Windowblinds 5 takes less memory then Windows Default?

By czanchez
in Tips, Tweaks & Customization

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czanchez

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I was looking at the screenshots of Windowblinds 5 and I saw something written on it. It says that WB5 takes less memory then UXtheme. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't UXtheme just a way to permenantly patch the windows default file ... so they are saying that the WB5 engine is more efficant then the windows one?

The screenshot http://www.stardock.com/products/odnt/wb-oct05.jpg

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phot0nic

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yes, the windows skinning engine is essentially a stripped down version of windowblinds (version 3, I think).

And yes, newer versions of windowblinds are more effecient as far as performance goes, and Windowblinds 4 & 5 both use less resources than the default skinning engine.

If you want to notice a difference, use a windowblinds skin, and then TURN OFF the windows themes service via services.msc... Because if you don't, you'll be running both the windowblinds service AND the windows service, thus reducing performance instead of increasing it. you don't need two different skinning engines to be running simultaneously.

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greenreaper

Posted
Posted (edited)

Hitchhiker427, I'm sorry, but you are incorrect with the assertion that uxtheme is a stripped down version of WindowBlinds, If anything, Microsoft engineers may have taken an (unauthorised) look at how WindowBlinds 2 worked from diassembling the code (because initial versions of XP shared the same problems!), but no more. :)

It is indeed possible for WindowBlinds skins to take less in the way of resources than the uxtheme engine shipped with XP. It is, of course, possible for them to take more. The features you use will have an effect here, but on the whole I would say that an msstyle skin would take "more" in most circumstances than the equivalent skin done in WindowBlinds.

Why am I confident in saying this? WindowBlinds has been developed for nigh-on eight years now. It is a mature piece of software. Much time has been spent tweaking things, and that includes trying to arrange things so they use as little in the way of memory as possible. Ironically, nowadays this is appearing less and less important, but good use of resources will always improve things, even if just by a small amount.

Moreover, the objectives of the Microsoft theme engine were not primarily performance, but compatability. It had to be perfect in terms of "working" from day one. Several features appear to have been cut from the spec to achieve that, including menus. They do appear to have achieved that, which is still reasonably impressive for what must have been just a year or so, even if it is a lot easier to code for fixed border sizes. However, as can be seen by the load of 10Mb that you get from the msstyle service, RAM usage was not the number-one thing on their mind at the time.

Edited by greenreaper
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phot0nic

Posted
Posted

Windowblinds came out before Windows XP did, and from what I heard Stardock worked WITH Microsoft to develop their skinning engine.. I could be wrong, but I thought the two kinda worked together on it... it would also explain why the msstyles skinning format is both as limited as the older versions of windowblinds, and it takes up about the same amount of resources as the previous versions... well, maybe a little less than previous windowblinds because it is built into the OS.

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phot0nic

Posted
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well, for starters, I haven't used the windowblinds 5 beta yet, but one thing to note: It's still beta. I mean, don't get me wrong, I find it hard to believe that a transparent "glass" theme made by any skinning engine is less resource intensive than a non-"glass" theme, but still... the performance may improve when its actually released.

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#Michael

Posted
Posted
  Leddy said:
WindowBlinds 5 with transparent skins definitely takes more system resources than the microsoft skinning engine.

However if you don't use a transparent skin it is debatable about system resource usage

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Care to back that up with stats? Because I am using the latest build and the mem useage is nothing.

Apprentice

guranga

Posted
Posted
  czanchez said:
I was looking at the screenshots of Windowblinds 5 and I saw something written on it. It says that WB5 takes less memory then UXtheme. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't UXtheme just a way to permenantly patch the windows default file ... so they are saying that the WB5 engine is more efficant then the windows one?

The screenshot http://www.stardock.com/products/odnt/wb-oct05.jpg

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new engine all seems a bit buggy to me atm

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jbrukardt

Posted
Posted

Just for the record, those that are saying memory usage is nothing, need to take a closer look with process explorer. TGTsoft pulled a dirty trick and named their process svchost.exe. It appears to use between 9-14 megs of ram on average, which isnt horrible, but i dont like using any one individual background app that uses more than 5 megs

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toadeater

Posted
Posted
  jbrukardt said:
Just for the record, those that are saying memory usage is nothing, need to take a closer look with process explorer.  TGTsoft pulled a dirty trick and named their process svchost.exe.  It appears to use between 9-14 megs of ram on average, which isnt horrible, but i dont like using any one individual background app that uses more than 5 megs

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svchost.exe has nothing to do with TGTSoft and it's not the theme service. If you use the uxtheme.dll hack, it requires ZERO additional overhead compared to XP's native theme service. StyleXP uses more memory for it's useless theme management GUI in another process, but it is not necessary for skinning XP.

Svchost hosts multiple services, the theme service itself (uxtheme.dll) takes up around ~1mb of RAM, not including how much memory the bitmaps in the theme take up. Open the command prompt, type "tasklist /svc" and you'll see how many services are contained within svchost.exe that account for the full "9-14mb."

Now compare this with how much memory Windowblinds takes up. I don't remember offhand because I don't use Windowblinds anymore, but I know it is quite a bit more than 1mb.

Windowblinds offers more skinning options than uxtheme.dll, but it's not more efficient, and is still buggy, especially when DirectX is involved. I also found that neither one support 120dpi particularly well, if Windowblinds added this support I'd use that on my laptop.

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#Michael

Posted
Posted
  toadeater said:
svchost.exe has nothing to do with TGTSoft and it's not the theme service. If you use the uxtheme.dll hack, it requires ZERO additional overhead compared to XP's native theme service. StyleXP uses more memory for it's useless theme management GUI in another process, but it is not necessary for skinning XP.

Svchost hosts multiple services, the theme service itself (uxtheme.dll) takes up around ~1mb of RAM, not including how much memory the bitmaps in the theme take up. Open the command prompt, type "tasklist /svc" and you'll see how many services are contained within svchost.exe that account for the full "9-14mb."

Now compare this with how much memory Windowblinds takes up. I don't remember offhand because I don't use Windowblinds anymore, but I know it is quite a bit more than 1mb.

Windowblinds offers more skinning options than uxtheme.dll, but it's not more efficient, and is still buggy, especially when DirectX is involved. I also found that neither one support 120dpi particularly well, if Windowblinds added this support I'd use that on my laptop.

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Well this is what my machine uses with WB4.6 loaded:

wbtask.jpg

Grand Master

Inplode

Posted
Posted
  Zxian said:
Task Manager doesn't show the whole difference. :rolleyes:

I recently uninstalled WindowBlinds from my computer, and man what a difference. Everything was so much faster. Back to the uxtheme patch for me.

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your Pc must suck

Experienced

Zxian

Posted
Posted
  Inplode said:
your Pc must? suck

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Right... Sorry I don't have the funds to buy a new computer every 6 months to keep up with new WindowBlinds releases...

Pentium-M 1.4GHz

1GB PC2700 RAM

80GB 5400RPM Hitachi Travelstar

32MB Radeon 9000 Mobility (dedicated memory)

It's a laptop by the way...

Not really a "sucky" computer. It's almost two years old, but if it's not good enough for WindowBlinds, then StarDock needs to rethink their programs.

Grand Master

#Michael

Posted
Posted
  Zxian said:
Right... Sorry I don't have the funds to buy a new computer every 6 months to keep up with new WindowBlinds releases...

Pentium-M 1.4GHz

1GB PC2700 RAM

80GB 5400RPM Hitachi Travelstar

32MB Radeon 9000 Mobility (dedicated memory)

It's a laptop by the way...

Not really a "sucky" computer. It's almost two years old, but if it's not good enough for WindowBlinds, then StarDock needs to rethink their programs.

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Well let's see, wb5 beta runs on my laptop which is a p3 700 at 256mb of ram and a 12 mb video card. Hardly modern by any means and yet I don't get any performance hit. Seems to me that it maybe you need to look at how well your computer is performaning.

Grand Master

#Michael

Posted
Posted
  imtoomuch said:
I use WindowBlinds on a decent machine (2.4Ghz processor, 512MB Ram, and an ATI 9700 128MB vid card) and I do, and have always noticed a performance hit.  Nobody will ever tell me different.

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Try turning on hyperpaint and turning off your theme service. That will noticeably speed things up.

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Leddy

Posted
Posted
  AthleticTrainer1981 said:
Care to back that up with stats?  Because I am using the latest build and the mem useage is nothing.

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I don't really need to. The transparency obviously eats through your graphics card while the default XP skinning engine doesn't.

Memory isn't the only system resource, you know. CPU usage and GPU usage are both system resources.

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