dont disable game bar

[Shade7]

I always had to add games manually there.

Mine usually automatically show up in that menu.

[RealNC]

"remember this is a game" checkbox

Does have an add gameXYZ.exe under system>display>graphics
and set gpu preference to high performance and maybe set optimization for windowed games On, same result?

Basically is it the same thing?

I don't think so. Haven't tested though. To check if game mode is enabled for a game or not, I use Special K, which shows "Game Mode" as the active power mode. If it says something like "Balanced" or "High Performance" (which is the active Windows power profile,) then game mode is not active.

As a side-note, the most recent versions of SK will automatically add the game's exe to the game mode list in the Windows registry if it's not already there. Does the same thing as using the game bar for this.

Note that there is no need to uninstall game bar. When you simply disable it in Windows Settings, the game bar background processes will not start anymore (you can check in task manager.)