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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

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 — same frames, near-identical latency, plus instant alt-tab and overlays that keep working. Where the two modes still differ in a specific game, that's worth knowing, and it's measurable: play a session in each and compare, which is exactly the before/after Compy can time for you. Pick by measurement, not by 2014's rule.

How Compy treats it

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 Compy Blackbook holds 174 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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