Finally figured out how to disable windows 10 DWM forced vsync

[needforbeans]

Recently I've pretty obsessed about reducing input lag to the point I upgraded my setup, which now runs to run close to 1000 FPS on Fortnite and Valorant.

While the FPS kept going up, what bothered me is the diminishing return on the reduction of input lag. I had sub 2ms frame times yet it felt only marginally better than 60hz gaming.

Long story short I upgraded all my hardware and it came down to me having DDR3 2300Mhz RAM. I thought that might be bottle necking my setup so I upgraded to the Z390 Chipset with 16GB of Overclocked 4000Mhz Gskill Trident RAM.

Once thing plagued me, I could always feel some sort of cap on input lag. The trick to fixing it was just pressing Alt + Enter quickly twice.

The real culprit in all of this, is Windows 10's DWM (Desktop Window Manager). It's once nasty service that auto starts even when you try to kill it. Someone on reddit posted some sequence where you can get rid of it, but I tried doing it and it was a load of bs.

DWM will force the monitor's refresh rate V-Sync but do it in such a sneaky way, that it's simply disgusting. It will force V-Sync on your application, but the FPS counter in either MSI Afterburner or the in-game one won't be affected. So you think you are getting all those frames and the frame time is low, but DWM is completely taking over V-Sync. To the point where it will ignore Registry values.

I almost gave up, but then I remembered that when I first got my new monitor I decided to run a dual monitor setup with my Zowie, but I ended up getting terrible screen tearing in Kovaak's on my gaming monitor.

Then it clicked, screen tearing means we're out of DWM's jail and Windows 10's god awful forced V-Sync is not working. I'm assuming Windows 10 can only force V-Sync for a single refresh rate. If you force it to your monitor's lower refresh rate (by making it your main monitor), then DWM will leave the higher refresh monitor alone, BUT only if the application is running in Exclusive Fullscreen mode AND it's being run with Admin privileges.

I'm assuming if the application has Admin privileges it can override Windows 10's forced V-Sync as well.

tl;dr use a dual monitor set up with varying refresh rates, plug in the lower refresh rate monitor into your motherboard, plug the higher refresh one into your GPU, set the lower hz monitor as your main, run application in full screen exclusive mode as admin on your gaming monitor, profit???

[Unixko]

Recently I've pretty obsessed about reducing input lag to the point I upgraded my setup, which now runs to run close to 1000 FPS on Fortnite and Valorant.

While the FPS kept going up, what bothered me is the diminishing return on the reduction of input lag. I had sub 2ms frame times yet it felt only marginally better than 60hz gaming.

Long story short I upgraded all my hardware and it came down to me having DDR3 2300Mhz RAM. I thought that might be bottle necking my setup so I upgraded to the Z390 Chipset with 16GB of Overclocked 4000Mhz Gskill Trident RAM.

Once thing plagued me, I could always feel some sort of cap on input lag. The trick to fixing it was just pressing Alt + Enter quickly twice.

The real culprit in all of this, is Windows 10's DWM (Desktop Window Manager). It's once nasty service that auto starts even when you try to kill it. Someone on reddit posted some sequence where you can get rid of it, but I tried doing it and it was a load of bs.

DWM will force the monitor's refresh rate V-Sync but do it in such a sneaky way, that it's simply disgusting. It will force V-Sync on your application, but the FPS counter in either MSI Afterburner or the in-game one won't be affected. So you think you are getting all those frames and the frame time is low, but DWM is completely taking over V-Sync. To the point where it will ignore Registry values.

I almost gave up, but then I remembered that when I first got my new monitor I decided to run a dual monitor setup with my Zowie, but I ended up getting terrible screen tearing in Kovaak's on my gaming monitor.

Then it clicked, screen tearing means we're out of DWM's jail and Windows 10's god awful forced V-Sync is not working. I'm assuming Windows 10 can only force V-Sync for a single refresh rate. If you force it to your monitor's lower refresh rate (by making it your main monitor), then DWM will leave the higher refresh monitor alone, BUT only if the application is running in Exclusive Fullscreen mode AND it's being run with Admin privileges.

I'm assuming if the application has Admin privileges it can override Windows 10's forced V-Sync as well.

tl;dr use a dual monitor set up with varying refresh rates, plug in the lower refresh rate monitor into your motherboard, plug the higher refresh one into your GPU, set the lower hz monitor as your main, run application in full screen exclusive mode as admin on your gaming monitor, profit???

you wat1000 there is something for you which now runs to run close to 1000 FPS on Fortnite and Valorant.
1000 fps yo guy from NASA can you actually help us thank you

[deama]

On Windows 8.1 I made a script that I run everytime I restart my computer, it disables dwm, replaces dwm.exe with a fake one, runs the fake one, and then replaces the fake dwm.exe with the normal dwm.exe so I don't get a black screen if I restart without replacing it.

Works pretty well, dwm is always disabled for me. Though I hear if you do this for windows 10 it'll break a lot of stuff cause it relies on it a lot, but I guess you can enabled/disable it when you're about to play a game, should work fine at that point I think.

At least the good news is that dwm shouldn't be much of a problem once we get into 480+hz as dwm would only introduce about 2-3ms at that point of input lag.

[Simon95]

When I use my 60hz as main monitor and 240hz as second, i can’t Start can go in fullscreen on the second monitor. I need to change my 240hz Monitor to the primary monitor. Is it still working?

[Quizno]

tl;dr use a dual monitor set up with varying refresh rates, plug in the lower refresh rate monitor into your motherboard, plug the higher refresh one into your GPU, set the lower hz monitor as your main, run application in full screen exclusive mode as admin on your gaming monitor, profit???

I always thought full screen exclusive mode bypasses DWM. Is this not true in Windows 10? For games that require me to run Windows I stick with 7 in classic mode. I've noticed input lag when comparing full screen to borderless windowed in Aero. I can't give up borderless windowed so I just run classic mode which seems on par with full screen.

Are you sure the tearing on the other monitor just doesn't mean it was locked to the primary monitor's refresh rate with DWM?

I'm holding back on upgrading and one of the reasons is DWM input lag while running borderless windowed as well as other Windows 10 quirks I don't care for. It's okay though my Windows 7 install has minimal use now and I run most things in GNU/Linux anyway where I can freely disable the compositor whenever I want.

[Chief Blur Buster]

When I use my 60hz as main monitor and 240hz as second, i can’t Start can go in fullscreen on the second monitor. I need to change my 240hz Monitor to the primary monitor. Is it still working?

This is the recommendation anyway, use your highest-Hz monitor as the primary monitor.

You can use software such as DisplayFusion to automate primary-monitor swapping or secondary-monitor enable/disable on an easy hotkey.

Correct, tearing is your DWM-test. If you can get tearing, then you've got no DWM-related latency. Then you can later choose to disable tearing (triple buffer, VRR, etc) without the DWM penalty. You may have the scanout-induced latency but that diminishes at higher Hz, such as on the newer 360 Hz panels.

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[Chief Blur Buster]

How do I disable DWM? I have a 360Hz monitor and a 240Hz monitor. Just simply hook up the 240Hz monitor also, and that's it?

It's tricky/inconvenient to fully disable DWM, but you can reduce/nullify the DWM lag penalty.

But you can avoid the DWM penalties by connecting only one monitor.

Think of it as a "multimonitor issue", not a "DWM issue". Think about it as a multimonitor problem. Windows can't sync to two different-Hz monitors simultaneously, regardless of whether DWM is enabled or not. DWM just makes it more complicated.

If you must multimonitor, then:
- Play only on primary
- Play only in FSE (Full Screen Exclusive)
- Don't run anything intensive on the 2nd monitor.

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

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[Chief Blur Buster]

It's a new feature built into Windows 10 version 1903 and newer. Many graphics drivers can already do this, and power users usually do it via the graphics drivers. However, this standardizes it under the Microsoft Windows Settings umbrella, in a (hopefully) more universally compatible manner.

As a general rule of thumb, best performance is a single-FSE basis.

Now, about multi-monitor different-VRR (a more uncommon use case):

Multiple divergent VRR standards on multimonitor setups is a less-tested setup. But generally, it /should/ work with windowed G-SYNC via drivers simultaneously on both monitors -- both VRR displays should (hopefully) sync simultaneously to windowed G-SYNC stretched across both monitors simultaneously. This is a method of bringing the Window compositors in sync with one app -- at least in the overlapping area of the VRR ranges. There will probably be weird stutters and/or weird lag and/or diverging artifacts (e.g. one monitor stutters, other monitor smooth) whenever one of the monitors go outside VRR range but the other is within VRR range.

But as long as your framerate is in the VRR range overlap, both monitors will sync to the 3D app window stretched across both monitors. Basically a psuedo-surround with multiple divergent-Hz/VRR technologies, via stretching a window over both monitors.