Improving performance in windowed mode

[AMVPh34r]

I currently run Skyrim in fullscreen windowed (a.k.a. borderless windowed) mode using this mod, with the game resolution set to 1920x1080, my primary monitor size. I do so mainly because I often have other chats or things I'm working on open at the same time, and alt-tabbing out of Skyrim sometimes causes problems. I know that running any game in windowed mode as opposed to the same resolution fullscreen impacts performance, and it's more than a little noticable with Skyrim considering the amount of graphical mods I have installed.

So my question is: how can I gain back as much performance as possible while still running the game in windowed mode? I imagine disabling Aero (I'm running Win7) would definitely help, but are there any other fixes I could implement to get the game running a bit faster, and preferably without changing settings that would decrease game quality?

[Veladarius]

What are your hardware specs and what mods do you have installed and are you using an ENB? Disabling Aero or other programs outside Skyrim would only help if you are running out of system memory or you have maxed out your CPU. I run my game in windowed mode as well but I use http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/23664 and SKSE to do it and it is really smooth. If you are using an ENB try a few different ones as they can each have different effects on your FPS as I have seen anywhere from 15-40 FPS drop depending on the ENB.

[starfire42]

Alternatively, you might want to try the "alt tab fix" mod instead of running it in a full-screen window. It lets you run skyrim in a full screen, but still be able to switch to other applications. The only drawback is it doesn't fix the issue where you have to switch to skyrim twice to make it show on screen (I've seen this same behavior with quite a few other full-screen games).

 

If you're set on running in windowed mode, though, some other things you can do are to shutdown as many other apps and non-essential services as possible (web browsers in particular can be a resource hog). Make sure your antivirus is configured to ignore the entire skyrim folder (setting is usually called "exclusions").