AERO and lowend Video Cards

[Snuffy]

Tuning Windows Aero performance on low-end video cards

If you are running Windows Vista on a computer that is Windows Vista Capable, but find that the performance of Windows Aero is sluggish there are a few things which you can do to increase performance without having to use the Windows Vista Basic theme.

Change advanced performance options

Click on Start, and then click on Computer.
In the Computer window, click on "System properties".
In the task pane (on the left hand side), click on "Advanced system settings", and if prompted by User Account Control for consent, click on "Continue".
Under "Performance" click on the "Settings..." button.
Uncheck the following items:
Animated windows when minimizing and maximizing
Enable transparent glass (optional, performance change will depend on the level of graphics card you have)
Fade or slide menus into view
Fade or slide ToolTips into view
Fade out menu items after clicking
Show shadows under menus
Slide open combo boxes
Slide taskbar buttons
Click on the OK button to apply the new settings and dismiss the Performance Options dialog.
You should notice a gain in performance in terms of user interface responsiveness, although you will not see many of the cool transition effects.

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[felix8406]

That is an excellent tip. I wanted to point out that the key phrase pointed out by Snuffy is "Windows Vista Capable". I have received a few emails from users who want to use the Aero interface in a PC that doesn't meet the requirements...that, as far as I know, is not possible, unless the PC can be upgraded.

[Znod]

You are correct, IMO about not being able to turn it on at this point. I have been keeping my eyes open and have seen nothing that is suppose to worth on the newer betas/RTM's/Real Deals.

[felix8406]

There's always the possibility that something will come up to make it work, when there's a will, there's a way. I'm not a computer engineer, but I sometimes wonder is placing those type of requirements in an OS is necessary. Other than for economics reason or if the system is obsolete, I don't find those requirements valid. If you have a graphic card with 256MB of DDR Memory, installed in your system and at least 256MB of RAM, that should be enough random access memory to run just about anything, including Aero.

[Sneaky]

Aero is nicer if you have a card that actually supports it. The major feature of the Aero Glass theme is that its designed to offload the graphics to the GPU on the vid card thus relieving the burden on the computers CPU and. This lets the CPU use its time and resources for other things like it should do instead of being bogged down with doing graphics. Enabling Aero Glass on cards that don't support it kills this feature of Aero Glass. Even if you can enable it on a card that doesn't support it and it seems to work that doesn't necessarly mean that its working properly. I find Aero Glass much faster then the classic desktop or another theme.