Why is alt tab still so slow?

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Eagle156

2[H]4U
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Jan 21, 2006
Messages
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It is 2011 and alt tab support is still nearly non existent in games. It takes forever to alt tab back into the game, if it doesn't crash that is, and when you finally get in all the textures are messed up. Why isn't alt tab support more common?
 
alt tab'ing is non existent in games thanks to SLI/crossfire going ape shit when you do it. the slow part is due to windows having to move ram/swap file storage around and Aero. if your on a single display windows disables aero when a game is full screen so it has to activate aero when you alt tab to the desktop. since i run dual displays alt tabbing is almost seemless since aero is running 100% of the time. running dual displays is also the other way around games not supporting alt tab by just clicking on the left monitor or alt tabbing which allows you to access the second display but doesnt minimize the game. ETQW was one of those games that did that. i could still use my right monitor for everything but the game would still be running behind any windows i had open.


drako said:
You can't alt-tab on a console.
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thats a cop-out excuse since most console ports support alt tabbing.
 
It's a low priority for developers, the best alt-tabbing engine I've found was actually Cryengine 2.

Just learn to play games in a window and you won't need to alt-tab. More and more games are following the SC2 style in that the window is actually fullscreen but just overlaid on your desktop.
 
Because when you're running full screen the game has exclusive access to the graphics system (most of the time, unless you're in a DX10/11 using some hardware virtualization).
All the resources the game has are attached to that exclusive device context, all the textures, models, shaders ect. When you alt-tab to another process, the game loses it's exclusive device context and has to recreate that and then reload all it's resources when you want back in.
 
It might be your comp, or just the particular games your are playing. I can alt tab without much delay if any on my 1090T.
 
Seems to vary with engines. Any Source engine games I've ever played have been terrible to tab in and out of, taking up to 30 seconds to restore a minimized window. A lot of other games I've no problems with.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
thats a cop-out excuse since most console ports support alt tabbing.
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I think the point he was making was that since alt tabbing isn't a 'thing' on consoles the games aren't natively made around this functionality, and since games are primarily made for consoles, it means the games haven't been built from the ground up to be able to be snappy with alt tabbing.

It's always been a performance trade off. You could have ultra quick and smooth alt tabbing but lose 10-20% performance in games as a result. I'm sure most users would prefer raw fullscreen performance over alt tabbing speed.
 
I understand the problem exists but then there are also anomalies like Just Cause 2... sometimes I can alt-tab near instantly then other times it takes about 10-20 seconds to switch in or out.

I know a lot of people use Full Screen to counter-act the effects but that in itself has issues too (crosshair coming out of the screen and switching to another window).
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
thats a cop-out excuse since most console ports support alt tabbing.
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alt-tab is a windows function and games do not "support" it. Pressing Alt-Tab is like Pressing C+A+D windows stops what it is doing and responds to it.(well at least the NT based OS do) as long as the game does not remap the keyboad (some will do this)

OP

like others mentioned, al-tab is slow because windows has to rewrite the desktop and that takes a moment or 2.
 
Heh, I always get yelled at for alt-tabbing in real life: no really i was listening...
 
in dx9 it's up to the developer to handle it gracefully since you effectively lose your handle on the device when you do it and you need to reinitialize stuff.

this is automatic since dx10 and it shouldn't really be a problem on titles using that api.
 
Ever since I got an SSD I don't have problems with alt tabbing in most games.
 
More memory and faster hard drives will "fix" it for you.

It's just the way windows works. Games are resource intensive applicaitons. When you change to another app, windows has to dump portions of memory to disk and load stuff that it had already written to disk, which is why alt+tabbing makes your HD go crazy.
 
I wish that games wouldn't insist on dumping the game's data from the ram when I alt-tab. I have 6GB of RAM. Come to thing of it, I should probably disable my swap file since I have an SSD.
 
Term-X said:
I understand the problem exists but then there are also anomalies like Just Cause 2... sometimes I can alt-tab near instantly then other times it takes about 10-20 seconds to switch in or out.

I know a lot of people use Full Screen to counter-act the effects but that in itself has issues too (crosshair coming out of the screen and switching to another window).
Click to expand...

Never had issues with Alt-tabbing in and out of JC2 (though I have a problem with it crashing about every other time when I close it).OTOH I know of a lot of older games (e.g. the older NFS series) that would outright crash or black screen if you switched between or among other tasks.

Maybe OP needs to run these games in windowed mode instead. I guess that would make it easier to alt-tab in and out of a game.
 
hi ppl im new here, but all i can say is that i had XFX 9800GTX+ black edition card and alt tabing was so fast in any game, but i purchased a asus GTX 470 SLI and first thing i see it's the alt tabing was damn slow when i turn back in any of games. i tried with single GTX 470 and it's stil slow. i swaped back 9800 GTX+ an it was fast again.... so in my case it's the card !!!

sry on bad english :))
 
Eagle156 said:
It is 2011 and alt tab support is still nearly non existent in games. It takes forever to alt tab back into the game, if it doesn't crash that is, and when you finally get in all the textures are messed up. Why isn't alt tab support more common?
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It depends entirely on the engine.

Cryengine 2 is bloody fast. Source is bloody horrible.

Given the plateuing of game requirements, we have enough tech to forget about alt-tab and run games in fullscreen windowed mode now.
 
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