What is GameBarPresenceWriter
GameBarPresenceWriter.exe is the executable file responsible for executing the Xbox Game Bar functionality, this includes recording gameplay, taking screenshots, and performance monitoring and overlay. This is very useful if you are using these kind of features as you do not need to install 3rd-party software.
However, there are reports that it causes stuttering and abnormal CPU and memory usage – even when you are not using it. Xbox Game Bar is enabled by default and runs in the background. Disabling it in Windows Settings doesn’t work and it still uses system resources.
Pre-Requisite
Method 1
Method 2
Benchmarking
For our benchmarking tests, we downclocked our i3-12100F to 2.0 GHz and turned off hyper-threading to simulate low-end and old systems which are mainly the target of this article. If you have a high-end system you won’t need to act on this unless you are experiencing weird unstable performance. We also set the Windows Power Plan to add another handicap to our system.
System Specs
- Processor – Intel i3-12100F @ 2.0 GHz Hyper-Threading turned off
- Memory – G Skill 2x 8GB DDR4-3000
- Graphics Card – NVidia GeForce GTX 1650 4GB GDDR6
- Power Plan – Power Saver
For our games, we picked the start of the Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw demo and the in-game benchmarking tool of The Division 2. We used CapFrameX to capture the FPS for 90 seconds.
Results and Summary
In both games, the average fps was not affected by disabling the Windows Game Bar. The better results were in the 1% Low and 0.1% Low averages. The 1% Low average in Resident Evil 4 improved by 2 fps while 5 fps in The Division 2. The 0.1% Low average improved by 9 fps in both games. Improving both the 1% and 0.1% low average would also mean smoother gameplay as it will minimize stuttering and frame drops.
