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Windows 7 and GDI hardware acceleration


Guest mach_k

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Guest mach_k

I've found a couple of videos showing some problems with Windows 7 RTM GDI hardware acceleration (there is almost no acceleration at all).

I made the same tests the video shows and got the same results. What do you people think about? I really think Microsoft made a huge mistake by removing GDI acceleration, I'm used to work very fast in Windows XP and Windows 7 feels clearly slower to me.

It seems Microsoft started this with Vista. Now with Windows 7 they have brought back some minor gdi acceleration. Do you think we will eventually see again full GDI hardware acceleration in a future W7 SP1 or so?

Thanks.

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Well, for what it's worth I repro'd those steps on my own box with an ATI Radeon 3650, and I didn't see either of those problems. I'm pretty sure those problems are the nvidia driver set+hardware, not Windows. Again, I cannot repro either the slow redraw or the high CPU, and I'm not using an nVidia chip, fwiw.

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It's also much older hardware - only the 2xxx, 3xxx, and 4xxx cards get WDDM 1.1 drivers from ATI, so it's not a good test. You're using the old WDDM 1.0 drivers, so you're going to repro the same bugs as in Vista.

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Guest mach_k

And what about nvidia? I'm willing to buy a cheap nvidia if they don't have those issues. The video shows a 8600GT. Are those also not having WDDM 1.1?

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No, they have WDDM 1.1 drivers, but nvidia's drivers have historically been not so good. I'm using again a 3650, but a 3850 or a 4850 (or 4870 or 4890) Radeon are probably all fine with this. I'm going to build Win7 on my 9800GT box to see if it has an issue or not.

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nVidia GTX285 here, I can see the symptoms of the first video but no matter what I try I can't get above a spike of 50% of one core utilization with the Explorer/thumbnail issue.

To be honest I had not even noticed those symptoms, probably because the repro steps are kind of obtuse - I have seen artifcating of window contents or the wallpaper when switching between a fullscreen app and the desktop, this was 100% down to the Forceware drivers (reverting the "upgrade" from nVidia removed the symptom).

I'd say that most likely has to be poor or non-existent 2D acceleration on nVidia's part.

Given the frequent releases of the driver package to address individual game issues, it's not unfeasible to believe it.

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Note I can reproduce the services.msc repro on my 9800GT with the latest drivers from nVidia, but I cannot reproduce the CPU issue (nor does the issue reproduce in any other window - it appears limited to services.msc, as I cannot repro it in firefox, IE, windows explorer, the control panel, device manager, perfmon or resmon, etc). So it does partially repro on my 9800GT, but again, I'm not seeing it on my 3650. This would make me believe it is indeed a driver issue, as Direct2D is included in Windows 7. Also, seeing as it seems perhaps limited to services.msc, perhaps there's something about that mmc that's triggering it specifically.

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What do you people think about?

That this guy is making a lot of big accusations, based on very little evidence, and draws bad conclusions. Right off the bat, I can't reproduce his MMC issues. Sounds like he just discovered how bad nvidia drivers really are...

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ok first off the "music" in the first clip sucks - i muted the audio on the second one because i couldnt take another s***ty techno track (or whatever that s*** was).

but is this really that big of an issue? Even if this is a MS issue and not a Driver issue, Personally i rather see MS focus on real world issues like better multiple monitor support fixing the abundance of mapped network drives issues ive had than fixing some minor graphical glitch thats only a minor nuisance (and Maybe a slight performance hit) yes i saw the taskmgr graphs but people said the same crap about Vista "OMG look at how much memory it uses" this "problem" looks like one of those that will just fade away as vid drivers get updated.

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Guest mach_k

Yep that's is true. But at the same time it seems you would lose the few real hardware accelerated gdi functions reintroduced by microsoft in the new wddm 1.1 drivers.

I think they might be unrelated issues.

Edited by mach_k
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I don't know if it is the same kind of issue, but for me and my dual monitors setup, Aero is choppy with ALL WDDM 1.1 driver.

My only solution is to install the last "WDDM 1.0 only" driver i know (182.50) for my 8800 GTS.

I really hope it's a driver issue, because if it's not, well, i'll go back to Vista i guess...

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  • 4 months later...

guys I know its an old topic but I thought better to post here rather than new thread.

Here is my experience with the gui performance it is a strange one.

Few people will argue that certian desktop things are faster, such as moving windows around the screen when using aero the performance blows XP out of the water.

However some legacy apps perform horrific in windows 7, something was evidently wrong when I noticed this.

I discovered passmark (an excellent app by the way) seems one of few benchmark apps that takes 2D seriously.

I discovered the following on 2d benchmarks when comparing to people with same gpu and cpu as me.

XP approximately 250% faster on 2D (not as extreme as that youtube video says).

Vista approximately 30% faster than Windows 7 on 2D.

My lower spec machine with a 7600GT and weaker cpu was getting a higher score than this machine with a 8800GT.

The latter was to me at the time a surprise to me as I assumed at the time aero is aero and why would vista outperform windows 7. After some research I read about wddm 1.1 some new feature in windows 7.

I then installed driver version 182.50 (wddm 1.0 driver) on this machine and now I am about 10% higher than the comparitive vista benchmarks and on par with my 7600GT.

I also found out the 7xxx cards dont utilise wddm 1.1 which explains why the 7600GT is faster with the new drivers.

A possible reason for the worse performance is one of what microsoft calls an improvement over wddm 1.0 wddm 1.0 leaked memory with multiple windows open so every new window that opened required more memory than its previous window. wddm 1.1 this problem is fixed but microsoft say it is done at the expense of 'some' cpu usage, 'some' wasn't defined to an amount.

Let me tell you that the impact on gdi performance vs XP was enough that I noticed it in my everyday apps, it is the only reason I discovered this thread and passmark.

However something else I will add since I am a fair person and I am not out to attack microsoft.

the wddm 1.0 drivers have noticeable screen update lag when switching a youtube video between full screen and normal, on the 1.1 drivers there was no lag whatsoever, XP had significant lag unless the taskbar was set to not always be on top, I cant do the same test in windows 7 as microsoft removed that option for the taskbar. However with 1.1 regardless of that there is no lag on youtube.

When I was using XP the services.msc window was just as lagged anyway, mine was never smooth like those video show on his XP machine, so I can only assume for whatever reason the specific 2d functions for services.msc were not accelerated on my machine or his is smooth because he has a Q6600 vs my E6420.

There is no doubt nvidia has some serious issues with windows 7 drivers at the moment, ironically I went to 182.50 to fix my nvidia scaling and I then at that point decided to do more tests.

My WIE score on these drivers however took a nosedivs it went from 6.9 to 6.0, but bear in mind the scores are manipulated, I expect microsoft probably cap aero scores when they 1.0.

Edited by Chrysalis
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