Infamously resource-greedy chat service/social media Discord is working on a new Game Mode feature that should hopefully free up more resources for PC gamers.
As anyone who has used the service knows, Discord loves to suck up RAM, CPU and GPU consumption. Even if you’re not actively engaged in a call, the client can use enough resources to make a dent on your gaming performance.
According to VideoCardz, Discord is actively working to make its client less power-hungry while a game is running. While the service will still use up the same amount of resources while you’re not playing a game, it should run cleaner while you’re playing whatever you’re playing.
But how does this updated client free up resources? According to the report, Game Mode will be triggered when a game is booted, similar to how Streamer Mode is triggered when you open an application like OBS.
When Game Mode is triggered, Discord will immediately disable any effects and animations that are usually running or cached in the background. This will free up a considerable amount of resources as Discord is always animating those ugly profiles while you’re gaming, even if you’re not actively looking at them.
Essentially, this is an even better version of the client’s Reduced Motion option, which reduces the rate of animation and hover effects. However, this likely still won’t actually solve the true cause of Discord’s massive performance cost.
Much like many applications released nowadays, Discord’s performance issues stem from the fact that the desktop client is still a web app. The chat service runs through an Electron-based format which runs the app through a secret embedded Chromium browser, sucking up a tonne of resources while you use the app.
With this in mind, it’s unlikely that Discord will be significantly more performant even when Game Mode is active, although there will likely be a meaningful gain on the GPU side. As for how much CPU and RAM resources the app will take up, that will likely only be slightly improved, if at all, unfortunately.
Honestly, though, with how resource-hungry literally every damn app is nowadays, any meaningful improvements are welcome. Even if the new Discord Game Mode option only saves 10% of its usual cost, that’s 10% that can be put towards gaming performance, and every extra frame is important.
