n3urotic Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 Why do all windows blinds skins all seem slower and less responsive than StyleXP skins? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flyers Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 Originally posted by n3urotic Why do all windows blinds skins all seem slower and less responsive than StyleXP skins? Here we go again! Troublemaker!!:D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frogboy Administrators Posted January 23, 2002 Administrators Share Posted January 23, 2002 In what way do they seem slower? What video card are you using? What resolution? On our systems, msstyles are noticeably slower on screen and certainly benchmark much slower. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
correllium Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 I have to agree with Frogboy, msstyles did seem a little slower for me than WB3 skins, it really has improved a lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJP Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 Well i'm not agreeing with frogboy. WBSKINS are defenitely slower in for example the create window module. In most cases you can actually see the orginal classic look window is being repainted. Here is a benchmark of watercolor. First the watercolor from windowblinds Seond the watercolor from Binary. ********** Results of SkinBench (v0.45) benchmarking session: WindowBlinds skin 'Watercolor' by Dan Campeanu detected . . . Running on Windows NT (5.1.2600), . X-Resolution: 1024, Y-Resolution: 768, BPP: 32 >>>Watch this>>>>CreateWnd module: 171 SkinMarks (535 cycles complete in 6260 ms: scale 2012) SkinBench tests complete. ********** Results of SkinBench (v0.45) benchmarking session: No known skinning programs detected. ( watercolor form binary) Running on Windows NT (5.1.2600), . X-Resolution: 1024, Y-Resolution: 768, BPP: 32 >>>Watch this>>>CreateWnd module: 280 SkinMarks (699 cycles complete in 5008 ms: scale 2012) SkinBench tests complete. The create window module is a weak point from windowblinds. Greetz. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wickedkitten Veteran Posted January 23, 2002 Veteran Share Posted January 23, 2002 you can forget about running it with a kyro 2 for sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jardragon901 Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 Yeah but it runs perfectly with my Geforce 3, so meh! :lick: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenreaper Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 Be aware that that's probably the least reliable test in SkinBench. I had a hell of a time getting it to give even a reasonable result, and I'm the one who coded it. *g* Also, what this means is that that WB skin takes 11ms to create a window, while the other takes 7ms. 4ms really isn't all that long. But yes, if the test is accurate, it means that WB is slower in that particular area. Personally, I spend more time moving windows about, but maybe that's just me. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJP Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 Originally posted by greenreaper Be aware that that's probably the least reliable test in SkinBench. I had a hell of a time getting it to give even a reasonable result, and I'm the one who coded it. *g* Also, what this means is that that WB skin takes 11ms to create a window, while the other takes 7ms. 4ms really isn't all that long. But yes, if the test is accurate, it means that WB is slower in that particular area. Personally, I spend more time moving windows about, but maybe that's just me. ;) i know you coded it. :) But the test is objective and was made before msstyles. That's why it's so real.:D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frogboy Administrators Posted January 23, 2002 Administrators Share Posted January 23, 2002 What video card are you running? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJP Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 A geforce 2 mx with the latest nvidia drivers. So that can't be the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+E.Worm Jimmy Subscriber¹ Posted January 23, 2002 Subscriber¹ Share Posted January 23, 2002 My poor PII which could hardly manage XP before - is now noticably faster (switching between application is one) ...and all i did was installing WB3.1 (last time i tried WB3 i was not impressed and switch back to .msstyles) so there - i am considering registring it as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Large Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 :) Well for what my opinions worth, I agree with Frogboy, WB3 skins are way better than msstyles and way more responsive. It ain't ya graphics card because I've got a G Force 2 MX 200/400 card and I have no problems with WB3 skins. But for ever more we will here ppl shouting for one or the other ! I've had a stardock account for 10 months now and I've used windowblinds for longer. It just seems sometimes WB3 works well on some ppl machines better than msstyles and vice versa, go for what your machine deals with best. But I fly the flag for Windowblinds 3, fantastic Stardock, hurrah ! :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJP Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 Well i have compability problems also with windowblinds so it's msstyles for me. Run Windowsblinds and try then to run the Opera Browser. It just doesn't work. With wb i get the feeling skinning takes 3 steps 1:Load window 2:Make classic look windows 3:Repaint window With msstyles it takes 2 steps 1:load window 2: paint it in skincolor I get the feeling this happens, i don't know ofcourse these are facts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wickedkitten Veteran Posted January 23, 2002 Veteran Share Posted January 23, 2002 Originally posted by jardragon901 Yeah but it runs perfectly with my Geforce 3, so meh! :lick: honestly, theres no need in getting all riled up. I'm sure your quite pleased with your gf3 but for those of us with kyro 2 cards theres no point because for one the card doesnt support hyperpaint, and two when installing wb you get graphical glitches out of the ass. I'm not saying its stardocks fault, its just an issue with it and the card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Banfield Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 Originally posted by Wickedkitten honestly, theres no need in getting all riled up. I'm sure your quite pleased with your gf3 but for those of us with kyro 2 cards theres no point because for one the card doesnt support hyperpaint, and two when installing wb you get graphical glitches out of the ass. I'm not saying its stardocks fault, its just an issue with it and the card. What sort of graphics glitches do you get? Lack of Hyperpaint support is unfortunate, but I guess there is always hope they will support it in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJCrowley Esq Posted January 23, 2002 Share Posted January 23, 2002 FWIW, I enjoy using both WindowBlinds skins and MSStyles. On my ATI Radeon 8500, WindowBlinds UIS1 skins are really a lot faster than any MSStyles skins, with the same skin running on each (Acid Etched as it happens, just to make sure the test is objective). However, UIS2 skins (which the majority of WB skins currently are) are very slightly slower than MSStyles in most cases, but still usually fast enough that useability isn't a problem. My method for testing is grabbing a window and then simulating an epileptic fit with my mouse to see how fast the window can redraw. With WB UIS1, there is no lag, no matter how hard a spaz my arm out. With UIS2 there is usually a delay of about half a second after a severe shaking around for the window to fully redraw. With MSStyles, it's slightly less, if I were to say about 0.3 seconds, you'd have to put a great deal of faith in my ability as a human chronograph, but that's my best guess, and I'm guessing it's not too far off. The real advantage to using WindowBlinds at the moment is the huge amount of extremely good skins available for it, unfortunately, most MSStyles just aren't that great (mostly luna recolours or osx ports with the buttons on the wrong side) with very few noteable exceptions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n3urotic Posted January 24, 2002 Author Share Posted January 24, 2002 Doh, damn, I should ditch this Kyro 2 and get a geforce but it's a fine card in any other respect though :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hotdogz Posted January 24, 2002 Share Posted January 24, 2002 Can StylesXP and WB3 co-exist together? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frogboy Administrators Posted January 24, 2002 Administrators Share Posted January 24, 2002 Gerhard sent me a private email with a ton of helpful details on his WindowBlinds experiences. One thing we are discovering is, painfully, video drivers..video drivers..video drivers. Here's some interesting techie stuff: 1) On a Matrox card or a Radeon card, WindowBlinds is MUCH MUCH faster than msstyles. I.e. msstyles seems downright sluggish. 2) However.. you run it on a Geforce 2 or Geforce 3 card, then things become interesting because we have found that sometimes msstyles benchmark faster in certain areas than WindowBlinds (example, on my machine, WB moves windows faster, msstyles resizes them faster). Why though? One thing to be aware, just because your video card runs Quake really fast doesn't mean it's any good at 2D. Take today's leaked Nvidia drivers. They suck. They include this desktop management feature that is totally broken (and it's insidious becase you'll find that many programs simply seem buggier or don't work quite right and it's not obvious that it's because of Nvidia's drivers - WB3 has problems with it for instance but you'd never know it was Nvidia breaking system hooks). Nvidia's 2D stretching features are totally broken and are ridiculously slow. 3) There's somethign weird about msstyles - they are SLOWER in 16bit color than 32bit color. On my ThinkPad T20, this means that effectively, msstyles, even Luna, is not an option because the S3 Savage's chipset doesn't do 32bit color very well (unusably slow). What Stardock will have to do is find out specifically what causes WindowBlinds to FEEL slower on those people's systems. During the beta, people would report this and we talked to them, then purchased PC's that were similar and were able to identify the cause and the results showed in in 3.0 which went from being fairly slow in the betas to being mostly faster for usres. We hope by 3.2 to have it be faster on all systems but that remains to be seen. We don't have any Voodoo 5500 setups for instance and we have had multiple reports (not just here) that wB's performance on Voodoo cards is pretty crummy. Re Hyperpaint: Eventually all cards will be supported by it because the APIs that Hyperpaint uses are requred for Longhorn. Ironically, Geforce supports Hyperpaint the best. Hyperpaint will in the long term be a big deal because as video cards get better, the larger the window that can be buffered so that eventually, repainting when moving a window will not exist anymore and hence WB will feel a lot faster (especially at high resolutions) than systems not running it. But that will take literlaly months/years to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wickedkitten Veteran Posted January 24, 2002 Veteran Share Posted January 24, 2002 Originally posted by n3urotic Doh, damn, I should ditch this Kyro 2 and get a geforce but it's a fine card in any other respect though :( do NOT ditch that card damn you :p I read on the power vr site that the reason for the glitches are because the drivers so far don't offer winxp gui acceleration BUT (very big but) they are currently working on that and it should be released in the next driver update. other than that the only other option is to open your desktop at a massive acceleration since with kyro2 the higher the res the faster refresh you get. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenreaper Posted January 24, 2002 Share Posted January 24, 2002 Originally posted by aznduece Can StylesXP and WB3 co-exist together? Yes (well, I'm using the DLL, not sure about StyleXP), although you have to change msstyles from the themes tab and WB from the appearance tab. Originally posted by FrogboyRe Hyperpaint: Eventually all cards will be supported by it because the APIs that Hyperpaint uses are requred for Longhorn. The question is, is that because MS wants to be able to use Hyperpaint as well? I'm guessing they wouldn't rely on it until, say, Blackcomb, but you never know . . . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJP Posted January 24, 2002 Share Posted January 24, 2002 So what is hyperpaint? I never heard of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenreaper Posted January 24, 2002 Share Posted January 24, 2002 Originally posted by DJP So what is hyperpaint? I never heard of it. It's a feature that speeds up moving windows around. WB uses your video memory to buffer the display with the bit beneath the window you're moving painted as well (so you see *no* repaint). Relies a lot on having a fast bus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frogboy Administrators Posted January 24, 2002 Administrators Share Posted January 24, 2002 It's just that Hyperpaint relies on the same visual APIs that Blackcomb makes heavy use of to do its special effects. The better the score you get on XPBench, the better your hyperpaint performance will be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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