Windows 10/11 compresses infrequently accessed memory pages to fit more data in RAM. This sounds like a free lunch, but for gaming it has a cost.
How memory compression works
When RAM fills up, instead of writing pages to the pagefile (slow), Windows compresses them and keeps them in RAM (fast). The CPU does the compression/decompression work.
The gaming problem
Game engines allocate and access memory in patterns that are hard to predict. When the game accesses a compressed page, the CPU must decompress it before the game can read it. This adds latency to memory accesses that would otherwise be instant.
On CPU-bound games, the decompression overhead can cause frame spikes — sudden 1% low drops that don't correlate with visible game events.
When to disable it
16GB+ RAM: disabling memory compression is safe. You have enough physical RAM that Windows rarely needs to compress pages during a typical gaming session.
8GB RAM: leave compression enabled. Without it, Windows hits the pagefile much faster, which is slower than compression.
# Disable memory compression
Disable-MMAgent -mc
# Re-enable
Enable-MMAgent -mc
What you see after disabling
RAM usage appears higher in Task Manager (uncompressed data takes more space). This is normal — the data was always there, just compressed. System responsiveness during gaming should improve slightly.
IzanagiOP's Aggressive Optimizations disables memory compression. https://terweb.lt/
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