What is AFK Mode?

[JimBear]

Is AFK Mode just a joke, or does it actually do something useful?

[Silberfuchs]

For most of us it's a pointless thing, but afk-mode is intented for slower machines.
Aka the game running in the backround will consume slightly less ressources.

[JimBear]

Thanks!

[battlezoby]

Actually, I'm a bit of an expert on software and hardware on the "theoritical limits", and in theory the AFK mode probably does close to nothing whatsoever with respect to saving resources. And it probably doesn't do anything else useful.

If I minimize the games to small size though, 640x480 or even 320x200 and then Minimize it, my Win-8 machines will run other games faster, although when this games starts to stutter does to other games, changing it's resolution and mode doesn't seem to help much.

On the other hand, there's never any way to tell how badly something would be programmed, so stuff can unpredictable. But I suspect the only badly programmed thing here is the assumption that "AFK" actually helps, when there are other things that could have been down that would have actually helped!

Along the same line, the smaller minimized games should be very different than running the game fullscreen but in the background while another window is "over" it. But, again, almost all software these days is total garbage with respect to efficiency, so there's no telling what effect anything can have.

I man think about it, open your best performing 3D first-person game, run and spin around and watch all the great 3D graphics move smoothly around, and then think about how many polygons are being rendered, moved, shaded, reflected, and shadowed etcetera, and then think about the huge CPU/GPU power of your machine.

Then, click on something like Notepad or the Start-Menu 16-Button Calculator, and watch it take somewhere between 1 to 5 seconds or more to open and think about just how totally retarded that is by comparison.