does classic view actually make the laptop run faster?

I have heard that using classic view can make windows run a lot faster, it that true? I have a weak laptop running a big external monitor (u2711)

Classic view cuts down on the detailed themes and the fancy eye candy so it frees up some RAM. Wouldnt make too much difference on a well-equipped machine but I guess with limited memory, you might notice some difference. Its ugly though!

No Classic will not make the computer run faster. If your computer supports Aero then a good chunk of the UI is being handle on the GPU which is hardly ever used. If you switch to Classic (or Basic) then the UI is generated on the CPU only. This take CPU cycles away from your applications.

To recap, Aero runs on the GPU. Classic runs on the CPU.
Running Aero on a weak computer is the best thing to give it an extra life.
My little netbook* would be awful without Aero.

* Dell Inspiron Mini 10v (Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHz; 1GB; Windows 7 Professional)

Well I disagree with both of the previous posts. Not sure where Aero runs and really don't care. Classic theme IMHO will cut down on the overhead your system has to deal with. Cut down overhead and you get more bang for your bucks. Simple logic.
There is also a tutorial on this subject on this site.
What can really help is turning off all the special effects.

Here is the tutorial.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11728-optimize-windows-7-a.html

And what is the definition of "overhead"?

Shootist said:

Simple logic.

Click to expand...

Simple maybe, but not correct. Aero offloads the work of those "eye candy" features to the GPU, even a weak GPU. The classic theme, while giving you little eye candy, still uses the CPU. I'm not going to make the claim one is better than the other, but my point is, disabling Aero won't suddenly speed up a laptop or make it snappier.

This is just another example of where people expect the rules and tweaks of XP to still work now, and they don't.

If you set up your system for "Maximum performance", then all visual enhancements are disabled;



Enabling ANY enhancements slows performance.

The only exception to this is Aero, which offloads tasks to the graphic processor. This may make a difference on a weak machine, but on a high performance machine there is no noticeable difference.

Regards....Mike Connor

Doesn't matter where Aero "offloads" the work to...Aero is disabled in Classic View so it's irrelevant.

Have to agree with Mike's assessmant here...

patio said:

Doesn't matter where Aero "offloads" the work to...Aero is disabled in Classic View so it's irrelevant.

Have to agree with Mike's assessmant here...

Click to expand...

Well, that's really the point. It's not irrelevant. If you have a weak machine, and you enable Aero, it may be quite a bit faster than not using Aero, because Aero offloads tasks to the graphics processor, and using "Classic" doesn't.

Regards....Mike Connor

patio said:

Doesn't matter where Aero "offloads" the work to...Aero is disabled in Classic View so it's irrelevant.

Click to expand...

You're actually proving the counterargument, to be honest. It is a big deal where the offload is done. The point behind Aero is to allow weaker machines to run just as well with normal graphics, rendering the old "switch to classic" tweak irrelevant.

Once again, Windows 7 is not XP and shouldn't be treated as such. Can't stress that enough.

Proof of the pudding is in the eating. OP, why dont you just switch to classic view and find out? Maybe do some benchmarking.

Also when in Classic mode you can turn off and disable the Theme service which stops one more service from loading at startup.
Not sure how that will affect the overall system performance.

I think there are 2 aspects here- since aero uses the gpu, it actually frees up cpu cycles in contrast to classic view. At the same time since dwm.exe consumes memory, switching to classic releases a certain amount of RAM. Any performance gains you see will be the net of these 2 opposing effects but in any case they are unlikely to be phenomenal.

I had an old Dell Dimension 8100 (I believe), has a Pentium 4 1.5 GHz, 512 MB of RAM, and an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. This thing barely ran Windows XP. Just because I felt like it I threw Windows Vista on this machine couple months after it was released. Now it ran as well as Windows XP, slow but bearable. However, anything having to do with the UI was responsive and fast, if I turned Aero off on this machine it was horrible. Even with classic.

Using Aero is not going to bring around any more overhead then any other. The GPU can better handle the workload of Aero with ease, compared to processing games Aero is a walk in the park for any DirectX 9 graphics card. The Radeon 9700 came out in around 2002 and it is more then capable of running Aero. What you have to watch for is embed craphics.

Also as for memory, Aero lives on VRAM not System RAM if you have WDDM 1.1 drivers, otherwise only a portion of Aero resides on System RAM. However, the amount used is so insignificant. Freeing up CPU cycles versus freeing up RAM will net much better results for performance.

May also be of interest;

What is the Aero desktop experience?

Regards....Mike Connor