Does disabling Aero improve performance?

With anything like this although there may be a measurable difference when disabling the Aero interface it is the perception that actually matters.

As you have stated you did not see any difference so it is realy a moot point

If you are performing graphics intensive tasks which would require all of the graphics processor power to operate, then disabling aero may give you a perceptible improvement,

Whilst running non graphics intensive operations the graphics processor power used to provide aero is merely using an unused resource so can IMO be left running

McDougal said:

Hi all,

I have Win7 64-bit with Intel GMA 4500MHD integrated graphics and 2GB RAM. My system is running smoothly and quickly, but I was wondering if disabling aero would make my system run faster? I have tried it before and haven't noticed much of a difference, and a lot of other forums say that it doesn't increase performance, and some say it does increase performance. For my hardware, would it make sense to disable aero or not?

Hello !! Welcome to SF !!


It's not the Aero that causes the Performace it Transparency that affect the performace more. Also lot of unwanted visual effects like

• Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
• Animations in the taskbar and Start Menu
• Enable transparent glass
• Fade or slide menus into view
• Fade or slide ToolTips into view
• Fade out menu items after clicking
• Show shadows under windows
• Slide open combo boxes

For more info on imporving performance check our great Tutorial by Shawn

Optimize Windows 7

Hope this helps,
Captain

Krispy1 said:

yes is does increase performance. the gpu has less load.

In theory that is great and sound advice. but in the real world, what does this less load amount to?? I'm running on an e8400 CPU at work, with an evga 8600GT with 256MB of RAM and there is no difference whatsoever between running with aero enabled as it is my default and turning off transparencies and going into advanced system settings and setting the machine optimized for performance. With a stopwatch, nothing changes.

Krispy1 said:

theres a difference but it depends on what u are doing. if u are running bare minimum specs for aero there will be a difference but only in things that rely on the gpu. for regular tasks and browsing and documents there not much but if u were gaming or streaming hd there will be. the difference is not night and day but its there.

Sure, if you are just skimming by on the absolute minimums...this might make a difference. However, the vast majority of people in this forum are far and away above the minimum specs on their Windows 7 machines. Even the 8600GT that I have in my box, is only like a $39 video card.