WPF Performance Question

[programmervb netc]

I have just moved to doing real dev in VS2010, when I first started using it the interface was very slow. I unchecked the option to automatically adjust for best visual experience which ironically helped it to perform better. The problem that I have now is that I have also started using Expressions Studio and it is dog slow on my machine my boss who is running a similar machine is not seeing it. He however is using a desktop which has a better video card than mine while that is logical my card is not really that bad so I wonder is there a way I can optimize the settings of my card for WPF performance or does someone know if there is a similar option to disable to enhanced user experience in Expressions. Here a my machine specs and advice is appreciated. Dell Vostro 1700 laptop Core 2 duo 2.2ghz 4 Gig Ram slow hard drive 5400rpm One thing that might be important my res is 1920x1200 on my machine and 1280x1024 on my secondary monitor. NVidia Geforce 8400M GS gpu I have the most current drive only update after seeing the problem. Windows XP Pro SP3 32bit I do not see this slowness in other applications that are not WPF.

Humble Programmer

[Michel Godfroid]

Just a thought, check if you have the latest and greatest DirectX. Updating your videocard driver might also help, although I doubt that NVidia still produce a lot of updates for XP. (update, you've done that, sorry). Oh I and about your check box: best visual experience means slower in most cases, because then you get all the gizmo's like shadows, transparency, textures, etc, which can really slow things down. Turning them off makes it look ugly, but fast. WPF uses GDI+ to it's painting, and that kicks down to DirectX, which hopefully is able to offload most of it's processing to the card. That's where the drivers come in. Unfortunately the 8400M GS is quite an underpowered card for today's standards (I see it rated at around 39 Gigaflops). These cards offer a good video watching performance (but I doubt that what's your boss expects of you), but are poor at gaming. Unfortunately, WPF draws upon the gaming features. So, pretty please to your boss (or just steal his videocard while he's out of the office, chances are he won't notice the difference - I used to swap whole motherboards as a young(er) programmer :-) I started coding in 1976, and swapping the mainframe's motherboard was not an option )

[programmervb netc]

LOL entertaining post... I know that the card is under powered although he is a game so he would notice real quick. I am going to check on the DX thing though I was just hoping I could turn off some features in expressions because like I said when I toned it down in VS it made a big difference.

Humble Programmer