Areo 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

 

[jedimasterben]

Windows disables Aero whenever a 3D application is running, so there will be no difference in performance.

 

[AsAnAtheist]

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

Well thats a bit surprising. Areo uses very little resources maybe 100 mbs~ of your ram. It shouldnt affected gameplay much at all, there must be something wrong with your GPU's drivers, or ram.

Install latest ATI drivers for your HD 4870
Check your ram via "Properties" on "my computer" if it registers the full 4GB's then your okay.
Can you run the Windows Experience Index, and tell me what it says there for the numbers of your GPU/Ram? I just need the numbers.

Can you tell me the components on your PC?
Processor:
Motherboard:
Ram:
GPU:
Power supply:
Is all I need.

 

[belial2k]

there are some games that have issues running in windowed mode with aero running, but if you turned it off and saw no difference, I think that answered your question.

 

[kevinator]

Windows disables Aero whenever a 3D application is running, so there will be no difference in performance.

Hmm... then why did Windows kick me out of my game and tell me my system performance was low and suggest to use a Windows Basic theme? One of the other options was to keep the same theme that I was running (which is Aero) and not have that message come up again. It doesn't make sense to suggest using Windows Basic theme if Aero is automatically disabled.

Is there a setting I can check (to disable Aero upon 3D gaming)?

 

[kevinator]

Well thats a bit surprising. Areo uses very little resources maybe 100 mbs~ of your ram. It shouldnt affected gameplay much at all, there must be something wrong with your GPU's drivers, or ram.

Install latest ATI drivers for your HD 4870
Check your ram via "Properties" on "my computer" if it registers the full 4GB's then your okay.
Can you run the Windows Experience Index, and tell me what it says there for the numbers of your GPU/Ram? I just need the numbers.

Can you tell me the components on your PC?
Processor:
Motherboard:
Ram:
GPU:
Power supply:
Is all I need.

Yeah, it registers all 4 gig of Ram and the Windows Experience Index number is 7.4 for RAM and 7.5 for Graphics.

As far as the ATI drivers, I downloaded them only a few days ago.

Processor - AMD Phenom II X4 940 (3.0 Ghz)
Mobo - MSI DKA790GX (MS 7550)
RAM: 4 Gig Kingston HyperX 1066 Mhz
GPU: ATI 4870 1 Gig
PSU: Enermax 620 Watt (going off memory, but that should right)

 

[kevinator]

there are some games that have issues running in windowed mode with aero running, but if you turned it off and saw no difference, I think that answered your question.

This game was running in full screen mode. You might be right, since I didn't see a difference, that is likely the answer. This is the first time an OS has ever stopped me in mid game and told me about low system performance and asked if I wanted to disable a theme. It just makes me wonder how much recources Aero is actually using...

 

[emyyhh]

Yeah, it registers all 4 gig of Ram and the Windows Experience Index number is 7.4 for RAM and 7.5 for Graphics.

Well I feel cheated! My i7 system with triple channel ddr3 only gets 5.9 for RAM (1500Mhz) and 7.3 for graphics (GTX275)

God damn......

 

[AsAnAtheist]

This game was running in full screen mode. You might be right, since I didn't see a difference, that is likely the answer. This is the first time an OS has ever stopped me in mid game and told me about low system performance and asked if I wanted to disable a theme. It just makes me wonder how much recources Aero is actually using...

Aero doesnt use a lot of resources. Also if a game is incompatible with certain 3d applications it will shut off aero for you. I think the reason issue may be one of your components crashing or under performing. I think your issue may be your GPU or RAM. I recommend you do two things:

1. Run Memtestx86 to test your memory.
2. Run 3dmark06

Also did you overclock your GPU or CPU?

 

[kevinator]

Aero doesnt use a lot of resources. Also if a game is incompatible with certain 3d applications it will shut off aero for you. I think the reason issue may be one of your components crashing or under performing. I think your issue may be your GPU or RAM. I recommend you do two things:

1. Run Memtestx86 to test your memory.
2. Run 3dmark06

Also did you overclock your GPU or CPU?

My memory should be running fine, it runs all my games the same as it did in XP. It's just that XP doesn't have a warning when you really take a graphics hit. Also, I'm not overlocking anything. Thanks for the suggestions but after researching more on this it, the warning I got is simply the Windows 7 default response when it detects that the GPU is taking a big hit. One guy said that he got this from watching a video in media player (that's pretty sad). Also, somebody did point out an Aero benchmark to me that showed the difference in games with Aero turned on and off. The difference was tiny, not something that one would notice. Essentially, it makes no difference.

I should have been satisfied that I was going to be OK when I tried the game with and without Aero on and couldn't really tell a difference. I just haven't ever had an OS tell me that my system performance is low and give me options... so it kind of concerned me, and thus my mad quest to find out how much Aero hits my system. Thanks again for the help.

 

[sminlal]

My i7 system with triple channel ddr3 only gets 5.9 for RAM

I have a Xeon W3520 which is identical to the Core i7 920 except that it supports ECC RAM. With a standard CPU clock and Kingston DDR1333 ECC RAM running at the default speed, my RAM score is 7.5. Although the notation next to the RAM score states "Memory Operations Per Second", I strongly suspect that at least part of the reason for the high score is because I have 12GB installed (6 x 2GB).

 

[apache_lives]

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/windows_vista_aero_glass_performance/page3.asp

 

[rodney_ws]

Well I feel cheated! My i7 system with triple channel ddr3 only gets 5.9 for RAM (1500Mhz) and 7.3 for graphics (GTX275)

God damn......

I'm sorry, but there just has to be something wrong with that test or your system because my dual channel i5-750 (I honestly don't recall my exact scores) scores in the 7s on the memory part of the WEI tests... the only sub-7 score I have is my disks and that's because I'm too cheap/poor to buy an SSD. Are you SURE they're actually running at that speed? That just doesn't sound right for some reason.

 

[kevinator]

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/windows_vista_aero_glass_performance/page3.asp

Yeah, I just recently saw this benchmark (somebody pointed it out to me on another forum). It was nice to see that Aero doesn't affect gaming.