As you may know, Windows 10's Creators Update launched today. Perhaps the most highly anticipated feature that comes with it is Game Mode, which promises to optimize and increase performance in PC games.
Now of course, that should sound intriguing to you if you're a TS3 player, and if you're well familar with the issues that it has. Especially if you have a high-ass end system like I do.
Personally, my performance in TS3 is about as good as it will currently get - definitely playable, sometimes even smooth, but hardly anything to write home about.

So with the whole Game Mode thing, I think it's fitting to make a thread about it and see if it's helping anyone. I don't know how many of you are Windows 10 users, and I don't know if this will be most helpful on high end systems, or across the board.
What I do know, because I've been messing around with it a little bit already, is that my game now loads differently when I tab into it. The game now appears to run in a borderless windowed mode, and I get the impression that the framerate is higher. Would like to see what you guys are experiencing.

I have windows 10.

No clue about Game Mode. Generally, I don't let windows update, because I'm still bitter about Sim Ant not working on windows.

Sim Ant works in DosBox...

(I'm still on Windows 8, refusing to get those "Important Updates" that included the free upgrade to Windows 10.)

That's kind of your loss, really, The thing is, I've tried everything already, and my game is playable 99% of the time, but this new Game Mode thingy gets me a few FPS extra. The point is that your framerates should be more consistent, and I think it's making that happen. I already have the SSDs and the cache sizes and NRaas's complete collection and whatnot. So until someone figures out 64-bit, and until I start closing Chrome when I play, this is the best it's gonna get.

Speaking of it getting better, I wonder what's next for my graphics. I've already laid the "This is the best it's ever going to get" to rest, because I've been proven wrong in that way too much. So like 12 year old TS2 is still getting better and better, I wonder what's next for 7 year old TS3. I wonder if we'll ever succeed in decompiling the shaders...

Heh...interesting to know considering I use Razer in conjunction with Park Control for my game

So I don't really keep track of what programs I have doing what, but as far as booster caches go, anything you can recommend? Maybe like a separate tool, like ParkControl?
Oh, that reminds me - RAMdisk. Do you need one when everything is on SSDs?

If I understand Windows 10's Creators Update correctly, it's a way for user to participate in improving Win 10, the Game Mode feature that comes with it is still in beta program, it's still being develop, I don't think its purpose would be any different from any other game booster.

I personally don't use any game booster for my games, but if I need one I just make another Windows User profile and customize it via Windows Services menu to lighten things up, disabled anything that doesn't need for gaming, with this.. user will have a very fast and lite Windows with not much going on in the background, I used to do this method in Windows Vista back then

I personally think that the user won't need this kind of game booster very much if their OS is Win XP or Win 10, maybe for some Win 7 users (and definitely for Win VIsta users) but not for XP or Win 10, because the gain is not that much for XP or Win 10. The thing that is really affecting how any game performs is back to the hardware spec that the user have in their system, running game mode for certain game won't make their computer any faster for that particular game, maybe it helps lighten things up but not in making their computer any faster.

As for RAMDisk and SSD, that depends on what you'll doing, but having big RAM and use RAMDisk even with SSD as primary drive to store your system will definitely bring more advantage, RAMDisk is very useful not only for TS3 but for other things and other games as well.

well, because of "daddy knows better" MS policy you have no choice but embrace inevitable fluffy rainbow-ish and full of unicorns future with another (and another) uptade whatever comes embedded with it.

If you cannot, or do not want to downgrade (or do not to block the whole MS-thingie on the border router) there's nothing really to discuss. Sry. Swallow and be happy, whatever it shall be.

Hmm. I remember how they said that Windows 7 would be great for gaming, that they made it specifically compatible with older games. Then I installed it and found out that DOS games do not work anymore. They used to launch on all Win OSes before... Compatible with older games, indeed. Only DosBox can help now.

Sorry if that was random

My main frustration with 10 is the lack of reliable in game camera screen shot software---I downloaded yet another program to get clean screen shots and still have issues. Sometimes the keyboard short cuts work but then my game glitches. I don't want to play in windowed mode at this point (my Sims 2 is set up for that). I am sick of hearing the Xbox camera works (again unreliable for me). I suppose someday someone will come up with a hybrid computer that can play games with the easy of a gaming system for less than thousands of dollars--we can dream anyhow.

I don't use any of the Xbox tools besides Game Mode. Fraps for capturing stuff, ReShade for making my games look pretty, and that's it.

I have no idea what this "Game Mode" is supposed to be, but it sounds like one of those features that's too good to be true, which means it probably is. Unless it can magically conjure me 10 more GB of RAM to compensate for GTA Online and The Sims 3's memory leaks, I think it's fair to assume it's pretty much useless.

Microsoft should really worry about optimizing their own titles before turning their heads towards other games.

RAM is pretty much irrelevant with TS3. If you have ~6Gb or more, you can't expect to see any improvement in installing more. But what you can do, and this is what Game Mode does, is prioritize TS3 and streamline the interaction between your hardware and the game. So if you give TS3 more cycles in your CPU, or if you make sure there aren't any bottlenecks in the data streaming process, you can expect increased stability and more consistent performance. And if I recall correctly, the point of Game Mode (and all the other equivalent tools too) is to make your performance more consistent.

So how do I use this?

Win+G, then you click the cog and toggle Game Mode. I'm not sure if it'll work without reloading your game.

Ah it requires the Xbox in-game nonsense. Yeah nevermind, I disabled that long ago. It caused more problems than game mode could ever fix...