Vista Aero - Is this the cause for the slowdown?

Hi guys,

I have a T61 with an nvs140m 128mb.... everytime i go into flip3d, there is a small pause before it brings all the windwos up fully, it looks like lag, but once its up i can spin through very fast.... if i pull them up again its still very fast.... however, if i leave it 30second or so its laggy again...... ive updated BIOS, drivers, windows, everything!

Because im running my res at 1680x1050, wouldnt that occupy more than 128mb on flip3d? so would the 3d card try and use some of computers main memory? i have 3gig so that shouldnt be a problem.... hooooowever, in task manager, it says vista is using 1.2gig, accept i only have a few meg free? How am i running out of memory? i have 3gig and vista only using 1.2gig...

Would this be the cause for the random slow downs? it seems to effect it more if i have this IE window open full screen.....

Cheers guys
Will

 

You can turn off aero to test it very easy in your display options but I doubt its the cause, aero does not require much computer power at all.

 

oh - damn, lol

its really really annoying.... i quiet like using flip3d and i find it rather handy - but why is the damn thing so laggy on a pretty decent spec laptop! grrrr

 

check ur background processes/services? virus scanner? optimizing ur vista environment yet?

cheers ...

 

havent really optimised yet - no virus scanners at all - id have thought it wud have been able to cope :S

 

You should check your antivirus software and your processes running in the background. Tweak some settings and start-up programs with msconfig and services.msc

I have 2GB RAM and a non-dedicated graphics card on my laptop and Vista Aero always runs smooth with no lag at all.

You should not be concerned if it shows that you have only a few MB free memory. Vista caches most of your computer's memory for faster access. With 3GB RAM Vista should be flying near warp speed.

 

ye, i foolishly installed Ultimate over the preinstalled Business.... so i cant recover my partition and see how it was out the box :-(

i've run IBM and they are apparently sending me a recovery DVD.... so well see how that turns out!

 

I don't think it's any lack of resources causing that bit of lag. It's most likely the GPU throttling up based on the demand that Flip 3D creates by making a rendering request. That would explain why it's completely smooth once it's up (the GPU is in full 3D mode then) and why after a short period of just sitting there it gets a little bit slower the next time you invoke Flip 3D (as it has gone back to 2D clocks at idle and has to throttle up again).

The whole GPU throttling thing in laptops is done to save on power and produce less heat, but it's not always completely transparent to the user.

 

i think aero is the process dwm.exe? well it took 80mb of my ram so it'll free alot of memory if that is the cause.

 

DWM.exe is the Desktop Window Manager service. It pretty much just does window compositing and manages pretty much all the GUI effects in Vista. I'm pretty sure you can't disable it without making some weird things happen as it is a system process.

Currently, DWM is taking 28MB's on my system with a fair number of windows open, so usage may increase with the number of windows being used.

 

Vista will cache the extra ram you are not using at the moment. It doesn't mean you are running out of memory. Vista has made it handy to use when needed. Vista does a very good job of memory management. Besides, if memory is not being used it's just wasted.

Jim

 

DWM can be closed. You need to change the theme to Windows Classic interface. It also puts those pictures in the taskbar when you scroll over the programs. Open a bunch of Notepads and watch DWM eat away at your ram. Each window eats up ram for that little picture thing in the taskbar.