To optimize Windows 11 for gaming, check six settings in this order: the refresh rate your screen actually runs at, whether the graphics driver is the real one, hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling, Game Mode, memory integrity, which should stay on, and the power plan, which should keep its own default values. All six exist on an up-to-date Windows 10 too, a few under different menu paths. Every list of "Windows 11 settings for gaming" is a list of switches to turn off. That format is easy to write and easy to follow, and it is why so many people end up with a machine that behaves oddly and no idea which of the forty changes did it.
This page is the other shape: each setting below gets three answers — what it actually does, who it helps, and who it does nothing for. Some of them you should leave exactly as Windows shipped them, and saying so is part of the job.
One thing about this product before the list: there is no one-click optimization here and there will not be one. Nothing is written until you tick a specific box and press a specific button, and every background engine is off on a new installation until you decide otherwise.
The one with the largest effect, and it is free
Your refresh rate, which decides how often the screen can show a new frame at all. A monitor that supports 144 Hz and is running at 60 Hz puts a floor under every frame's wait for the panel, and after a fresh install or a cable swap it can be wrong without any warning. The arithmetic is in the input lag no software can fix.
Who it helps: anyone not already at their maximum. w0a's Home page checks every connected screen, names the first one that is behind and raises that one in one press; on a laptop it leaves a 60 Hz panel that offers 120 Hz or more alone, because dynamic refresh rate can run it at 60 Hz on purpose. Windows' own route is Settings → System → Display → Advanced display. Who it does nothing for: everyone already there — and if you lowered it deliberately, for 10-bit colour, cable bandwidth or flicker on a variable-refresh panel, leave it. On more than one screen, match the rates where you can: the compositor schedules against one clock.
The graphics driver, and whether it is the real one
What it does: everything. A card running on Windows' basic display driver has no hardware scheduling, no shader cache, no variable refresh rate and none of the vendor's per-game profiles — and while that is true, every other graphics finding in a scan stops meaning anything. Worth checking after a Windows reinstall, a swapped card or an install that went wrong.
Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling (HAGS)
Should it be on? Yes where your graphics driver offers it, which is the case it helps; no where the driver never offered it, because forcing it there is a known way to end up at a black screen.
What it does: moves the scheduling of frame submission from the driver on your CPU to the GPU's own scheduler, reducing jitter on that path. It needs a restart to take effect.
Who it helps: machines whose driver advertises it and is not running it — which w0a reads from the graphics kernel rather than the registry, because the registry says what was asked for and the kernel says what is happening. Who it does nothing for: anyone whose driver never offered it; forcing it onto a stack that did not advertise it is a known way to end up at a black screen, so the tweak refuses.
Game Mode, and the two fullscreen settings
Should it be on? Yes, as Windows ships it.
What Game Mode does: tells Windows a game is in the foreground, so it holds back some background work and stops driver installs and restart prompts from landing mid-match. It is on by default; leave it on unless you have measured otherwise on your own machine.
Fullscreen optimizations and the separate "optimizations for windowed games" switch are argued about more than anything else here, and they have their own page: fullscreen optimizations and Game Mode.
Game Bar and background recording
Should it be on? Yes if you make clips; background recording only if you actually use it.
What it does: the capture layer hooks the game process; background recording additionally encodes every frame so the last few minutes can be saved.
Who it helps to leave on: anyone who actually clips. Win+G and "record the last 30 seconds" stop working without it, which is why the repair card puts it back rather than treating "off" as correct. Who it costs: everyone else — background recording keeps encoding the game for as long as the game runs, and it is on some machines without their owner knowing. What that costs in frame time has not been measured.
Memory integrity, VBS and the anti-cheat question
Should it be on? Yes, wherever your hardware and drivers allow it.
What it does: runs the kernel under a hypervisor and verifies drivers before they load. That costs processor time and can add jitter on the frame path; how much on your machine has not been measured.
Who should leave it on: everyone, and this is the clearest case on the page. FACEIT asks some players for it and turning it off can cost them access to the platform, Riot Vanguard's On-Demand mode needs it, and from October 2026 Windows quality updates start switching memory integrity on for eligible devices — gradually, after a readiness check, and not on devices where it was turned off before (Microsoft). w0a reads the six requirements and shows where each switch is; CS2 low FPS and stutter covers the list. The only one it can change is memory integrity, from its own box on the Optimizations page, and it refuses to while FACEIT is installed.
Power plan and processor power settings
What it does: decides how quickly cores clock up, how deeply they idle, and whether they park.
Who it helps: mainly people whose plan was edited by a previous tweak guide. A plan's name is not what it does: turbo switched off, a maximum processor state below 100, idle states removed or cores parked are values written inside the active plan, each capping the processor while the plan still calls itself high performance. Put the plan's own defaults back rather than inventing values — power plan and battery and processor power settings are the two cards, and the second exists because switching back to Balanced does not undo values written into Balanced itself.
Auto HDR
Should it be on? Only on an HDR display, and not for a competitive game.
What it does: tone-maps SDR games into HDR, at the cost of a pass per frame and a wider swapchain. Worth having on an HDR display for games that never shipped HDR; worth turning off per game for a competitive one, which is the right shape here — and Auto HDR removes that override again.
Background apps, startup items and scheduled work
What it does: nothing at all while a game runs, unless the work actually runs. A startup item that idles costs memory and boot time; a scheduled scan that fires mid-match costs frames. So this helps anyone whose hitches line up with a time of day or an update window — scheduled tasks, background apps and Windows Update are the cards for those settings.
Who it does nothing for: anyone hoping a shorter service list is a frame rate. Disabling services wholesale is how machines end up without audio, without printing and unable to update.
The ones that are not settings
Kernel memory-management values, timer-resolution overrides and the MPO/TDR registry values are refused here outright — not because they are exotic, but because nobody has published a measurement of them that survives contact with a method, and one of them froze a game on a real machine. A memory cleaner on a machine that is not short of memory changes nothing measurable either.
One genuine leftover is worth knowing about: Win32PrioritySeparation, which decides how long a thread keeps the processor and how much more time the foreground application gets. A value with long or fixed quantums, or a foreground share below 3:1, changes how the processor is shared between the game and everything else; what that does to frame times has not been measured, and the memory and system defaults card writes the Windows default back.
Whichever of these you touch: change one thing, capture the same scene twice, and read the lows rather than the average. High average FPS but bad 1% lows explains why that is the number worth reading.
Related
- Fullscreen optimizations and Game Mode
- Why games stutter on Windows 11
- Reading the benchmark
- Clean Install for Stable 1% Lows
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