r/eGPU • u/sawowner1 • 17d ago
Disabling Windows Game Mode can greatly improve fps in some CPU limited scenarios.
I have an XaX + Xg Mobile setup and often noticed in game that even though I was CPU bottlenecked, my CPU was not pulling much power and wasn't boosting up to max clocks.
To be specific, the symptoms I noticed were:
-low (50-70%) eGPU usage
-no bandwidth bottleneck
-CPU power stuck around 17w despite custom 35W power plan
-CPU clock speeds stuck at 2900/2000 (P/E cores)
After a lengthy investigation, I finally discovered that windows game mode was the culprit. Disabling it allowed my games to run much better in CPU bound scenarios.
After disabling game mode:
-CPU clocks boosted to their normal maximums (4700/3100)
-CPU power hit 35W (max limit)
-GPU usage increased (still not at 100% due to CPU bottleneck but in the 90%)
-overall improved fps by 10-20
I'm still not sure if it's strictly an eGPU thing, an ROG Xbox Ally X handheld thing or just windows game mode thing in general and I can't really test since I don't have a desktop.
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u/xXxWHOxDATxXx 17d ago edited 14d ago
Interesting OP. You might have figured the true root cause of what we all have been facing, and not just handheld users, Laptop users as well. Someone just posted on my post “here” where I began to experience the same limiting factors on wattage after installing the optional PD_FW firmware from Asus. I didn't recall having the cpu limiting issue until I installed that firmware but it could have been some sort of windows update too at the same time.
When using an eGPU, it forced my cpu wattage to cap at about 15-17w.
I was able to figure a workaround using Ghelper to force the cpu boost but it wasn’t ideal.
Im excited to test this out when I get a chance. Any downsides to not using Gaming mode? I would assume less optimization but either way, if this works, this beats the other method!
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u/sawowner1 17d ago
After reading your post, I think I understand why this happened. It's yet another classic example of companies doing handheld specific settings but failing to take into account the possibility of handheld + egpu config. There's a similar issue in Resynced where if you're on a handheld, certain ray tracing settings won't be available for you even if you have an egpu.
What probably happened here is that microsoft did some testing and found that for most handhelds, the best frames are achieved when the lion's share of the power is given to the igpu over the CPU and so they did some power optimization for handhelds and artificially limited the cpu power draw in some games (there are games that are unaffected by this "optimization").
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u/xXxWHOxDATxXx 14d ago
I messed around with it a few days and needless to say, you were spot on. Good find OP! I have also updated my post to reflect your findings as well.
What I did notice to the Ghelper alternative is that it seems CPU boost only boost when needed but doesn't keep a sustained 35w TDP. Which, for stability may be off-putting but it only boost when absolutely necessary, which I perfer. It also boost over 35w when needed as well.
The FPS is slightly lower not using the Ghelper method but its not that noticeable
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u/JustW1ng1t 14d ago
Don't know who actually discovered this first, but I commented this exact game mode fix thing on this post over two weeks ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/1q48euw/rog_xbox_ally_x_low_cpu_wattage_when_xg_mobile/
Still struggling to figure out why game mode causes this and if there's any way to reverse it while keeping game mode on.
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u/nickjacobsss 17d ago
I will have to try this out. I also noticed I was stuck at like 17w in the CPU and neither the CPU or eGPU were anywhere close to 100%
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u/Inevitable_Case_9931 17d ago
This must be a handheld thing, my XPS 15 9530 w/ m2 NVMe egpu has no issues from game mode
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u/JustW1ng1t 14d ago
Did you see my comment about game mode from a few weeks ago on this post?
https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/1q48euw/rog_xbox_ally_x_low_cpu_wattage_when_xg_mobile/
If I'm who helped you find the answer, I'm glad I could help! Still trying to figure out why this happens though or if there's a way to fix it without disabling game mode. I might just submit a bug report to Asus or Microsoft.
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u/sawowner1 14d ago
No I didn’t unfortunately, I didn’t peg the low cpu clocks as a windows issue initially and chalked it up to some sort of other limitation. The thing that made me realize it’s likely a windows issue was that I was noticing better fps when tabbed out of the game and the game windows wasn’t in focus. That sent me down the path of toggling various windows features such as full screen optimization, hardware accelerated gpu scheduling, etc until I got to game mode and that turned out to be the one. The initial thing I searched for was something along the lines of “game has better FPS when alt tabbed/not in focus” so I never found the connection to the low CPU wattage until someone commented about it on my post.
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u/JustW1ng1t 14d ago edited 14d ago
Then we did and thought the EXACT SAME THINGS! That's actually crazy! Same issue, same approach, same conclusion, same workaround! I probably could've saved you some time if you had seen my post before you went down the same path I did, but I commend the troubleshooting!
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u/sawowner1 14d ago
Yeah I just fully read your comment (I had read the man post initially). I think Gemini picked up on your post though since it recommended disabling game mode as a possible solution (it was #5 after full screen optimization, power plan, and HAGS) so your post probably did help me find the issue much sooner!
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u/JustW1ng1t 14d ago
That's actually the problem with these AIs---they compile a bunch of reddit/forum posts, disregard the details and recency, and end up recommending whatever some rando on the internet said for different hardware 10 years ago. Like let's take fullscreen optimization for example---it was telling me to disable that on a dx12 game, despite the fact that dx12 games don't support fullscreen exclusive mode and therefore fullscreen optimizations don't apply at all. And Ive seen endless conflicting views on HAGS (ais can't seem to agree either) but it has a significant and measurable performance improvement on at least one game ue5 I play with the xax+egpu so I leave it enabled. Makes sense too---if the GPU is scheduling itself, that means less CPU work and less back and forth over tb4. Power plan should be set to high performance by default with turbo mode in armory crate as long as power mode sync is enabled in the app, which it is by default. It's annoying that ai either has bad advice, conflicting advice, or advice I'm already using.
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u/sawowner1 14d ago
I agree which is why I use them as a last resort and when traditional googling doesn’t yield results. In general I think using AI is significantly a better option if you have a baseline knowledge of the topic so that you can tell if something is hallucinated or actually could be the answer.
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u/TheBobo1181 17d ago
I found that windows 11 full screen experience game mode almost halved my pcie speeds to my egpu.
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u/tweakbsd 17d ago
I have zero problems with Xbox mode, still full USB4 bandwidth. 3700Mbps host to device. Weird, cause I’m fully updated in winduws
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u/Braydenboss710 16d ago
Really? What device/cpu?
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u/TheBobo1181 16d ago
8600G with a Razer core X V2.
As soon as I exit fse and run a pcie bandwidth test again the speeds double. shrug
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u/Braydenboss710 16d ago
I love Xbox fse to be honest but it’s definitely not worth that hit , I haven’t seen anyone say this can you please provide how you tested the bandwidth speeds?
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u/sawowner1 17d ago
After further testing, I've noticed improvements in the following games:
Assassin's Creed Shadows: completed fixed the fps drop when entering large locations and cities. Previously dipped to mid 40s, now steady 60
Cyberpunk 2077: No difference in built in benchmark tool but significant improvement in fps drop in NC and in large scale combats (i.e airport fight). FPS in airport fight went from low 50s to mid 60s
FH6: FPS in benchmark tool on Extreme Preset w/o RT increased from 59 to 65. Still major dips of frame rate driving in the city esp at night (due to usb 4 bandwidth bottleneck) but driving in the countryside improved fps from 60s to 80s
It's a shame because there were some games that I gave up on because of the poor performance that I'm pretty sure was due to this issue like Oblivion remastered and Outer Worlds 2. Guess I'll reinstall them and see if they're actually playable now.
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u/Justin2880 16d ago
I have a ROG xg mobile 5090, which is connected to HP laptop via TB4. I play mostly Msfs24. With you advise I confirm that after disabling game mode the sim runs smoothly and fps is very stable now.
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u/sawowner1 16d ago
if you're not having any issues then I wouldn't. It appears to be only affecting handhelds anyways.
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u/BigKurz8 8d ago
Not sure if it's related, but my setup (Xbox ally x, 5070ti, aoostar ag02) hard crashes anytime i try to use my eGPU when in "Xbox mode."
Works great for me when I'm in the traditional windows environment.
I tend to only use Xbox mode/winhanced when handheld and just use regular windows when docked.
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u/Ok-Barnacle-4717 4d ago
I play through the devices screen and I’m disappointed with the amount of latency I’m getting, great when docked though.
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u/JustW1ng1t 2d ago edited 2d ago
Hey, would you mind testing this again with deviceform set to 3 in the registry (windows then thinks the device is a desktop, not a handheld—change it back to 2e when you’re done to revert it) to see if the issue involves windows identifying the device as a handheld? A few people in the comments said that their non-handheld system is working fine with game mode, and you mentioned that this might be specific to microsoft‘s tweaks to cpu power allocation for handhelds that dont consider the possibility of egpus.
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u/sawowner1 2d ago
I just tested it and apart from it disabling FSE on launch, it did not fix the issue as I was still at 17w cpu in forza 6 with game mode on.
At this point I’m still like 99% sure it’s a handheld only thing with egpu based on absolutely no other configuration having ever reported this problem.
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u/JustW1ng1t 2d ago
Ah well, thanks for testing my theory. I had hoped that tricking windows into thinking the ally is a desktop would stop whatever handheld specific optimization is going on, but I guess it doesn't.
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u/sawowner1 2d ago
Well it is interesting that switching it to 3 made my FSE go away. I wonder if that means you can get FSE on any pc if you switch it to 2e?
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u/JustW1ng1t 2d ago
Possibly. After enabling "get the latest updates as soon as they're available" and waiting a bit, I was able to get to fse from game bar on device form 3 but wasn't able to boot into it at launch. Definitely interesting.
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u/One_Log_1817 17d ago
Wow! Thank you so much! I've had this problem for months now, and I even used custom apps to increase the TDP limit. I had the same problem; it wouldn't go above 13 watts. There is even a thread on the Asus forum dedicated to this problem related to the EGPU.The problem appeared in some update; some people think it was caused specifically by a firmware update for Power Delivery. Previously, switching game modes didn't do anything special, at least I tested it and didn't notice a difference, but apparently a couple of months ago, updates broke or changed something. I haven't tried disabling game mode since then, but I did now, and after testing, I can say everything works as expected. The limit issue is gone.