Win 7 Aero Theme vs. Gaming Performance

[Kevinator]

Hello all,

I was playing a game (Dawn of Discovery) and had the details cranked up at 1920x1200 and it was a little choppy. Windows 7 interupted my game and said that it noticed that the system performance was low and said I might want to choose the Windows 7 Basic theme. My question is, how much does running an Aero theme in the background really affect gaming perfomance? I tried the game with and without Aero themes and the performance was very similar. Are there any benchmarks to show this? I've seen benchmarks comparing OS to OS, but I'm looking for one that shows with vs. without Aero enbabled.

Here's my rig:

AMD Phenom II X4 940 (3.0 Ghz)
4 Gig DDR2 System RAM running at 1066 Mhz
ATI 4870 1 Gig

Much thanks in advance,

Kevin

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm. I always thought that Win7 shut down Aero when you went to play a full-screen game.

 

[dguy6789]

Hmm. I always thought that Win7 shut down Aero when you went to play a full-screen game.

Same here. That's what Vista and 7 do for me.

 

[Kevinator]

Hmm... well, it certainly didn't turn it off in this case. I don't know, maybe I should just go to a basic theme before gaming and then going back to an Aero them aftwards. That would kind of be a pain though. Do you guys know how much Aero might affect gaming performance?

Is there a way to set Windows 7 to automatically turn on Aero when gaming like you guys are talking about?

 

[ImDonly1]

Hmm... well, it certainly didn't turn it off in this case. I don't know, maybe I should just go to a basic theme before gaming and then going back to an Aero them aftwards. That would kind of be a pain though. Do you guys know how much Aero might affect gaming performance?

Is there a way to set Windows 7 to automatically turn on Aero when gaming like you guys are talking about?

If should be set to turn it on and off automatically without changing anything. You can try to update your video card drivers to the newest ones.

To force the aero on/off. Try this:
1) Right Clicking the application/game .exe icon.
2) Click the "Compatibility" Tab.
3) And under "Settings", check box "Disable Visual Themes"

And that will disable Aero when you run the application, then re-enable it when you exit the application/game.

If you are getting errors/crashes try to let windows detect errors. Go to control panel then click system find and fix problems under system and security.
Or go to the Action Center and under maintenance click check for solutions to problems.

 

[Kevinator]

If should be set to turn it on and off automatically without changing anything. You can try to update your video card drivers to the newest ones.

To force the aero on/off. Try this:
1) Right Clicking the application/game .exe icon.
2) Click the "Compatibility" Tab.
3) And under "Settings", check box "Disable Visual Themes"

And that will disable Aero when you run the application, then re-enable it when you exit the application/game.

If you are getting errors/crashes try to let windows detect errors. Go to control panel then click system find and fix problems under system and security.
Or go to the Action Center and under maintenance click check for solutions to problems.

Ah, cool deal. Thanks for the tip regarding the compatibility settings. Well, it doesn't sound like there is a universal way to check if Aero is disabled for all 3D games, so I'll either use the compatibility tab for each game or just go to the basic theme when I game.

I am already using the latest drivers and fortunately, no, its not crashing (at least not yet) 🙂 .

 

[ViRGE]

I would just like to add that there have been a number of benchmarks done over the years, and Aero has never been shown to cause a performance hit in games. Here's a FiringSqaud article from the Vista launch in which they looked at benchmarks and found no difference.

Vista/Win7 suggesting to disable Aero has more to do with the fact that it makes the same suggestions regardless of whether the game operates in a window or full-screen. If it sees low graphical performance, it's going to suggest disabling Aero no matter what.

 

[Kevinator]

I would just like to add that there have been a number of benchmarks done over the years, and Aero has never been shown to cause a performance hit in games. Here's a FiringSqaud article from the Vista launch in which they looked at benchmarks and found no difference.

Vista/Win7 suggesting to disable Aero has more to do with the fact that it makes the same suggestions regardless of whether the game operates in a window or full-screen. If it sees low graphical performance, it's going to suggest disabling Aero no matter what.

Thanks ViRGE! I really appreciate the benchmarks link, and you are right, Aero isn't a factor. It also makes sense that the message I got is just the default message when it sees low graphical performance. I googled it and one guy got the same warning I did watching a video. 🙂

Thanks again.