra software.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

It'd be even cooler if they give you a way to write a script (or maybe just a batch file) you can deploy when the system detects certain issues in background utilities/services/processes causing framerate and performance issues in a game, and automatically start shutting down the processes the script specifies until a certain level of stabilized game performance is attained.

I do not know how that would be implemented, however. The service itself would still need to run in the background obviously, but I think the games themselves would have to support that type of thing in the code. Or maybe not, I dunno. It would be neat if games could automatically change between their different texture/graphical and resolution settings based on reading any persistent state of CPU/GPU bottlenecking that could be occurring due to some background tasks, if the user enables it on their setup for the system and game of course.

HDD

There's your problem. Switch to SSD amigo, you'll never regret it

 

[Slings and Arrows]

How about just making a game mode windows?

Pause, stop, kill 100% of all non gaming tasks or let me boot up in Xbox mode (no Windows fluff)

 

[Arkam]

There's your problem. Switch to SSD amigo, you'll never regret it

Thats some truth right there. I have a 250GB samsung SSD that I put the games that need it on (like SQUAD). But my OS is on the slow spinner til I upgrade next summer/fall.

 

[Mista]

What's wrong with the Game Bar?

Believe it or not, it screws with games performance. Run a game with it on and look at your frames, then turn it off and look again.

 

[base]

Just like the Game Mode which causes stuttering.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Believe it or not, it screws with games performance. Run a game with it on and look at your frames, then turn it off and look again.

Bigger issue for me was that for the longest time, it also lead to stuttering in games, even in low-rent 2D stuff. Which was incredibly annoying.

 

[Mista]

Bigger issue for me was that for the longest time, it also lead to stuttering in games, even in low-rent 2D stuff. Which was incredibly annoying.

Yeah. It screws with games performance in general

Its not worth having it on for any reason honestly

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Thats some truth right there. I have a 250GB samsung SSD that I put the games that need it on (like SQUAD). But my OS is on the slow spinner til I upgrade next summer/fall.

Stay strong until then; I would never put OS on a HDD after suffering HDD failures three times on those things (and a couple other times due to shitty anti-virus corrupting the boot loader...but that happened on HDD so I still hate HDDs out of proxy even if that wasn't actually the reason).

 

[alabtrosMyster]

The only feature i need on the gamebar is easier to disable gamebar.