Slow graphic performance (screensaver)

Hi,

I recently got a Sony SZ6 with vista and I am experiencing some slow performance during my screensaver animations. In particular, the bubbles screensaver is particuarly slow and the speed of the bubbles changes depending on how much resource is needed. Now, I have 2Gb of RAM and I've noticed this behaviour both with the Intel 965 chip (x3100) and the Nvidia8400GS graphics card (although it is slightly faster with the nvidia card but there is more speed fluctuations as well).

I've updated both drivers to the latest release as well, and have also done a clean install of the OS. I just don't see what could be causing slow animations during my screensaver, and this happens regardless of the current power plan I am using (i.e. it happens when settings are on high performance). From the task manager, I am sing 3% CPU and 836MB of my 2037, and have 66 processes running. Anyone know why this is happening? Makes my new laptop look kind of poor when the screensaver comes on (especially since my previous LG 1GB ram and lower specs had no issues with screensavers)

 

have you tried windows update?

 

I have experience this issue before. Try the Windows Energy screensaver, that is the most demanding.

On my old Sager (specs in sig) with its X700 256MB, I had no problem running it smoothly. However when I was using a laptop with an Intel X3100, the screensaver barely ran; it was like a slideshow. When I installed the beta X3100 drivers that enabled hardware shading it worked better but still not close to the X700's level of performance. From what I can tell this is a video card issue. I would not worry about it that much because after all, it's only a screensaver.

 

Thanks for the replies. I have updated windows with all available updates. After reading Chaz's reply, I got the idea of checking to see if changing the resolution would affect this. My default resolution (native) is 1280x800 on the Nvidia 8400GS. With this resolution, the screensaver (bubbles or enery) is very choppy (looks like a poor fps). I changed the resolution to 1024x768, and they both ran perfect.

So am I to understand that my graphic card simply isn't good enough to run these screensavers at native resolution? This seems odd to me, I thought the X3100 and the 8400GS were decent cards.

 

Does anyone with either the X3100 or the 8400GS experience anything of the sort? I have come to notice that even the window maximization and minimization is sometimes choppy. Also, when viewing a slide show of pictures, the transition between pictures (fade in and fade out) is also choppy.

 

@Duchesne

Hello, i have an Asus C90 with an 8600M GT with 512MB VRAM , and i have this screensaver called "koi fish 3d screensaver" from 3planesoft.. very realistic by the way.. I have yeat to discover why, when i max all settings, anti-aliassing, everything to the max, and push "preview" button it runs smoothly at 30-35 frames per second....

But if i configure the screensaver to start automatically after x minutes i only get 6.7 frames per second

edit:

after thinking for a while, i was almost certain that this was some kind of Power Plan energy saving....and later on i discovered that it was a PowerMizer issue...went to NVidia Control Panel to turn it off....i now have 45 frames per second

Maybe this helps