The recently released Windows 8.1 update is causing problems for some gamers. EuroGamer reports that gamers using the latest version of Windows are experiencing various annoying performance issues affecting their mice. Mouse lag and cursor jumping is affecting games which “don't use Raw Input (or DirectInput, which is more-or-less the same thing) for reading the mouse,” according to a Reddit thread. Meanhile AMD has boasted of better APU performance in Windows 8.1.
Some of the games most severely affected by this newly introduced mouse lag problem include popular titles including - Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Metro 2033 and STALKER: Call of Prypiat. These three are said to be “close-to unplayable” by the original Reddit poster. Reports say that the hugely popular Call of Duty series of games are also affected by this mousing problem.
There are a few ways to fix some of the affected games to improve performance and get your mouse response back to 100 per cent again. A general fix is to use the Windows program properties compatibility mode. Set the program for Windows 8 compatibility with the option ‘Run this program as administrator’ ticked. Also tick the ‘Disable scaling on high DPI settings’ option. Some other games have built in configuration menu items or command codes to switch to raw input. STALKER: Call of Prypiat can be freed of Windows 8.1 mouse lag be pressing the tilde key (~) and typing ‘input_exclusive_mode 0’.
AMD boasts of better APU performance in Windows 8.1
The latest version of Windows could bring performance gains on your AMD APU powered system as high as 9.5 per cent as evidenced by the PCMark 8 benchmark. AMD says the advances come from working with Microsoft on essential OS components and development and tuning of graphics drivers.
The results above are good, but what about 3D and gaming, does that benefit from an OS upgrade to Windows 8.1? AMD compiled a ‘Competitive benchmark’ table to show that in 3D and gaming the APU powered systems benefited from the OS upgrade a lot more than a PC with an Intel Core i5-4670K and Intel HD 4600 graphics. Check out the chart below.
Have readers had any notable positive or negative experiences following their Windows 8.1 upgrades?
