Can the X200M handle Aero Glass well?

Hi!

Has anybody managed to run Vista's Aero Glass on the integrated X200m with decent performance?

I've tried a few times, using different video drivers, but the performance is extremely bad. I can't have more than 1-2 windows open, before the OS goes from slow to really sluggish.

I'm just experimenting a little so it's no big deal if this is the performance to expect, but what keeps me wondering is that its Intel counterpart, the GMA950 is able to handle the interface pretty well.

//MrIbra

 

Which version of Vista are you trying to run?
Your memory amount might be the bottleneck.

 

The X200M can certainly handle Vista's Aero interface (it's called 'Aero' now, not 'Aero Glass.' That's the old term) as WackyT posted. Check your memory usage. Also watch your hard drive activity light and see how much it is on.

 

I'm not running Vista (Vista Business) at the moment, but here's some info that i recall:
Vista was using about 500-600MB RAM. The hard drive activity was quite normal.

The video card scores 2.0 in Vista btw.

//MrIbra

 

The CPU might be the bottleneck -- the Sempron line isn't very fast to begin with , and the 3300 is a couple of years old as is.

 

I have seen Vista run acceptably on a 1.8 Ghz Venice cored A64. Is your Sempron the 3300+ with 128k L2 cache and a 2Ghz clockspeed? If so I suppose it could be the lack of cache combined with SC memory which are giving you problems. Also from what I heave heard Vista tends to want 1.5GB or RAM or more for serious multitasking.

Do you get these issues when multitasking without Aero running?

You could try maybe Vliting yourself a stripped down version of Vista with less crap running in the background.
http://www.vlite.net/

 

It's the one with 128k L2 cache and 2GHz speed indeed.
If Aero is turned off, it does run better, but not by far.

//MrIbra

UPDATE:

It looks like the X200m is quite capable of runnnig Vista w. Aero enabled after all:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3499&review=Gateway+MT3705

The laptop in the review has faster CPU & RAM. I guess my laptop isn't fit enough then.

 

I'd suggest upgrading to 2GB of ram with Vista Home Premium/Business/Ultimate. I did not have any problem running Aero with that amount of memory on the X200M. It was actually rather fast.

 

I suggest using Vlite and trimming down a Vista install first to reduce the memory footprint. You don't want to go buying extra RAM if your CPU is the limiting factor.