I'm attempting to improve the frame-rate for a PC game called Condemned. My machine exceeds the recommended requirements described back in 2006. The machine is, however, running Windows 10.
Many forums are recommending that I disable "HID-Compliant Devices":
To get the best performance, you are going to want to disable all "HID-Compliant Device", you should not need to disable ANYTHING else.
I can't find any reasoning behind this method.
Inspecting the Properties of these devices via Device Manager doesn't tell me much about them. There are three types of HID-compliant devices on my machine:
- consumer control device (4 instances)
- system controller (2 instances)
- vendor-defined device (6 instances)
I have no idea what functionality is provided through these. I'm worried that I'll disable my keyboard or mouse if I disable these entries.
Update: Condemned will randomly have dramatically sharp drops in fps. Dropping from ~180 to 8. Unplugging the keyboard and mouse seems to restore the normal frame-rate.
Also, all but one of the HID-Compliant devices vanish once I disconnect them from my KVM: 
Switching from my computer to another via the KVM's switches makes for a quick remedy.
Best Answer
I have found disabling HID does indeed allow FEAR and games that seem to be sensitive to POLLING of HID devices to run well.
FEAR would run ~ 25 FPS and go to over 200 FPS with HID devices disables with a 1070ti video card and AMD Ryzen 2600X CPU, for instance.
Oddly, my keyboard, mouse and sound ALL function 100% normally with the HID devices disabled. I rebooted to see if maybe a re-set is needed, but no, everything works the "same" as I use the PC after a re boot.
If I ENABLE the HID devices, FEAR FPS collapses to unplayable. SO I've kept them disabled while I play this game, and re-enable them later on when I'm finished.
My experience suggests that disabling HID devices to trouble shoot an odd older game MIGHT be a solution to more consistent FPS elsewhere, and that mouse / keyboard function, at least on my ASRock X470 Taichi W10 system, still work fine.
Report of the HID device POLLING frequency slowly bringing FPS down in certain older games seem to be the "answer". Stopping the polling by disabling the device drivers fixes it...I'm told. But, it works.