Aero input lag with Sandy Bridge?

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Blahman

[H]ard|Gawd
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Has anyone else noticed a tiny bit of input/mouse lag after upgrading to Sandy Bridge or possibly installing Windows 7 SP1? I am not sure if I just noticed it and it was there from the beginning or if it was something that changed recently (installed SP1 last weekend), but I noticed that mousing over certain visual elements like the items in the right-hand column of the start menu had a slightly delayed effect from when the mouse went over and when the visual cue/effect would play. Turning Aero off (disabling the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager service in services.msc is a quick way to test it) resolved the lag for me.

I even did a reaction time test with Aero on and off, with Aero on I averaged ~270ms, off ~190ms: http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/index.php

It might have come with SP1, not too sure. I did try a fresh install (with SP1) on a second drive just to test this and the issue is present even with no 3rd party drivers installed. Next I'll try without SP1 to rule that out.

Interested to hear if anyone else has noticed something similar.

EDIT: Here's a video demonstrating the input lag with Aero enabled, and the lack thereof when it's disabled: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5ClfagyBGI
 
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Blahman said:
Has anyone else noticed a tiny bit of input/mouse lag after upgrading to Sandy Bridge or possibly installing Windows 7 SP1? I am not sure if I just noticed it and it was there from the beginning or if it was something that changed recently (installed SP1 last weekend), but I noticed that mousing over certain visual elements like the items in the right-hand column of the start menu had a slightly delayed effect from when the mouse went over and when the visual cue/effect would play. Turning Aero off (disabling the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager service in services.msc is a quick way to test it) resolved the lag for me.

I even did a reaction time test with Aero on and off, with Aero on I averaged ~270ms, off ~190ms: http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/index.php

It might have come with SP1, not too sure. I did try a fresh install (with SP1) on a second drive just to test this and the issue is present even with no 3rd party drivers installed. Next I'll try without SP1 to rule that out.

Interested to hear if anyone else has noticed something similar.
Click to expand...

I guessing you have the latest NVidia drivers for your SLI cards?

May try removing the SLI feature and see if that makes a difference...
 
Tried without SP1, same thing. Tried with 1 GPU installed, same thing. Disabled all the power saving settings for the CPU in the BIOS, same thing.

Only thing that fixes it is disabling Aero. Very odd.

Maybe I am just being picky. My notebook (Arrandale, not Sandy Bridge) which is also on Windows 7 SP1 and has switchable NVIDIA and Intel graphics, has the same issue on either GPU. Never noticed it before but it's definitely there, albeit to a lesser extent.

Funny that I just noticed this... no one else has tested turning Aero/DWM on and off seeing if there is a difference in terms of UI responsiveness? The most obvious indicator for me is mousing over icons in my Quick Launch bar (see here on how to re-enable Quick Launch) and having the "highlight" for each icon appear a fraction of a second after the cursor passes over it. Because I have so many icons (34 on each of 2 rows) and because they are horizontal (which is easier for your eyes to track than vertical like menus) the effect is obvious.

Since I know it exists on my notebook as well I am just going to try to ignore it... not worth spending any more time fretting about :)
 
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Blahman said:
Tried without SP1, same thing. Tried with 1 GPU installed, same thing. Disabled all the power saving settings for the CPU in the BIOS, same thing.

Only thing that fixes it is disabling Aero. Very odd.

Maybe I am just being picky. My notebook (Arrandale, not Sandy Bridge) which is also on Windows 7 SP1 and has switchable NVIDIA and Intel graphics, has the same issue on either GPU. Never noticed it before but it's definitely there.

Funny that I just noticed this... no one else has tested turning Aero/DWM on and off seeing if there is a difference in terms of UI responsiveness? The most obvious indicator for me is mousing over icons in my Quick Launch bar (see here on how to re-enable Quick Launch) and having the "highlight" for each icon appear a fraction of a second after the cursor passes over it. Because I have so many icons (34 on each of 2 rows) and because they are horizontal (which is easier for your eyes to track than vertical like menus) the effect is obvious.

Since I know it exists on my notebook as well I am just going to try to ignore it... not worth spending any more time fretting about :)
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Have you tried disabling your OC and running stock? I know that with some unstable OCs it can cause weird graphics issues.
 
I have the lag issue Blahman. Have you managed to fix it?

Thought it was my new Roccat mouse at first, but have the same issue with other mice. Tested with everything set at default - still happens. It's intermittant though, which makes it more annoying. I'm hoping my new REV3 board will fix this...
 
Nadfink said:
I have the lag issue Blahman. Have you managed to fix it?

Thought it was my new Roccat mouse at first, but have the same issue with other mice. Tested with everything set at default - still happens. It's intermittant though, which makes it more annoying. I'm hoping my new REV3 board will fix this...
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Fix it no, work around it, yes -- disable Aero either by disabling the Desktop Window Manager service or Control Panel-System-Advanced System Settings-Performance-Uncheck Enable Desktop composition. Or right click the desktop, go to Personalize, and choose the Windows 7 Basic theme.

Glad to hear it's not just me. I will be receiving my B3 board tomorrow and trying it out.
 
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A video of the lag would be great, if you could. In such a case please make it a cam recording rather than screen capture for what should be obvious reasons.
 
I've been dealing with this type of input lag the past short while, been trying to effect some kind of remedy. I thought it was an anomaly because I had a graphics card crap out and have a replacement in.
 
Using an X38 motherboard, 8800 GTX, and an SSD system drive. Usually my system was incredibly snappy, until a few days ago. At some point, a slight amount of input lag was introduced. It has been annoying the hell out of me. Both disabling Aero or desktop composition effectively remedy it, but I'd sorta like to be able to use Aero. Not a big deal, though. I've been fiddling around with a ton of crap in an effort to truly fix it, to no avail.

I'd figured I had introduced it into my system when it went down with a pink screen of death on my GTX 280, due to disk error or driver corruption. I had also messed around with a bunch of desktop enhancement crap and miscellaneous other freeware, so I thought that might have been its genesis. Kinda like to know what is causing it. Tried driver reinstalls, sfc /scannow, etc.. also thought it might be the gfx card because I had to do an oven bake to get the backup running while my other one is RMA'ed. Ostensibly some of the solder had cracked due to the age of the card, which doesn't please me with Nvidia much.

My problem may differ from yours, hard to say. Have you noticed any lagginess with Flash video or other types of windowed, streaming media? That was another thing that has been happening with my system. Direct3D gaming is evidentally lag-free.
 
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Have you tried a clean install? I did and there was no change.

Only common thread I see is NVIDIA GPUs and SSDs... but I doubt that's it.
 
Nah, I haven't. Not worth it for me to wipe this one yet, but I may put an entirely separate Windows 7 install on another drive, so that I can check it out. Seems odd that it didn't fix it for you. Maybe our issue stems from different sources?
 
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Probably.

Although it is easy to blame NVIDIA, they've screwed up so much before...

I can borrow an ATI 4870 to test this, will give that a shot tomorrow.
 
Blahman said:
Thanks for the links but that's not what is going on here. This is a much lower level issue (driver level or hardware level, not OS-shell level).

Going to try the 4870 since I'm all out of other ideas.
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I'm just curious if you've had any luck fixing the problem yet.
 
It is probably caused by enabled transparency, because then everything that is displayed in transparent frames is redrawn 2-3 times more. So if normal lag is 190ms and with it enabled it is 270, it is still not as lagging. Try to just deactivate transparency if it solves the problem. This is probably a software bug and it is not showing that your PC is slow.
 
@bmg, No, I couldn't get the 4870 to boot in my machine and can't be arsed to buy another video card just to try it.

@Acer_Sheep, disabling transparent glass has no effect, only disabling window composition (Aero) eliminates the input lag.
 
I think this effect as it is happens on all PCs running Aero then. It is just you notice it more because you have that panel full of icons. I just tested it as well and yes Aero makes mouseovering over some items slower. But unless there is too many of them in one place, it is hardly noticeable.
 
It's not just mousing over stuff, it's even keyboard input, like what I'm typing right now into this message window there is an appreciable amount of delay between me hitting the key and the character appearing. Makes for lots of typos :p

I don't doubt that it affects all PCs running Aero, because I tested it on my Arrandale notebook and it has the same thing to a much lesser degree. It's only really bad on my Sandy Bridge machine.
 
I think a problem is that aero isn't recognized a 3d app, so reducing max prerendered frames to 1 or 0 doesn't reduce the input lag. The only way to decrease Aero desktop lag is to disable Aero, since that disables vsync. Setting the max render ahead frames to 1 works fine for the games I've tried, but it doesn't work for Aero. nvidia should make their drivers recognize the desktop as a 3d app, and then Aero's input lag could be reduced by setting max pending frames to 1 or 0.
 
Good point -- FRAPS and I think MSI Afterburner can recognize the desktop window manager (Aero) as a 3D application so surely NVIDIA's drivers could too.
 
I had mouse click lag for my setup:
i7-2600k stock
8G memory , PC-1600
2600k GPU
I have wireless mouse, and the receiver was at the back of the case, so I had lag on clicking.
after I put the receiver to the front bay, everyting is fine now.
my guess was the frequency interruption between the mouse wireless receiver and the USB WIFI adapter.
 
Good for you, but that's not what this thread's about. I've already done all the diagnosis to determine it's an Aero problem not a mouse problem.
 
armartins said:
no lag here
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