Windows 7 Basic = Ugly

Originally posted in another thread.


Windows 7 Aero theme clocks my GPU up and down like crazy. Looks like the teeth of a saw in the GPU-Z monitoring window. And, because of that, it can heat up to 60C just by browsing or switching windows. Unacceptable.

I checked out the Windows 7 Basic theme, and while it doesn't give me crazy clockings, it's utterly hideous, especially that blue-gray color. Is there a way to fix it? I'd like a black, but nothing will change the active windows or taskbar.

 

Try leaving Aero on, but disabling the transparency.
This way, you get the benefits of Aero, and you can change the colour of the frames, but your GPU should run cooler, due to the lack of rendering the transparency.

 

Not the actual solution it is in fact due to the lousy drivers 187.xx onwards.
Solution is uninstall the drivers run ccleaner to remove registry traces and install driver 186.91 or 186.81.

 

Probably wont help Shadows.. Its because powermizer doesnt ignore dwm.exe and dwm.exe will be there even when transparency is off. Happens here too, its so annoying. If you use Basic or Classic it uses the CPU instead of GPU to render the windows, therefore it will be much cooler..

If i were you i would maybe try and get:
http://k-johnson.deviantart.com/art/Clearscreen-Sharp-for-Windows7-141360821

Which has a nice basic theme.

Powermizer is 'broken' with almost all drivers at me, basically.

 

Nope I only experience the problem with Nvidia driver 187.XX above, 186 driver version doesn't have the issue. VGA Card is able to revert to default clock during idle.

 

Its no problem fixing powermizer but if i move a window around the clock goes skyhigh ; )

 

same thing happens here
fortunately my card isn't as powerful so my temps only fluctuate between 49C-54C

 

Same here, but sadly thats exactly the temp where my pc likes to start the fans a bit more and its annoying that it goes up and down

 

Try the Nvidia 195 series (beta) drivers.

 

I tried these and got a BSOD. Changed back to 186.61 and no problems at all.

 

Get a picture of Alizee on the desktop. That should fix your problems.

 

186.81 and 186.82 gave me troubles. Forgot to mention what drivers I was using.

 

I think you have a driver conflict... If all drivers gives you issues or BSOD... it's clear a driver problem or corrupted registry.

 

no its just powermizer lol.. its all nvidia fault

 

60C is not a bad idling temp for a notebook GPU. My vaio FZ with 8400M GT idles at 58-67C.

 

I'm used to it idling in the mid-40 neighborhood--at least in this 65F-70F weather--so I'm annoyed when it keeps clocking up and down like that. Like Reb said, powermizer is epik phailing me.

In any case, a quick deviantart search came up with a good basic black skin. Pretty--beauty in th eyes of the beholder, etcetera, etcetera--and powermizer isn't going out of whack. Happy so far.

If anyone wants to recommend something ele, I'd be glad to look at it. I tend to gravitate towards dark themes.

 

I tried running basic for a day, and well it just made my cpu work more which almost caused the same amount of noise, lol..

 

Yea.. and I lose battery life on my side. CPU's are not designed to draw.