Strangely, when I Alt-Tab Crysis 3 I get better performance after I give Crysis 3 focus again. I'm seeing an increase of around 10 fps or ~20%. I don't notice any change graphically, and when I record my screen my recordings come out smoother after alt-tabing.

I'm using GTX 480 SLI at 754 MHz, and a 2600k at 4.2GHz, all Max settings with SMAA (MGPU) antialiasing. I'm really curious what causes this, or if there is a fix so that I won't have to alt-tab every game.

Strangely, when I Alt-Tab Crysis 3 I get better performance after I give Crysis 3 focus again. I'm seeing an increase of around 10 fps or ~20%. I don't notice any change graphically, and when I record my screen my recordings come out smoother after alt-tabing.

I'm using GTX 480 SLI at 754 MHz, and a 2600k at 4.2GHz, all Max settings with SMAA (MGPU) antialiasing. I'm really curious what causes this, or if there is a fix so that I won't have to alt-tab every game.

Try a borderless full screen window ( the first google search result gives several techniques ). The Crysis 3 specific method ( Thanks to Blutaar666 ) is to set r_fullscreenwindow = 1 in the console or use the CVar configurator tool to do the same.

See Blutaar666's post for more information about improving your graphical performance :

http://secure.gamesas.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=59554&p=606271#p606271

I just added r_fullscreenwindow = 1 to my system.cfg and tested your suggestion. It doesn't seem to help. It allows me to alt+tab faster, but I still get an FPS improvement after alt+tabbing. I don't understand what is causing my FPS to be lower before I make Crysis 3 lose focus. Its nice that i can get an FPS increase so easily, but I wish it was just better to begin with.

On further inspection, it seems this is because V-Sync is enabled in game until I alt+tab out even though V-Sync is disabled in the settings. Anyone know a fix for this?