Windowblinds 10 slows down desktop rendering

from Stardock Forums

One thing I immediately noticed upon enabling Windowblinds 10: it drastically reduces the smoothness of the desktop rendering.

I have a 144Hz LCD (kept at 120Hz most of the time), and moving windows around is super smooth.  If I enable Windowblinds 10, the movement of windows becomes quite rough, as if the framerate is low and perhaps actually uneven.  At best, it feels only as smooth as the default theme at 60Hz.

I value the smoothness much more than I value the customization, so for the moment, I've switched back to the Windows default theme.

This shouldn't be a matter of insufficient horsepower -- I have a Radeon R9 290 and a Xeon E3-1245 v3 (3.4GHz).

windowblinds
5,899 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top

At least you aren't running OSX, iOS or Android. They are stuck at lousy 60 Hz. WindowBlinds shouldn't affect refresh rate. My displays are running at 75 Hz and I don't notice a difference with or without WindowBlinds.

I am on Win 7 so it could be Win 10 :-" I have seen posts from people with custom refresh rates that stopped working in Win 10. But that's not your problem since you get 120 Hz without WB. I can't help you but maybe support can.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Is the slowness only noticeable when moving windows?

It may be we have some code in there assuming 60hz and I will check that.

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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

I'd say it's probably just the window movement, yes.  Interestingly, moving an Explorer window shows the lack of smoothness, but a Chrome window seems unaffected (probably due to not being skinned very much).  I can even move the Chrome window with the testufo.com test running, and the test stays smooth.

 

EDIT: Another observation, while testing the movement, I discovered that Windowblinds doesn't respect the disabling of Aero Shake via the registry setting "NoWindowMinimizingShortcuts".

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting DanaGoyette, reply 3

I'd say it's probably just the window movement, yes.  Interestingly, moving an Explorer window shows the lack of smoothness, but a Chrome window seems unaffected (probably due to not being skinned very much).  I can even move the Chrome window with the testufo.com test running, and the test stays smooth.

 

EDIT: Another observation, while testing the movement, I discovered that Windowblinds doesn't respect the disabling of Aero Shake via the registry setting "NoWindowMinimizingShortcuts".
End of DanaGoyette's quote

The latest beta update should respect that.

Having looked at the code it seems it would have been capping at around 100Hz which would explain your issues.  I have adjusted this for future updates.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

Cool.  Hopefully you've set it to be vsynced, at whatever rate the monitor is actually set to (90, 100, 120, 144hz).