Correlation Between Game Capture and Windows System Settings

TL;DR

• Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS): Highly relevant. Can be enabled if the GPU has sufficient performance, but should be disabled if streaming stutters or drops frames.

• Variable Refresh Rate (VRR): Minimal relevance. Can be turned on to enhance visual smoothness with little to no impact on streaming.

• Optimizations for Windowed Games: Minimal relevance. Not needed for fullscreen or DX12 games; only relevant for DirectX 10/11 games running in windowed or borderless modes.

1. Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS)

Safe To Re-enable HAGS?

Mechanism: HAGS allows the GPU to manage its own memory and task scheduling independently, reducing CPU overhead and CPU–GPU synchronization costs. However, it may also lead to resource contention with other GPU workloads.

Pros: Slight performance gains in high-frame-rate or multitasking scenarios.

Cons: Offloading scheduling logic to the GPU can lead to contention with concurrent GPU tasks such as live stream encoding, occasionally causing frame drops or stutters.

2. Variable Refresh Rate (VRR)

win11可变刷新频率和g-sync有什么区别？

DRR (Dynamic Refresh Rate): a Windows 11 feature that dynamically switches between high and low refresh rates depending on the scenario (e.g., scrolling, inking), designed to reduce power consumption, with no direct conflict with capture performance.

Mechanism: The monitor’s refresh rate syncs in real time with the GPU’s frame output to eliminate screen tearing and stuttering, resulting in smoother gameplay.

Resource Usage: VRR does not perform extra rendering or computation—only synchronizes frame display timing. It has no direct impact on live encoding workload.

Cons: If in-game frame rates remain very low, LFC (Low Framerate Compensation) may trigger frame interpolation, which can slightly increase encoding load and indirectly affect stream stability.

3. Optimizations for Windowed Games

Mechanism: Replaces the legacy Blt-model (which involves video memory copying) with the Flip-model (which flips buffer pointers), bypassing VRAM transfers and reducing input latency by approximately 30%. Also enables support for Auto HDR and VRR.

Essentially, this is a Microsoft patch targeting windowed/borderless DirectX 10/11 games to enforce use of the Flip-model and compensate for limitations in older APIs.

Scope: Only applies to DirectX 10/11 games running in windowed or borderless mode. Has no effect on DX12 games or exclusive fullscreen mode.

Resource Usage: By reducing VRAM bandwidth usage, it slightly optimizes GPU utilization, but offers limited improvement to capture performance.