Disabling MPO (MultiPlane Overlay) in 2025

[chesterman]

just for the record, i'm still having the problem, albeit it seems to have a lower frequency.

 

[Kafka]

Hmm interestingly enough for me on 22H2 I had to disable MPO so it wouldn’t crash on idle or alt tabs sporadically, it was awful. Once I upgraded to 24H2 it went away and I left MPO as is. Seriously what gives

Are you guys on build 4202? WDDM had some optimizations with how it interacts with the GPU. It’s pre-release afaik but updating could be the way to go.

 

[chesterman]

Are you guys on build 4202?

Yes, 4202 here. since setting "OverlayMinFPS"=dword:00000000, the problem is down to a minimum here. barelly even happening

 

[Kendi]

How do you check if MPO is active? On my Windows 11 24H2 the old way in the registry still works.

 

[H-Koboshi]

i found this thread on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/1kgxdno/psa_windows_11_24h2_microsoft_issue_causing

i removed all the previous modifications that i have tried, and only maintened this one. it finally did the trick

I must say this solved my issue with video and browser flickering when a game is in the background (happens with my desktop with an RX 7800 XT, but doesn't happen on my laptop with Intel iGPU + GTX 1650).

 

[Dr. Dro]

How do you check if MPO is active? On my Windows 11 24H2 the old way in the registry still works.

dxdiag > save all information, then open the text file it generates and look for this section

MPO MaxPlanes: 8
MPO Caps: RGB,YUV,BILINEAR,HIGH_FILTER,STRETCH_YUV,STRETCH_RGB,IMMEDIATE,HDR (MPO3)
MPO Stretch: 10.000X - 0.500X
MPO Media Hints: resizing, colorspace Conversion
MPO Formats: NV12,YUY2,R16G16B16A16_FLOAT,R10G10B10A2_UNORM,R8G8B8A8_UNORM,B8G8R8A8_UNORM
PanelFitter Caps: RGB,YUV,BILINEAR,HIGH_FILTER,STRETCH_YUV,STRETCH_RGB,IMMEDIATE,HDR (MPO3)
PanelFitter Stretch: 10.000X - 0.500X

 

[Kendi]

From what I know and based on my own experience, the information provided by DxDiag does not directly indicate whether MPO is functioning on the system. It only shows whether the feature is supported by the driver and displays — and that’s the only aspect that changed in the Windows 24H2 update.

If you want to verify whether MPO is active, I recommend using the PresentMon tool. You should add the "Present Mode" widget to the overlay. During fullscreen gameplay, the present mode should be Hardware: Independent Flip. However, if you enable an overlay, open the Start menu, or perform any other action that places content over the game, then — with MPO disabled — the present mode should switch to Composed: Flip.

Check how it behaves on your system and let me know.

 

[Dr. Dro]

From what I know and based on my own experience, the information provided by DxDiag does not directly indicate whether MPO is functioning on the system. It only shows whether the feature is supported by the driver and displays — and that’s the only aspect that changed in the Windows 24H2 update.

If you want to verify whether MPO is active, I recommend using the PresentMon tool. You should add the "Present Mode" widget to the overlay. During fullscreen gameplay, the present mode should be Hardware: Independent Flip. However, if you enable an overlay, open the Start menu, or perform any other action that places content over the game, then — with MPO disabled — the present mode should switch to Composed: Flip.

Check how it behaves on your system and let me know.

Oh I thought you meant "supported". You're correct, but personally I just use Special K.

They have some excellent documentation on swapchain and presentation if you want to understand the mechanics better but the tl;dr is you always want Hardware: Independent Flip whenever possible

SwapChain Science

It puts the Pacing in Frame Pacing

wiki.special-k.info

Presentation Model (D3D11-12)

For when you wonder why things are the way they are...

wiki.special-k.info

 

[Kendi]

The author asked about disabling MPO, so I presented a way to check that editing the registry still works. With MPO disabled, you can't always have Hardware: Independent flip presentation mode. Every time some content is rendered on top of the game layer, dwm has to take control of merging everything and displaying it on the screen.

Thanks for the links with a lot of useful knowledge

 

[mario64]

I've read through this post and would like to get some input on my situation. I just purchased an Asus G14 5070Ti laptop which has a G-Sync HDR display with Advanced Optimus and I'm using the latest nvidia 576.80 drivers. I've been having ongoing problems with it freezing or even black screening, requiring a press & hold power button to fix. Sometimes it's during a game, sometimes watching a youtube video, sometimes when Alt+Tabbing out of a game, sometimes when waking from sleep. In researching this issue I stumbled across a post recommending to disable MPO. Sure enough, I haven't had a freeze or issue since making that change a few days ago (knock on wood).

There has been mention in this thread of downsides to disabling it but in my situation it seems to have resolved my issues. Any thoughts on this? Could there be some other setting(s) I could change to fix these issues while leaving MPO enabled?

 

[lifer16]

Do laptops support mpo? mine shows max planes 1 which is disabled, I tried to enable it but no dice.

 

[chrcoluk]

I actually use discord in the browser now, it works so much better, the app seems to be written quite badly, but when I did run the app I disabled acceleration due to the weirdness it could introduce to GPU rendering in other software. so if discord is the only reason you disabling MPO, just use it in the browser instead or disable GPU acceleration in the app.

 

[Kafka]

I actually use discord in the browser now, it works so much better, the app seems to be written quite badly, but when I did run the app I disabled acceleration due to the weirdness it could introduce to GPU rendering in other software. so if discord is the only reason you disabling MPO, just use it in the browser instead or disable GPU acceleration in the app.

Even better, Vesktop with hardware acceleration turned off

 

[Dr. Dro]

Do laptops support mpo? mine shows max planes 1 which is disabled, I tried to enable it but no dice.

Yes, laptops support MPO. A laptop panel is no different from any other type of monitor.

I've read through this post and would like to get some input on my situation. I just purchased an Asus G14 5070Ti laptop which has a G-Sync HDR display with Advanced Optimus and I'm using the latest nvidia 576.80 drivers. I've been having ongoing problems with it freezing or even black screening, requiring a press & hold power button to fix. Sometimes it's during a game, sometimes watching a youtube video, sometimes when Alt+Tabbing out of a game, sometimes when waking from sleep. In researching this issue I stumbled across a post recommending to disable MPO. Sure enough, I haven't had a freeze or issue since making that change a few days ago (knock on wood).

There has been mention in this thread of downsides to disabling it but in my situation it seems to have resolved my issues. Any thoughts on this? Could there be some other setting(s) I could change to fix these issues while leaving MPO enabled?

Unfortunately, if MPO is the root cause of the issues you have, it's very hard to debug. You'll need to isolate and find out what is making your display driver crash and just stop using that app, if possible. Definitely file a bug report, though.

 

[lifer16]

Yes, laptops support MPO. A laptop panel is no different from any other type of monitor.



Unfortunately, if MPO is the root cause of the issues you have, it's very hard to debug. You'll need to isolate and find out what is making your display driver crash and just stop using that app, if possible. Definitely file a bug report, though.

Cant seem to be able to enable MPO, my laptop panel is a mini-led 10 bit 300hz 1600p hdr g-sync with advanced optimus if it matters

 

[Dr. Dro]

Cant seem to be able to enable MPO, my laptop panel is a mini-led 10 bit 300hz 1600p hdr g-sync with advanced optimus if it matters

If you are running 10 bpc without enabling HDR, MPOs won't work afaik

 

[lifer16]

If you are running 10 bpc without enabling HDR, MPOs won't work afaik

I always have HDR enabled, tried disabling it just in case, but dxdiag keeps telling me MPO is disabled

 

[Dr. Dro]

I always have HDR enabled, tried disabling it just in case, but dxdiag keeps telling me MPO is disabled

Running multiple monitors? Special K's injection frontend app can tell you MPO status on all monitors

 

[lifer16]

Running multiple monitors? Special K's injection frontend app can tell you MPO status on all monitors

View attachment 407824

Nope just the laptop

Well it turns out It had to do with advanced optimus, since I only run on dgpu mode (I changed it from the bios directly) I went to switch to advanced optimus real quick and now it shows supported

 

[Dr. Dro]

Nope just the laptop

Well it turns out It had to do with advanced optimus, since I only run on dgpu mode (I changed it from the bios directly) I went to switch to advanced optimus real quick and now it shows supported

Interesting. I suppose this has to do with your iGPU in some way. Mine shows as supported regardless, although it does not support Advanced Optimus (RTX 3050M). The panel is connected to the Radeon iGPU, and MPOs are supported on that, MPOs also work when I have an HDMI cable connected (which goes straight to the 3050M). MPOs are weird, way too weird for MS to drop as a hard requirement, which is where they seem to be going

 

[lifer16]

Interesting. I suppose this has to do with your iGPU in some way. Mine shows as supported regardless, although it does not support Advanced Optimus (RTX 3050M). The panel is connected to the Radeon iGPU, and MPOs are supported on that, MPOs also work when I have an HDMI cable connected (which goes straight to the 3050M). MPOs are weird, way too weird for MS to drop as a hard requirement, which is where they seem to be going

Yea I think the igpu drives the panel and it's probably why it shows unsupported on dgpu mode, but I'll stay with MPO disabled in dgpu since I dont think I'm missing much or knowing microsoft maybe even avoiding a headache