Windows 10 has been a fairly good operating system thus far. It’s sleek, very customizable, and easy to use when it’s not hi-jacking your system for an update. However, the most recent system update has turned on the Xbox app’s Game DVR feature, and while this may be useful to some, it could also be sapping your framerate in your favorite games. We have the lowdown for you on how to fix it.
Game DVR works sort of like Nvidia’s Shadowplay feature in that it allows players to record game clips and take screenshots on the fly with relative ease. Unfortunately, it also seems to sink framerates on various games, Valve titles in particular. Fortunately, there are several ways to deal with this and neither of them are too difficult, though one requires some fiddling with your PC’s registry.
The first requires that you have a Microsoft account. It works thusly:
-From your Start Menu, Open the Xbox app and log in with your Microsoft account.
-Select the cog from the bottom of the left side menu bar to access Settings. (Pictured left below)
-Select the Game DVR Tab from the category bar in the Settings menu. (Pictured right below)
-Switch the first option to “Off”. (Also pictured right below)
If you don’t have a Microsoft account and prefer not to create one, there is a slightly riskier method of turning off Game DVR via your PC registry. Here’s how it works, as described by a user on the DOTA 2 Subreddit:
-Open Registry Editor (Run > regedit)
-Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\System\GameConfigStore
-Set the value of DWORD “GameDVR_Enabled” to 0
-Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\
-Create key “GameDVR”
-Create DWORD 32bit called “AllowgameDVR” and set to 0
PCs using Nvidia cards have seen the biggest effect from this option, though Nvidia released a new Game Ready driver just today, so it’s possible that downloading and installing the newest update may help with this problem. Either way, unless you’re recording or taking screen caps regularly, you’re probably better off with Game DVR turned off, or maybe even choosing one of the less invasive options out there.
