Windowed borderless VS fullscreen

[Corbin Bleu]

in terms of performance are they the same or does one perform better?

[CursedPanther]

Fullscreen is usually the better option.

[gantry]

Depends on the game but usually, It goes like this

Windowed runs the worst

Windowed Borderless is the balance between performance and window form factor

Fullscreen is the best interms of performance because your desktop is disabled(not rendered by the gpu and barely rendered by the cpu)

[MancSoulja]

If you use Windows 10, expect almost identical performance in full screen and windowed mode. MS put a lot of effort into getting it right this time as their own UWP games only run in windowed mode.

[SmollBrain 🏹]

Full screen gives your program priority over others, so it can make a difference in performance

[hawkeye]

I read once in a WItcher 3 tweaking guide that windows frame buffering works differently to directx. Not 100% sure but I think full screen was the recommendation. I got an extra 10 fps whatever it was though, so they were different for that game.

[Air]

Fullscreen, as said, is slightly better for performance. However, if you have multiple monitors, you may wish to use borderless windowed in some situations.

[Supafly]

Originally posted by Air:

Fullscreen, as said, is slightly better for performance. However, if you have multiple monitors, you may wish to use borderless windowed in some situations.

I have multiple monitors and use Fullscreen all the time. If you've loaded things up already that you don't need to interact with, monitoring software or TS/Vent for example you won't need to Alt tab anyway.

Also certain games and programs still allow some, if limited, interaction when you're in fullscreen mode. If I have a webpage open and move mouse all the way to the left in a game that has a cursor it can go offscreen and onto the second display. When this happens I can use mousewheel to scroll up and down on the page without leaving the game and then move it right back onto main screen and continue gaming without needing to tab out.

[[☥] - CJ -]

In general, performance may be less with Windowed as neither the CPU nor GPU wil be maxing out like they do in FullScreen

Technically, when in Windowed theres some what less to render, of sorts.

[bigbenisdaman]

I've never noticed a differance in performance between the 2. Always run borderless though since in most games i can alt tab out and like kill time in loading screens/send messeges etc on other monitor.

In fullscreen most the time it freezes 2nd monitor so cant even watch movies etc on it.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Yes for many of us who use Mutli-Display, Windowed/Borderless is a must. So we can actively see changes and also interact with whats on the other Display(s)

The difference though is in how VSync methods work. You will be stuck using whatever the Desktop is set to when it comes to Refresh Rate when you use Windowed/Borderless modes. So to ensure the game uses that in such a mode, ensure the OS Desktop is set to the higher refresh you'd want. Where is in say Full-Screen, you could have Desktop set to 60Hz, and have the Game running Full-Screen using 144Hz for example.