Will disabling themes/desktop-composition provide better GPU performance in Windows 7?

2

While playing Starcraft 2, there's a cutscene (rendered) that has always choked at one graphics-intensive part. I have an overclocked 6950 2GB; on paper, it shouldn't be a problem for the card/system.

Two recent things led to seamless performance in this particular cutscene -- closing the program "Actual Window Manager" (which I suspect hooks the GPU/Windows desktop management in some way), and setting the compatibility to "Disable desktop composition".

Could this just be a placebo or random luck? Or does desktop composition take away from the GPU's performance?

And additionally, would I get even better performance if I also disable "Visual Themes" (theoretically)? I don't know what the difference between them is.

(Of course, I can and will test them out in practice, but it'll be difficult to judge if disabling visual themes will give minutely better performance).

Coldblackice

Posted 2012-07-06T22:19:21.830

Reputation: 4 774

I would run a benchmark to test (FutureMark comes to mind)

– soandos – 2012-07-06T22:25:32.403

Answers

0

If you are playing fullscreen, then all background graphics processing should be disabled and you shouldnt have a loss of performance. Do you have a second monitor attached? If so, then the GPU would have some resources dedicated to that.

Keltari

Posted 2012-07-06T22:19:21.830

Reputation: 57 019

I do have a second monitor. – Coldblackice – 2012-11-10T11:21:34.253

Asked: 2012-07-06T22:19:21.830

Viewed: 2 397 times

Active: 2012-09-14T07:20:30.007