fullscreen faster?
BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Programming/fullscreen faster?
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| hi. would like to know if using fullscreen graphics is faster than having them windowed at the same size? thankyou. una.x |
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| In most cases, fullscreen is faster, because DirectX and OpenGL can then have more direct access to the video card and doesn't have to try as hard to "play nice" with other windows. |
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| I must say yes telling from my own experience. I think one of the reasons is that in fullscreen your computer doesn't have to calculate where all other windows and icons at that moment while drawing. Other reason could be that in fullscreen if you draw an object on coordinates x=100 and y=100 your computer doesn't need to do anything else but that. In a windowed mode your computer needs to know first where the x and y left top corner position of the window is and then add the x=100 and y=100 relative to the windows left top corner. |
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| Yes. |
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| Simplified, with DX when full-screen it is a hardware "flip", when windowed it is a software "flip". |
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| For me its the same in both, in some cases fullscreen is even slower ... has something to do with the DX overlay from MSN Messenger Plus and most likely the 8800 GTS (old G8x) 640MB SC |
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| I'd say fullscreen is faster in most cases. |
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| would like to know if using fullscreen graphics is faster than having them windowed at the same size? Considerably faster, on most computers. Full-screen 3D is faster than the video card having to do both 3D in a window and 2D (around the window) at the same time. On my computer things run about one and a half times faster in full screen than windowed. Plus by default full-screen would run at 60 Hz on most computers, while in windowed mode you'll be running at whatever refresh rate windows is set to , which may be very different. |
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| Furthermore you'll probably run full-screen in a lower res than windowed mode, say 800x600 fullscreen when windowed mode could be really anything, so there's way less pixels to render in full-screen (depending on the res you choose). Having said that, on my PC 800x600 is only a little bit faster than my 1024x768 windowed mode because I guess my video card is well optimised for higher resolutions. |
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| Plus by default full-screen would run at 60 Hz on most computers, while in windowed mode you'll be running at whatever refresh rate windows is set to , which may be very different. Why would this make a difference? Refresh rate not = draw rate. |
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