Question re: fullscreen/windowed and GPU burden

zhen_rogue

I'm wondering which scenario below (1, 2, or 3) is the most taxing on a system's GPU;

System Details:
WinXP Notebook System
Core2Duo 2.3GHz
Nvidia 7950 GTX 512mb
2GB Ram

Display Details:
WUXGA (1920x1200) LCD monitor

Scenario Details:
1. Running a game at 1920x1200 resolution (native) in fullscreen mode
2. Running the same game in a lesser resolution (say 1440x900) in windowed mode.
3. Running the same game in a lesser resolution (say 1440x900) in fullscreen (scaled) mode.

I know that GPU performance is increased by running games at lesser supported resolutions. I've also read that running games in windowed mode can be much more taxing than running games in fullscreen mode at your system's native resolution. What i'm trying to determine, is if I want to give my GPU a break on a particularly taxing GPU game, what's the display configuation that is likely the best (or worst) for me to use?

Thanks!

zhen_rogue

< shameless bump >

Still looking for any input here, thanks in advance.

TychoCelchuuu

I'm pretty sure scaling up takes little to no GPU power. So 1 would be the most taxing, and 2 and 3 more or less equal. Maybe 100% equal. Try benchmarking it.

Tertiee

3≥2>>1

From my experience windowed vs fullscreen mode doesn't make a huge difference performance wise. The main difference is that in windowed mode your system is rendering the desktop at the same time so if you are running fancy Aero graphics (I don't) it might make more of a difference.

Lowering resolution is the more obvious performance increase since your graphics card has to render less pixels. I've never heard/noticed upscaling to have a performance impact though your image quality is a little worse.

Infidel

Windowed mode used to be noticeably slower quite a ways back in the day, but for a while now they solved the issues of full-acceleration without having to monopolize the display. It's negligible in pretty much every game I run and I'm a few generations behind hardware-wise.

Resolution and effects settings will dominate the performance factor.

Bluefoot

I think these days running things in windowed mode is more of a RAM issue than a GPU issue. If you're in fullscreen I think that lets the OS know that it can page pretty much everything but the game out to disk, whereas if you're windowed it tries to keep more stuff in RAM (which is why alt-tabbing goes way faster if you're in windowed mode). So if you're running up close to your total RAM you might get some thrashing (this is what happens to me when I try to run Starcraft 2 in windowed mode).

Infidel

Bluefoot wrote: »

I think these days running things in windowed mode is more of a RAM issue than a GPU issue. If you're in fullscreen I think that lets the OS know that it can page pretty much everything but the game out to disk, whereas if you're windowed it tries to keep more stuff in RAM (which is why alt-tabbing goes way faster if you're in windowed mode). So if you're running up close to your total RAM you might get some thrashing (this is what happens to me when I try to run Starcraft 2 in windowed mode).

Memory won't be very different, the alt-tabbing is because it doesn't have to switch graphics context, not that things are "still loaded."

Bluefoot

Hrm, yeah, you're right. Coulda sworn I was running into more memory issues running in windowed mode. Maybe just a coincidence.

Buttcleft

Tertiee wrote: »

3≥2>>1

From my experience windowed vs fullscreen mode doesn't make a huge difference performance wise. The main difference is that in windowed mode your system is rendering the desktop at the same time so if you are running fancy Aero graphics (I don't) it might make more of a difference.

Lowering resolution is the more obvious performance increase since your graphics card has to render less pixels. I've never heard/noticed upscaling to have a performance impact though your image quality is a little worse.

Aero disables when you run games.