Monday, November 24th 2025
Xbox Full-Screen Experience Uses 9% Less RAM Than Standard Windows 11 Mode
The Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) is a new system performance enhancement to use less system RAM than the standard Windows 11 desktop mode, as confirmed by MSI. Recently, Microsoft introduced this feature to regular Windows PCs, allowing them to play games using Xbox FSE mode. MSI has now confirmed that its handhelds running Windows 11 can significantly benefit from this feature. When the system operates in standard Windows 11 desktop mode, it consumes 8.6 GB of RAM. However, with Xbox FSE enabled, RAM usage drops to 7.8 GB, a 9.3% reduction. MSI describes this as a 5% difference based on the total system capacity of 16 GB, rather than the difference between the two usage figures.
Users with the Xbox app installed can access Xbox FSE by navigating to Game Bar > Settings or pressing Win + F11. This feature can take over the screen at startup, hiding the desktop and minimizing background tasks, creating a console-like experience. The interface is minimalistic, with game tiles filling the entire display. Navigation is controlled by a game controller, and typical Windows elements are hidden to maintain focus on the game. Microsoft states that this mode also pauses maintenance activities and mutes notifications to ensure consistent frame delivery. This is demonstrated with Cyberpunk 2077, which can achieve up to 8.6% higher FPS. All of this occurs with 9.3% less RAM usage, meaning Xbox FSE reduces background load, allowing the handheld to achieve better performance.
Users with the Xbox app installed can access Xbox FSE by navigating to Game Bar > Settings or pressing Win + F11. This feature can take over the screen at startup, hiding the desktop and minimizing background tasks, creating a console-like experience. The interface is minimalistic, with game tiles filling the entire display. Navigation is controlled by a game controller, and typical Windows elements are hidden to maintain focus on the game. Microsoft states that this mode also pauses maintenance activities and mutes notifications to ensure consistent frame delivery. This is demonstrated with Cyberpunk 2077, which can achieve up to 8.6% higher FPS. All of this occurs with 9.3% less RAM usage, meaning Xbox FSE reduces background load, allowing the handheld to achieve better performance.
50 Comments on Xbox Full-Screen Experience Uses 9% Less RAM Than Standard Windows 11 Mode
And honestly, with exception to single-digit capacities or severely mismatched hardware, do computers these days ever run short of main memory for pure gaming?They are not the design case for a linux-running machine then.
Whether it's the desktop or background processes, the point is any modern computer is more than capable of running an OS and a game at the same time. Microsoft's solution of just running less stuff, instead of making the stuff run better, is short-sighted.
Desktop might be a different story though, who knows. Clean installs of Win 11 only take me like 45 mins and that includes reinstalling most of my shit, so I will probably do a clean install when this variant of Windows comes out and give it a go.
Regardless, let's presume that 8.6GB is legit, 9% = <850MB.
Looks like microsoft is grasping at straws to sell the "Full Screen Experience". Kinda sad.
Some people are just going to complain no matter what you do.
Wait, what the fuck? Is that at idle? What do they have running on those MSI devices? My idle desktop on Win 11 is, like, 2 gigs. That’s with 32 gigs of RAM. I assume they counted VRAM allocation into that for the APU? Still, that’s insane.
Going back to 7 and re doing 15 years of work will lead you right back to 11.Because there are games that dont run on Linux that people want to run? I dont see why Linux users cannot comprehend this.
Like, I dont see why you would waste your money on a handheld when they provide inferior experiences then desktops, they're heavy, bulky, their batter life sucks, ece. The way I handle that is not buying one. What I dont do is go online and ask why anyone is buying these things since I dont like them.
There are plenty of Windows handhelds out there, and people buy them.
A SteamOS/Linux handheld is a better experience for a handheld, like you can put the device on sleep mode and it's not going to consume the whole battery or randomly power back on to force an update, once you power it back on, resuming a game works a lot better than it does on Windows.
It seems like you want desktop gaming in a handheld and none of them deliver that experience, ironically enough you're asking why people want SteamOS on a handheld because you don't like SteamOS/Linux.
People are buying Windows handhelds because it's the familiar branding of Xbox, most people seeing a Steam Deck in a store won't know what SteamOS is.