huge heat difference between fullscreen and windowed mode games

hi all;

i tested it with two games and the results are really strange between fullscreen and windowed.

when i play sacred 2 and mass effect on fullscreen i have stutter and my gpu heat goes to 85-95 c in both games. when i play in 1900x1200 windowed mode my gpu heat is only 65-70 c.. is anybody know why is there a 20 c difference between fullscreen and windowed mode ?

thank you.

 

Because your gpu does not get stressed while trying to render it to full screen.

 

but i am playing 1900x1200 full screen and also playing 1900x1200 windowed mode. the rendering area is the same.. am i missing something ? i am just changing from fullscreen and there is no change at anything at all.

 

I wonder if your 3DMark06 score will change in "windowed mode"?
Just out of curiosity.

 

i have 15 fps drops in windowed mode. fullscreen 62 fps windowed 45-52 fps in mass effect.. no big deal. it is not under 30 fps ...

 

I rarely play, but when I do, I always play windowed. Impossible for me to leave the multi-tasking aside. If I wanted to just play games, I would get a PS3

I haven't noticed a huge performance difference actually. Perhaps I should do more in-depth testing. Interesting thing you point out.




On a side note:

Being under 30 is not enough to make it fluid. I know that you are thinking about the eye only needing 30fps to make something look fluid. But there are tons of things to consider.

How many frames can humans see

That article above explains a lot. Summary: depending on what we need to see, we could have 10fps to 500fps... I know weird.

 

People get the 30 fps standard because Television is 30 fps. The fact is the eye can notice the different between 50 and 60 fps. It takes training but it is capable.

 

Where does one train for such a skill?

Do you have the game res the same as ur native?

I used to run games in nothing but window mode. Like the other guy said for multi tasking. But then there are the times when you just want to game and dont want the stupid window bar, that you can sort of hide, in the way.

 

You know that only 1 video card is used in window mode, right?
So, your video card was the bottleneck and your cpu is not doing as much as in crossfire mode.

Did I solve your mystery?

 

i think you are wrong. before mass efect my gpu heats are 55c in vista.. in game both of them are 63c, thats mean both of them is working.. screen shot attached.

 

The reason your temps are cooler in Window mode is that the GPU is not rendering as many frames per second as it is in Full Screen mode. In Full Screen mode, the message loop does not respond to every Windows message as it would necessarily do in windowed mode-therefore more time is spent rendering frames without interruption.

As far as frame rates, 30fps is high enough to eliminate flicker because of the persistence of the eye. However, the advantage of higher frame rates, particularly in gaming is the reduction of blurring in fast moving scenes where there is a lot of action. Be aware, however, that most notebook screens don't display frame rates higher than 60fps even though the graphics card is rendering frames faster than that.

 

thank you.