Borderless Windowed poor performance (stuttering/seemingly low fps)

[WillisMacvalin]

Hello!
I've been racking my head around this issue for a long time now. I play in fullscreen mode but for ease of use (and possibly fixing my directx woes) I want to play in borderless windowed. However, when I use borderless windowed I get really stuttery performance.

What I mean by that is my fps reading says the game is running at 82 fps (my cap) but looking at it, it's clearly not. If I switch to fullscreen, buttery smooth, clearly running at 82fps.

I run two monitors. Main one is 1440p 165Hz with Gsync. The other 1080p 60hz no gsync. I've tried a lot of possible fixes but nothing has worked.
Can anyone help me?

[Kenneth34250]

Same here. Even I enabled G-Sync setting on full screen and windowed, it seems just working with exclusive full screen and windowed, borderless window is not supported. I also play WoW which only support windowed and borderless window, the same issue exist with dx11 client but dx12 client works fine, so I guess G-Sync does not support dx11 borderless window, maybe a bug with nvidia's driver.

[Packetdancer]

While I don't have a really solid solution for you, I do know that GSync can work in borderless windowed mode; I'm running in that configuration.

THAT SAID, Razer's "game boost" thing has sometimes erroneously gotten confused by stuff and caused my game to drop to like 20-some FPS for chunks of time specifically in borderless windowed. If you happen to have a Razer keyboard or gaming mouse or whatever, I might temporarily quit Razer Catalyst (or disable the "Game Boost" mode before starting FFXIV) and see if that improves it.

[WillisMacvalin]

While I don't have a really solid solution for you, I do know that GSync can work in borderless windowed mode; I'm running in that configuration.

THAT SAID, Razer's "game boost" thing has sometimes erroneously gotten confused by stuff and caused my game to drop to like 20-some FPS for chunks of time specifically in borderless windowed. If you happen to have a Razer keyboard or gaming mouse or whatever, I might temporarily quit Razer Catalyst (or disable the "Game Boost" mode before starting FFXIV) and see if that improves it.

I do have a razer mouse...when you drop to 20 fps does the game say you're running at that specific frame rate?

[Puss_Kat]

Hello!
I've been racking my head around this issue for a long time now. I play in fullscreen mode but for ease of use (and possibly fixing my directx woes) I want to play in borderless windowed. However, when I use borderless windowed I get really stuttery performance.

What I mean by that is my fps reading says the game is running at 82 fps (my cap) but looking at it, it's clearly not. If I switch to fullscreen, buttery smooth, clearly running at 82fps.

I run two monitors. Main one is 1440p 165Hz with Gsync. The other 1080p 60hz no gsync. I've tried a lot of possible fixes but nothing has worked.
Can anyone help me?

The internal FPS limit does not function properly on Borderless Window with high refresh monitors and never has, it introduces a faulty vsync which will result in you getting the divised rate of the current potential framerate instead of divising the peak refresh rate, similar issues can be seen in Grim Dawn when using vsync+borderless.

ie, on a 144hz display, if you can only achieve 82fps the 1/2 limit will result in 41fps in Borderless window, instead of the 72 that Fullscreen achieves.

utilise RTSS to achieve your desired frame cap instead when using borderless.

Else, use Fullscreen, Windows 10+ optimizes fullscreen modes to behave closer to borderless windowed.

[WillisMacvalin]

The internal FPS limit does not function properly on Borderless Window with high refresh monitors and never has, it introduces a faulty vsync which will result in you getting the divised rate of the current potential framerate instead of divising the peak refresh rate, similar issues can be seen in Grim Dawn when using vsync+borderless.

ie, on a 144hz display, if you can only achieve 82fps the 1/2 limit will result in 41fps in Borderless window, instead of the 72 that Fullscreen achieves.

utilise RTSS to achieve your desired frame cap instead when using borderless.

Else, use Fullscreen, Windows 10+ optimizes fullscreen modes to behave closer to borderless windowed.

Hiya! Yeh I don't use in-game fps limit. I already use RTSS to limit my fps.

[DatOni]

I logged in today and suddenly my borderless window performance has dropped considerably. I take it ya'll are having the same issue?

[Puss_Kat]

game hasn't updated, so anything that has happened has done so within your windows environments, check the power/thermal targets of any gpu tools, windows own game mode settings, focus assist, etc.

[Geirr]

Hello!
I've been racking my head around this issue for a long time now. I play in fullscreen mode but for ease of use (and possibly fixing my directx woes) I want to play in borderless windowed. However, when I use borderless windowed I get really stuttery performance.

What I mean by that is my fps reading says the game is running at 82 fps (my cap) but looking at it, it's clearly not. If I switch to fullscreen, buttery smooth, clearly running at 82fps.

I run two monitors. Main one is 1440p 165Hz with Gsync. The other 1080p 60hz no gsync. I've tried a lot of possible fixes but nothing has worked.
Can anyone help me?

I encountered this issue last night, I'll make a proper bug report topic on it shortly. In the meantime, if you were to check your GPU frequency I would bet it is half of what it should be while playing FinFan. Right?

There are two things that have to be enabled for this bug to exist.

1.) "Reduce frame rates while minimized" or whatever it is.
2.) Some kind of frame cap. Be it vsync. Fast vsync. Gsync.

What is occurring: For whatever reason, the driver or the game thinks that the game isn't in focus. The clock rate (speed, power) of the graphics card drops to next to nothing. What should be a smooth 144 or 120 fps experience on a 3080, 3090, becomes a 12-20 fps experience.

How to fix: Turn off the reduced framerate when minimized. Set the frame cap to off, or set it to the full refresh rate of your monitor. Even going down to 120hz from my own 144hz native rate will trigger this bug unless I set the refresh rate of my monitor to 120hz first in the driver suite, and then run "Full" refresh rate in final fantasy.

Let me know if this fixes it for you.

[Geirr]

I logged in today and suddenly my borderless window performance has dropped considerably. I take it ya'll are having the same issue?

Yup. See my above post for the fix.

It seems like the newest GeForce drivers triggered it for me, but there is a work around I mentioned above so you don't have to downgrade.