Additional Windows 11 and BIOS gaming-related optimizations

Posts in my Windows 11 optimization series:

• Optimizing Windows 11 for Gaming
• Disabling unneeded Windows 11 Services (for gaming)
• Additional Windows 11 and BIOS gaming-related optimizations (this post)

I decided to write a third part of Windows and PC optimizations for gaming, as I was suffering absurdly long load times in some games and, in the process of fixing them, found some interesting additional tweaks that I think are worth documenting and sharing.

Windows settings and features

The power plan for a gaming PC should be always high performance. Also, unless you run virtual machines in your gaming PC, you don't need the Hyper-V component, but on supported hardware it runs in background and consumes resources. Lastly, Windows 8 onwards removed a DirectX component that seems to affect framerate, but it can be easily added back.

• Control Panel → Power Options → Select High Performance
• Windows Features → Hyper-V uncheck
• Windows Features → Windows Hypervisor Platform uncheck
• To ensure Hyper-V is off, from a Powershell terminal, run: Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-Hypervisor
• Windows Features → Legacy Components → DirectPlay check

As some small extras, two Windows Registry entries that I tweaked. Note that after any RegEdit change, you need to restart Windows for the changes to take effect.

The following entry used to disable efficiency mode. Now it seems to do nothing (and you need to disable e-Cores from the BIOS), but just in case I like to leave the feature off:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
"DisableEfficiencyMode"=dword:00000001

This entry disables network throttling, which might improve your multiplayer experience:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile]
NetworkThrottlingIndex DWORD Hex value: ffffffff

PC BIOS settings

The following mostly applies to intel CPUs. That's what I have, so that's what I've tested. AMD does not have e-Cores, so you don't need to disable them.

If you only play recent games, from late 2021, maybe released in 2022 to be safe, then you don't need to disable e-Cores or Hyper-Threading. But if you do, you might face insanely long load times in some games, like GTA IV or Ghost Recon: Wildlands, as they tend to pick e-cores and the fake/extra HT cores. This happens because intel copied Apple's concept of efficiency cores + performance cores in 2021, after those games were released. While Windows 11 added support for both core types, some games from before that date seem to insist on picking e-cores when loading, and they perform badly. Those cores are meant for background or simple programs, not for gaming-related tasks.

By disabling e-Cores you will "lose some cores", but only the efficiency ones. If you use your computer for many things (and multi-task a lot), you might notice something (I really doubt it). But otherwise, or if, like in my case, you only use the PC for gaming, you will actually notice a speed increase everywhere. If Windows 11 was able to properly hide e-Cores from old programs, everything would be fine, but as things stand right now, you're better off without them regarding gaming.

The following three actions are to be done in your BIOS. Commonly, you access it pressing Del or F2 but it really depends on your motherboard.

• Turn off SVM/VT-D. Hyper-V should get disabled automatically in Windows when you do this, but I like to make sure by running the steps in the previous section.
• Disable all e-Cores
• Disable Hyper-Threading

Note: after disabling SVM, your local Windows PIN might reset. You can easily reset it via your registered Microsoft account, but I wanted to point it out, as it scared me when I couldn't login normally anymore.

Optional additional Windows tweak

Note that this will lower your Windows security level. Core isolation means more security, but less performance.

• Windows Security → Device Security → Core Isolation → Turn off

My Windows tools list

I maintain a Windows tools page, with the few ones that I either use often, or whenever I need them. e.g. I don't create bootable Windows USB installers often, but when I do, I always use Rufus.

If you have performance issues with non-recent games, I recommend checking at that page the dgVoodoo2 and DXVK libraries.