Low SSD performance on Windows Xbox App

Marco Moura_074 · Nov 17, 2021

Hi, i'm new to the Microsoft/Xbox community. My problem is that when i'm playing gamepass games, my SSD underperforms, this is very noticeable in games like Forza Horizon 5 and Doom Eternal. In Forza there are more people complaining so i thouth the problem was in the game, but recently i found out that Doom Eternal also has problems when loading stuff, for example, sometimes in middle of the gameplay the music simply stops, audio gets unsynced, screaming of monsters happens after they already screamed in game and etc... All of this while all the games runs fine above 60 fps, so it shouldn't be because of other pc components. The weird thing is that i can only notice this behaviour when playing xbox games, i use the same SSD on Steam and never had any issues with SSD performance, all games load really fast, while on xbox app it seems i'm using a normal HDD. Unfortunately i don't have the same games on Steam so i can compare the performance but i really never had any issues on the SSD with Steam. I kind of know this weird behaviour is storage related because i already used an old HDD with Steam and had similar issues on some games (long loadings, audio/texture problems) and since i switched to the SSD i never had any of those again, on Steam at least.

Sorry for my weird english, if something wasn't clear feel free to ask. I want some help on solving this performance issues when playing Xbox games on Windows 10, because right now all the three games i've tried (FH5, DOOM, Subnautica BZ) had similar issues and is really annoying, specially DOOM and FH5.

Thanks for taking your time to read this.

:)

Marco Moura_074

Hey, thanks for the reply!

So i use a normal SATA 3 1TB SSD 2.5" from sandisk (or maybe kingston, i don't remember exactly because i have two and one of them is just for games). Only thing that may be considered is that the OS itself is running on another SSD different than the one where games are.

As for programs in the background, apart from de MS/Xbox services themselves, i almost always have discord and logitech GHUB for the mouse and keyboard configurations. I don't use any security programs except for Windows Defender.

On the root of my SSD, MS Store really created an encrypted folder called WindowsApps which i failed to open no matter what i tried, it don't give any warning or lacking permission errors, nothing happens and just don't open, i don't know if it is suposed to behave like this.

I'm really lost on what to do since the game performance is fine, apart from the sound/texture/loading glitches, i even tried to set all settings to the lowest on Doom Eternal but it had no effect.

I've also tried to "optmize" the disk with the "defrag and optimize drives" and still no success.

Obsessive Power

Hi,

This sounds like a difficult thing to get to the bottom of. There are some differences with Steam and other distribution systems compared to Windows 10/11, but they shouldn't cause loading slow downs on an SSD.

Many of the Game Pass titles install to an encrypted WindowsApps folder, but loading times should be unaffected. What kind of SSD does your PC have? My games are only running from a slower SATA based SSD and I haven't had any issues running Doom Eternal.

Do you have any security software installed on your PC or hardware monitoring running in the background? Some of these applications can cause issues with the Windows Store/Game Pass versions, but have no issues with Steam.

Claritylol

Hi same problem on steam no problem but with the xbox app sometimes i can play a game the ssd can run the game normally sometimes not idk why idk how to resolve this issue i have reinstall my os (w11) and no change maybe the dev can fix this idk my ssd is a 1tb seagate btw thanks in advance

AlexrhDjddbdj

I did not reinstall windows but I clone my C drive files from old ssd to new ssd.

After using the new ssd for a few month, I decided it was time to free my old ssd so I formatted it. After that I need to reinstall the windows store and xbox app.

Farscape247

settings - gaming - graphics look for custom options for apps - find the app you want to alter or add it to the list - select the app in the list - select options - select high performance (which will be your gpu), this will stop the game using your low powered integrated graphics.

above is for windows 11 but similar on windows 10 too.

Low SSD performance on Windows Xbox App