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Forcing exclusive fullscreen for FPS

Also searched as: fullscreen vs borderless · borderless lag · borderless costs fps · always exclusive fullscreen

What it does

Always picking exclusive fullscreen over borderless, on the old rule that borderless costs FPS and adds lag.

The honest verdict

Graded placebo. That rule was true a decade ago. On Windows 10 and 11, a borderless game with nothing covering it gets handed the display almost as directly as exclusive mode ever did — the same frames, plus instant alt-tab and overlays that keep working. …

Compy won't recommend it. If you're curious anyway: change one thing at a time, measure it on your own rig, and revert unless it's clearly better — that loop is exactly what Compy is built around.

The full graded entry

The rest of this write-up — the specifics behind the grade — ships inside the app. The Blackbook publishes its verdicts here — the full write-ups stay in the book, on your rig, next to your own measurements.

The Compy Blackbook holds 191 graded entries like this one, judged against your hardware — and every change it does make is reversible, with the receipt to prove it.

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