Tuesday, June 29th 2021
Windows 11 to Enable Dynamic Refresh Rate on the Desktop - A Hint of Support for Multi Chip Module GPUs?
Microsoft seemingly has one more trick up its sleeve to increase attractiveness of Windows 11. Via a Microsoft blog post, the company revealed that Windows 11 will introduce support for Dynamic Refresh Rate on the Desktop, the 2-D realm of work e-mails, personal accounting, and social media. This means that Windows will be able to dynamically change your screen's refresh rate to save power consumption - scaling it to the scenario at hand.
For example: if you are reading a TechPowerUp article, Windows will dynamically reduce the refresh rate down to 60 Hz while you do so to conserve power. However, should any user interaction occur, such as a mouse movement or other input (like moving the browser window down and revealing a TechPowerUp wallpaper), Windows will automatically restore the refresh rate to its user-defined value.
This feature will naturally be more useful for battery-powered devices, but power savings should be had wherever possible, right? There are some requirements to the enablement of this feature, however: an adaptive refresh rate monitor, (FreeSync or G-Sync) with 120 Hz or greater refresh rates. Graphics cards will need to support the new WDDM 3.0 standard - another exclusive to Windows 11. There is improved graphical support for Linux apps, and adds the ability to assign different apps to different GPUs simultaneously - which sounds a bit like OS-supported, Multi Chip Module (MCM) graphics card design to me. And the feature will have to be an app-supported one to work anyway - games will only support it if they have any creative gain for it, I wager.
Anyone want to see a 120 Hz Penumbra game that scales down to 60 Hz when you're going insane?
Source:
Tom's Hardware
For example: if you are reading a TechPowerUp article, Windows will dynamically reduce the refresh rate down to 60 Hz while you do so to conserve power. However, should any user interaction occur, such as a mouse movement or other input (like moving the browser window down and revealing a TechPowerUp wallpaper), Windows will automatically restore the refresh rate to its user-defined value.
Anyone want to see a 120 Hz Penumbra game that scales down to 60 Hz when you're going insane?
25 Comments on Windows 11 to Enable Dynamic Refresh Rate on the Desktop - A Hint of Support for Multi Chip Module GPUs?
This is much more similar to Nvidia's Optimus and AMD's Switchable Graphics which Microsoft has been trying to natively implement - and step-by-step actually implementing - in Windows for a while now.
And "MCM GPUs" have zero relation to that since GPU's power consumption changes very slightly between refresh rates. It's the LCD panel power consumption which goes up significantly.
So does this mean it's a baby carrot on a stick feature.
eh it's whatever.
There's some great features on those, but the lack of 120hz is a little annoying, but obviously not an issue in the workplace.... but if I can now get a better desktop responsiveness, this just became an important feature for when I next do a monitor rollout.
They never learn...
www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/i-just-switched-to-linux-mint-latest-beta-release-i-am-freaking-in-love-take-care-windows-10-and-11-lmao.283820/
Knowing all that.. linux had dynamic rendering refresh rate FPS for years imho...
I haven't tested any of my 10bit PNGs yet. Previous Windows GUI parts were hard coded to convert anything to 8bit and having a 10 bit feature was no easy feat without rewriting everything.
I agree that the author's take that this relates to MCM GPUs is way, way out there. This sounds specifically geared towards improving dynamic performance and battery life on laptops (and tablets) with two discrete GPUs. For MCM GPUs to work at any reasonable level of performance they would need to appear to the OS as a single GPU anyhow.
it's frustrating and extremely annoying. does anybody have an idea how to permanently disable this crap?
However I still like the idea, as I dont like that when allowing higher refresh rate for games globally, it forces me to run desktop at that refresh rate, the two shouldnt be linked.
Also consider there is monitors out on the market being used by many people that run out of spec at their highest refresh rates (custom overclocked timings), not good for the components, dropping back to 60hz on desktop is good for those also.
Luckily though this isnt a major issue for me as I rarely play at higher than 60hz, 60fps is fine for me, so my comment was more of a nice to have rather than I am especially bothered by it.