Windows 7: Slow and Jerky Graphics

I just posted a similar thread under Windows Media Center concerning the playback of recorded TV video. I triple boot Windows XP Pro 32 bit, Vista Home Premium 64 bit and now Windows 7 RC1 (build 7100). I have experimented with different graphics cards and different drivers. In Windows XP my playback is without fault. In Vista & Win 7 it jerks.
I also noticed today that an executable slide show had the same symptoms. Then I went to a folder with just pictures in it and tried to view them using the default Windows 7 picture viewer, and it was *way* slow loading each picture, showing the "loading" icon on each picture before it finally came up. I then booted back into XP and brought up the same folder in Windows Picture & Fax viewer. In XP you can thumb from one picture to the next almost immediately. These are 1.5 to 2 Mb files direct off my digital camera. Vista and Windows 7 display the same sluggishness. My Vista install was originally 32 bit. It was slow too.
Does anyone have any suggestions?

OK. I just downloaded the latest 64 bit NVidia drivers for Windows 7 and installed them. That *seems* to have taken care of the photo viewer problem. However, video playback is still jerky. No change noticed there at all. So far I've tried Media Player Classic, Windows Media Player, and GOM. They all act identical.

You might want to try getting a slightly more grunty Graphics card....256 meg is hardly cutting edge now. What is your WEI score on the Graphics???

It's 5.3. Interestingly enough, I tried a Geforce 8400 GT in it earlier today, and the index dropped to 3.5! I guess being a higher model number (the other one is a 7600) doesn't make any difference.

Hi there, mewnlite.

You're probably misunderstanding the way the NV series work (I'm guessing - if not, just ignore my message).

In terms of performance, it's the second number of the serie of the graphics card that matters (e.g.: a GeForce 9200 has not a even close performance to the GeForce 8800).

Hope that clarifies.

In your case, I recommend GF 9600.
ATI provides great hardwares also.

Even the 8400 is rather below par these days. Id imagine the 880s are fairly reasonable now.

But this will help you decide what sort of card you want:

<8800 are low end cards
8800 (of which there are a number of variations) are mid range
>8800 are high end

Bare in mind though the 8000 series is 3 series behind the current one which is the 200.

How about this PNY GeForce 9800 GT EE Video Card - 512MB GDDR3, PCI Express 2.0, (2) Dual Link DVI, HDTV, VGA Support at Tiger Direct? ($109)
PNY GeForce 9800 GT EE Video Card - 512MB GDDR3, PCI Express 2.0, (2) Dual Link DVI, HDTV, VGA Support VCG98GTEE5XEB at TigerDirect.com

There are many of the Nvidia 200 series for really cheap now.

PS.

Here is a quick run down i just saw for best performance per dollar.

$500 - Nvidia GeForce GTX 295
$250 - Nvidia GeForce GTX 275
$150 - ATI Radeon 4870


If you want to try and get the same performance you do on your XP machine, you can try disabling some of the visual effects and see if that helps. Try it in classic mode and test, see if that works. A lot has changed since XP, so you will see a different in video performance.

Honestly, I think that if you're not pretending to test the latest games or something that really uses heavy rendering solutions at all with a graphics device from nVidia GTX series, that'd be a waste of money.