You can adjust the “Refresh Rate”, in other words the refresh rate of your screen, to dynamic in Windows 11. This is called the “Dynamic Refresh Rate” and offers a solution in Windows 11 to save battery life, but also to display games more smoothly on supporting screen(s).
Refresh rate represents the number of times per second that the screen can update the image on the screen. A higher refresh rate means smoother gaming performance and faster, smoother scrolling through the apps. But a higher refresh rate consumes a large amount of power.
Dynamic refresh rate allows Windows to decrease or increase the screen refresh rate depending on the task at hand.
Suppose you have a 144 Hz screen. If the Dynamic Refresh Rate (DRR) setting is enabled, Windows will reduce the refresh rate to 60 Hz as you read documents, with changes in frame counts being very minor.
But the dynamic refresh rate will increase the refresh rate settings to the highest (144 Hz in this case), increasing the FPS (Frames per second) on your games and browser. When DRR settings are disabled, Windows 11 will not limit the refresh rate.
The dynamic refresh rate in Windows 11 will be quite a bit save battery on your laptop if this is supported. Dynamic refresh rate is available on laptops with displays that support variable refresh rate (VRR) and a refresh rate of at least 120 Hz. You can find this information from the supplier of your laptop. In addition, this DDR function requires a graphics driver (WDDM 3.0) that supports it.
How do I know if the installed graphics driver supports WDDM 3.0?
You can check whether a WDDM 3.0 graphics driver is installed as follows. Click on the magnifying glass. In the search bar type: dxdiag. The DirectX Diagnostic Tool starts. Click on the tab: Display, at the bottom right you will see: Driver model WDDM 3.0 or another number.
Enable Dynamic Refresh Rate in Windows 11
In the Windows search bar, click on the magnifying glass. In the search bar type: Show advanced display settings. Click on the result.
In the Display information. Change the setting: Choose a refresh rate to “Dynamic 60h or 120hz”.
This DDR feature is available – as far as I know – for a few Microsoft apps and a few Adobe apps.
I hope this helped you. Thank you for reading!