How Enabling Aero fixed my fps issues.

[Thulos]

First off, system specs: Q6600 @ 3.2ghz, 8gb of OCZ ddr2 @800mhz memory, Nvidia GTX 260.

For the past 3 months i've been having a wierd FPS issue running 1680x1050 windowed mode on a monitor running at 1680x1050. Running 1 client at this resolution would cause me to get about 10-15 fps anywhere in wow. If I ran the game at any lower resolution the game would run just fine and get very high fps. Also if I switched to full screen and ran the game at 1680x1050 the game would run perfectly fine. After being frustrated for far too long I set my maximzer settings to simply run my main client @ 1440x900 and just have areas of my desktop visible.

About two weeks ago I noticed that whenever i would get an IM via digsby my fps would drop down to the dreaded 10-15 fps. Normally I would just expect this to be caused by wow losing focus but at this time my main client had its backround fps set to a high number. I then started to think something else was going on and I could be on to something. I relogged my wow client and enabled the windows border so I could drag my wow window around. I dragged my 1440x900 wow client to the bottom of the screen and as soon as any of the rendering surface crossed part of the task bar my fps dropped to 10-15 again. This even happened if part of the wow window touched the big vista start button which goes higher than the bar. Happy with my discover I set my maximizer setting to fill the screen except for a small sliver at the button to prevent the wow window crossing the Windows Vista Start menu button.

I was happy at first because I could now play wow the way I wanted to be playing with it. But after a while my bliss faded away because anytime I got an IM in the middle of a key fight my fps would plummet and sometimes would cause me to die. At this time I was using the Windows Vista Basic profile for my desktop appearance. I figured this was forcing some sort of wierd sofware rendering bug to happen and decided to try switching to Windows Classic or Windows Standard and maybe this would fix the issue. Neither of these options resolved the issue.

At this point I started thinking about a rendering issue I was having on my software project (I'm a C# developer working with Windows Presentation Foundation or WPF). Our software uses WPF which also uses some of the Aero features to render certain video effects in our application. Because of this I also knew that Aero actually takes advantage of DirectX rendering and can be hardware accelerated. I was confident that the issue I was having was caused by windows forcing software rendering to happen over hardware accelerated rendering. I then correctly surmised if this was the case and I turned Aero back on that the issue would go away. After turning Aero back on and doing a little Jig this particular fps issue is now gone for good. Of course this doesn't help me in dalaran or Wintersgrasp but you have to start somewhere.

This is the thread where I initially talked about my fps issue over 3 months ago:
Weird FPS issue in windows mode.

Go figure, Aero saves the day! :thumbup:

[Maxion]

So then the question is:

What is Aero?

[Thulos]

Quoting this from wikipedia.

"Windows Aero is the graphical user interface and the default theme in most editions of Windows Vista, an operating system released by Microsoft on 31 January 2007. It is also available in Windows Server 2008, which was released on February 27, 2008 and is part of Windows 7. Its name is a ackronym for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective and Open.[1] Intended to be a cleaner, more powerful, more efficient and more aesthetically pleasing user interface than the previously used theme (Luna), it includes new translucency, live thumbnails, live icons, animations and eye candy. Aero also encompasses a set of user interface design guidelines for Microsoft Windows."

A lot of people turn it off because it generally decreases performance in Vista. For me it's the lesser of two evils.

[elsegundo]

thank god this wasnt an essay.


lol. thanks for the heads up.

[Thulos]

thank god this wasnt an essay.


lol. thanks for the heads up.

ROFL, I guess I did get a bit verbose there. Sorry for that. I should do a TLDR summary at the bottom.

[wowphreak]

Aero is the thing that makes windows purty :P

[Sajuuk]

I was getting a choppy-ish 30ish FPS on my shaman in Northrend.

On a whim I re-enabled Aero, and bam 60fps.


Thanks!

[Khatovar]

I never noticed a decrease in performance when using Aero. Rather the opposite in fact. When I disabled Aero after getting Vista, it always felt like my games were stuttering and nothing I did would improve it. No problems in full-screen mode, but comparing one full screen WoW to 4 windowed WoWs was never exactly apples and apples. Turned Aero back on, ran just like I expected it to. So I've just been ignoring all the "Disable Aero" advice out there, since having it on is obviously working better for me.

[moosejaw]

I turned off Aero first thing because pretty looking stuff=confusing for me. I prefered the the standard look because it was familiar to me. Now I will have to enable Aero and see if it makes a difference.

[Thulos]

I'm glad this has helped other people but to be honest I expected maybe one other person to have had this issue. I really think this is an isolated issue and a very specialized fix. I would like to hear feedback from more people on this. I expect more performance decreases than fixes but it doesn't hurt to get as much data as we can. After working with this for a while I believe it is related to GTX 2xx series cards under Windows Vista. :thumbsup: