Vista: Taxes video card?

[Avengeance]

I have a machine that I just put vista on (2.4ghz p4, 1gb of ram, geforce 4 mx) I was wondering if the video card is actually being beaten up by vista. The machine sometimes runs slow depending on whats going on but it seems like it could be the video card. Not sure though, anyone have any experience with vista and its speed?

 

[jimmyb]

By default the video card will be "taxed" more. You can try turning off aero and see if this helps.

 

[bbz_Ghost]

That Geforce 4 MX is gonna choke running Aero, regardless of the amount of video RAM it has or how fast it can be overclocked (I'm not saying you're doing that, just saying that it won't help if you decided to attempt it just to improve Vista's GUI performance).

I have a similar system in most respects:

P4 2.4 GHz (533 MHz FSB)
1GB DDR333
ATI Radeon 9550

With Vista running and Aero in operation, sometimes the system does get a big dull and non-responsive, but that's not directly attributable to Aero itself. Aero uses the Desktop Window Manager, seen as dwm.exe in Task Manager. The more windows you have open or applications running, the more system RAM that will be required by dwm.exe and that means a bigger load on the graphics card.

That old GF4 MX ain't got itself a lot of horsepower for such things, so couple that with the increased system RAM requirements and you'll see how Aero can have an overall negative effect on your system, just like it does on mine.

For day to day usage, I use the Vista Basic scheme/theme. It lightens the load on system RAM because with Aero you're almost always using at least 50MB of RAM just for dwm.exe to be running; add more application windows and it goes up - while running Vista Basic typically sees dwm.exe barely crack 10MB of RAM usage.

Try both, I'd say. Use Aero and do some stuff, then switch to the Vista Basic scheme/theme and try the same things. You might be surprised at the overall performance differences.

Also, grab a cheap 1GB USB thumbdrive for ReadyBoost duties on that 1GB machine. It'll help, tremendously.

Hope this helps...

 

[PWMK2]

I thought Aero required a DX9-compatible video card? If you're not running Aero, it's not your video card... and anyway, Aero uses like 10 polygons per window when it's running, so even something like a 9600 should be fine with it.

 

[bbz_Ghost]

I thought Aero required a DX9-compatible video card? If you're not running Aero, it's not your video card... and anyway, Aero uses like 10 polygons per window when it's running, so even something like a 9600 should be fine with it.

Duh, wasn't even thinking about that: his GF4 MX doesn't support DX9 calls, soooo... with the Vista Basic interface that wouldn't be an issue, as PWMK2 just brought to light.

I'm using this 9550 (which is a 9600 actually, just core clocked to 250 instead of the 9600's 400 default; it's the 9600 GPU underclocked on the core speed, that's all, and with 4 instead of 8 pipelines - I've successfully run it for periods of time at 400 also) just fine with Aero, no issues to speak of.

Good luck...