DWM on 3D performance in Vista

[SunnyD]

Yes I know Vista turns off DWM in full-screen exclusive mode on a display adapter making Vista play nice happy frame rates on things...

But what about Shared FB Windowed modes? I play a lot of my games in Windowed mode when available, particularly when I'm on my laptop as the laptop can't really handle full screen at 1900x1200. Are there any real performance reviews on what kind of hit DWM actually makes in this context, as it is most definitely NOT disabled?

 

[Markbnj]

I haven't seen any reviews, but I wouldn't expect to see a decrease (I don't play games windowed, so I don't have experience to go on). The DWM runs on WPF (Avalon), which is a more abstract graphics API, and definitely has more overhead than the old GDI+ approach (as well as a lot more flexibility and maintainability)... however, WPF is running right on Direct3D instead of GDI+.. So while you have more abstraction and more code overhead, you have far more efficient drawing operations.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

It will probably turn off in winwowed mode. Some apps I have that aint even 3d turn off aero when they are run.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: JonnyBlaze
It will probably turn off in winwowed mode. Some apps I have that aint even 3d turn off aero when they are run.

I can promise you at least most of the games that I have tried in Vista do not turn off or force off DWM. I still have the full effect of the desktop manager working when Windows, and while I have no context to compare the app to, DWM most certainly takes a major performance hit when gaming - and this is on a dual core with 2 gig of RAM. The weak link is the video card - NVIDIA Quadro NVS120M.