Aero = better framerates. Who knew?

Awhile back I was having framerate issues on my vista pc. Tried everything and nothing worked. I shut off Aero when I was setting up the machine thinking that, since aero is a resource hog, it would slow my framerates. In fact it was just the opposite, turning Aero back on increased my framerate by 40 fps. Just wanted to share that little counter-intuitive tidbit in case anybody else was thinking like I was.

Interesting....I suppose I could see why - but it all boils down to the drivers. I assume you are using nVidia cards?

I find this very bizarre because my experiences have shown the exact opposite. When I turned of Aero, my FPS went up about 20 (though I generally run in windowed mode for the main client then just hit the max button in the top right because I like to see my start menu). I'd love to get the same results as you though, Aero makes my desktop look so much better! Got any additional information to add? I can toss my specs into the mix if necessary if we want to try to narrow down what's making the difference.