Is a 2880x1800 Resolution Worth Getting Excited Over?

[OriginalJoeCool]

Scratch that. I only have 1GB of video RAM.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by madmat

Nope.

I don't have a single icon on my desktop purely to save the video memory. I didn't know that the memory used by your desktop remains in use during gaming when I first started with PC's.

Are you sure this is still the case? I know it used to be back in the day of 98 and possibly XP, but I thought this was an issue that disappeared with Vista and beyond. If it does remain the case, then Aero would also remain in memory, and that'd likely use much more space than a desktop full of icons.

[madmat]

Originally Posted by Rob Williams

Are you sure this is still the case? I know it used to be back in the day of 98 and possibly XP, but I thought this was an issue that disappeared with Vista and beyond. If it does remain the case, then Aero would also remain in memory, and that'd likely use much more space than a desktop full of icons.

I've never read anything to the contrary. I have heard of gamers that won't run Aero because it eats Vram. They run the basic UI in windows classic mode so it looks like 9X.

[Kayden]

In a word, no. That res is just too high for a such a small display.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by madmat

I've never read anything to the contrary. I have heard of gamers that won't run Aero because it eats Vram. They run the basic UI in windows classic mode so it looks like 9X.

I think those gamers are making a mountain out of a molehill. GPUs are more efficient than ever, so it's not as though running Aero is going to affect your game's framerate in a noticeable way - especially if you are running the game full-screen. In windowed mode, it'd be understandable that Aero would use a bit more VRAM, but I still don't see it affecting performance noticeably.

Of course, if you're running the lowest-end of the low and with less than 1GB of VRAM, then maybe I can begin to understand it a little bit (but then, the resolution would also matter).

[madmat]

When you run all the eye candy turned up to 11 and the highest resolution you can manage and still want 100+FPS I can see their point.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by madmat

When you run all the eye candy turned up to 11 and the highest resolution you can manage and still want 100+FPS I can see their point.

I can't. A second or third GPU will help that situation a lot more than disabling something as minor as Aero. If they're THAT fussy about turning things up to 11, they need to haul out their wallet, not just tweak their system in the most minor ways possible.

[madmat]

Next time you play Max Payne 3 go into the settings and start monkeying around with resolution and IQ settings. They give you a metric of the amount of Vram needed for the game to run at your selection.

It's alarming how much memory you really need to keep from dipping into much slower system ram.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by madmat

Next time you play Max Payne 3 go into the settings and start monkeying around with resolution and IQ settings. They give you a metric of the amount of Vram needed for the game to run at your selection.

It's alarming how much memory you really need to keep from dipping into much slower system ram.

First and foremost, I don't believe that in-game VRAM meter to be accurate at all. At best, it's a guesstimation, just like how a power supply calculator is (as in, where you put in all of your parts and it tells you what PSU you need). It's just unfortunate that Rockstar takes it upon itself to refuse you certain settings (GTA IV was the same way).

The fact is, and yes, I'm going out on a limb and calling this fact, if you need to turn of Aero in order to im prove gaming performance, you seriously need to upgrade your PC. And - if a game performs crappy because you're running it in windowed mode where Aero remains visible, that sounds like a problem with the game, not Aero. I've played many games in windowed mode and have never found that the performance was degraded as a result (if the performance is ever degraded for me it's because I am running a bunch of stuff in the background). GPUs are now very efficient with memory, and are going to prioritize what it has for your gaming. It's almost as though I need to do tests with this, but with Aero disappearing in Windows 8, it seems pointless.

Anyway, to each their own. There's nothing wrong with turning off Aero if that's what you want to do.

[madmat]

I don't. I just don't keep icons on my desktop. Besides, a clean desktop looks far better IMO.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by madmat

I don't. I just don't keep icons on my desktop. Besides, a clean desktop looks far better IMO.

I agree. I keep Computer and Recycle Bin on the desktop and that's it. It does get a bit cluttered when I'm working on content, though ;-)

[Tharic-Nar]

I have played a number of games that break Aero, either refuse to load in window mode with Aero, or when you tab out, you see the classic interface (Dungeon Siege III is the latest example). Running a game in window mode though does kill performance, but as a result of Aero? I doubt it.

[madmat]

Aero is a hardware accelerated so it's possible that it steals cycles away from the GPU in windowed mode. I guess a proper test of that being the case would be to run in windowed mode with and without Aero enabled and see if there's any difference.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by Tharic-Nar

I have played a number of games that break Aero

More often than not, that's done on purpose, and other times, it's because of compatibility issues.

Originally Posted by madmat

Aero is a hardware accelerated so it's possible that it steals cycles away from the GPU in windowed mode. I guess a proper test of that being the case would be to run in windowed mode with and without Aero enabled and see if there's any difference.

Yup, and if Windows 8 wasn't doing away with Aero, I'd be up for testing that out ;-)

A proper test would be doing it with lower-end GPUs, and at the moment I am rather swamped and can't undertake a project like this.

[Tharic-Nar]

I'll try it out later with Skyrim and a few others if I can. Though I'll run into multi-GPU issues (for some reason, the second GPU is disabled when a game is in Windowed mode).