Borderless Gaming and DxWnd are both called “windowing tools,” but they work on different layers of the problem — and picking the wrong one wastes an evening. Borderless Gaming takes a game that is already running in a window and makes that window borderless, fullscreen-sized and well-behaved. DxWnd takes a game that refuses to run in a window at all — the classic exclusive-fullscreen titles of the DirectDraw and early DirectX era — and forces it into one, with a compatibility layer attached. This page is part of our DxWnd alternatives comparison series.
What Borderless Gaming Actually Does
Borderless Gaming, by Andrew (published under the Codeusa name), has been on Steam since 2015 and costs $6.99 on Steam (checked October 2026). An older version, 9.6, is available free from the project’s GitHub repository — the Steam purchase is best understood as supporting the developer and getting the current build.
Its core job is window management. You add a game, and Borderless Gaming watches for it: when the game appears in a window, it strips the borders, resizes and repositions the window to fill your screen, optionally locks the cursor inside it, mutes the game when it loses focus, and applies all of that automatically on every launch through per-game profiles. For a modern or modern-ish game whose windowed mode exists but is clunky — borders, wrong monitor, alt-tab crashes — this is exactly the right tool, and it asks almost nothing of you.
The current Steam version has grown beyond that core. Its store page describes two additions: BGFX, a GPU effects pipeline (upscalers, CRT and sharpening effects) applied over the captured game, and BGProxy, which intercepts a game’s graphics pipeline — the page states OpenGL and DirectX 8 through 12 — to turn fullscreen-only games of that range into real, resizable windows. That is a genuine expansion into territory that used to be DxWnd’s alone, and this comparison would be dishonest if it pretended otherwise. Note the stated floor, though: DirectX 8. The DirectDraw generation below it is outside BGProxy’s described scope.
What DxWnd Does Differently
DxWnd, maintained by ghotik on SourceForge and free, works one layer deeper and one era earlier. It hooks a game as it launches and intercepts the calls with which the game claims the whole screen, so a title that only knows exclusive fullscreen renders into an ordinary window whose size and position you set per profile — the workflow our guide to using DxWnd walks through. On top of the window itself, DxWnd carries the era’s compatibility baggage: 256-colour palette emulation for games that otherwise display rainbow garbage (see our wrong-colours fix), time stretching for games whose speed is tied to hardware, locale emulation, CD-audio and filesystem emulation, and per-game profiles refined in the project’s forum for two decades.
None of that exists in Borderless Gaming, in any version — not because it is a worse tool, but because it was never aimed at that layer. Conversely, DxWnd has no effects pipeline, no interest in polishing a window that already behaves, and a settings dialog that makes Borderless Gaming’s clean list look like a different species of software.
The Day-to-Day Difference
The two tools also feel different to live with. Borderless Gaming is a set-and-forget utility: add a game’s process once, and its profile applies itself whenever that window appears, whether you launched the game from Steam, a shortcut or a launcher. Its niceties are all about desktop citizenship — the taskbar hides itself, a background game mutes itself, alt-tab stops being a crash risk. The Steam ecosystem around it is honest about its economics, too: the paid Steam build sits alongside the free GitHub version, and even its cosmetic Dark Mode DLC is sold explicitly as a way to fund the free and open-source edition. Its current version line also reaches beyond Windows — the store page lists SteamOS and Linux support, with BGFX running natively in Steam Deck’s Game Mode.
DxWnd asks more of you. A typical workflow is: create the profile, point it at the real executable, launch the game through DxWnd (or let its hook catch the launch), run it as administrator when the game demands it, tune, and save the profile so the work persists. In exchange you get control Borderless Gaming never attempts — the exact coordinates of the window on a second monitor, the game’s perceived clock speed, its colour palette, its locale. Neither workflow is “better”; they are priced in different currencies, money-plus-nothing versus free-plus-attention.
The Deciding Test
One question separates the two tools almost every time: does your game have any windowed mode at all? If yes — a settings toggle, an alt-enter, a -windowed flag — your problem is presentation, and Borderless Gaming is the simpler, safer answer. If no — the game seizes the screen, changes your resolution, or was built on DirectDraw in the late 1990s — the window does not exist yet, and creating it is DxWnd’s job; our still-fullscreen checklist covers the cases where even that fight is stubborn. Our deep-dive on window size and position settings shows how much control DxWnd gives once the window exists.
| Question | Borderless Gaming | DxWnd |
|---|---|---|
| Primary layer | Window presentation | Launch-time hooking + compatibility |
| Needs a windowed mode first? | Yes for the core tool; BGProxy extends to fullscreen-only DirectX 8–12/OpenGL titles | No — forcing the window is the point |
| DirectDraw-era (pre-DirectX 8) games | Outside its scope | Its home ground |
| Palette, timing, locale, CD emulation | No | Yes |
| Effects / upscaling pipeline | Yes (BGFX, current Steam version) | No — basic scaling only |
| Price | $6.99 on Steam (Oct 2026); v9.6 free on GitHub | Free and open-source |
Can You Use Both?
Sometimes, in sequence: DxWnd creates the window for a legacy title, and a presentation tool then manages how that window sits on your screen. But two programs adjusting the same window can also fight — borders reappearing, sizes snapping back. If you chain them, set one up fully, test, and only then add the other, and keep each game’s arrangement in one place: DxWnd’s profile for the hooking, Borderless Gaming’s profile for the frame. For DirectX 8–12 titles, try BGProxy alone first; it may make the second tool unnecessary.
The Verdict
| Choose… | If… |
|---|---|
| Borderless Gaming | Your game can already run in a window (or is a DirectX 8+ title) and you want it borderless, fullscreen-sized, cursor-locked and automatic — with zero interest in legacy compatibility surgery. |
| DxWnd | Your game is a fullscreen-only classic — especially DirectDraw-era — or needs palette, timing, locale or CD fixes alongside the window. Start with the current DxWnd build and the tested per-game guides in our games hub. |