Shadows Borderless feels like 40 FPS despite stable 75 FPS — possible fix
I had a very weird issue in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
My game was running at a stable 70–75 FPS, but in Borderless Windowed it felt like I was playing at ~40 FPS. Camera/mouse movement was smooth, but character movement looked extremely choppy.
Switching to normal Windowed mode immediately made the game feel perfectly smooth, despite the FPS being basically the same.
I tried a bunch of things: VRR, G-SYNC, HAGS, Windows' “Optimizations for windowed games”, etc. Nothing helped.
Then I noticed something weird in Windows 11 → Settings → System → Display: Windows was showing two displays, even though I only had one physical screen connected.
I selected:
Display → Multiple displays → Show only on 1
And that completely fixed the problem. Borderless mode became smooth again.
So if Shadows is showing high/stable FPS but feels like it's running at half the FPS, and Windowed mode is somehow smoother, check whether Windows thinks you have an extra display enabled.
Maybe this will save someone else from wasting an evening messing with every possible NVIDIA setting 😂