Performance of an WPF application worse, when Aero is disabled?

Question

I am working on a WPF application. During tests I noticed, that the application runs way smoother, if I switch to a Windows Aero Theme instead of a Basic Theme.

Why does this happen - and how can I make sure that the applications always runs as smooth as it does when using a Windows Aero Theme?

Thank you for your answer!

Answer 1

The reason might be that Windows uses the graphics card to accelerate drawing processes in the Aero theme.

Therefore, if you deactivate the Aero theme, all the processing is done by the CPU (instead of the GPU), resulting in a degraded performance compared to the hardware-accelerated task (if done by the GPU). The non-Aero theme uses only the CPU for drawing processes!

The source for my claim can be found here