Games run slow in a window

Candle · Wed 17/05/2006 12:50:30

If I run a ags game in a window they run real slow and take a lot of cpu to run but if I run them in full screen I have no problems with the games?
Could this be my video card, I have a ::

1.80 gigahertz AMD Athlon XP
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
64 kilobyte secondary memory cache

1gig Megabytes Installed Memory

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 [Display adapter]
MAG 18.0 [Monitor] (18.0"vis, s/n FANL36205009U, June 2003)
And have most of the drives up to date.

Pumaman · Wed 17/05/2006 19:58:14

Has anyone else experienced problems of this kind?

jasonjkay · Wed 17/05/2006 20:07:50

no, but isnt windowed mode more processor intensive than fullscreen for most games? Also maybe its the game, what game is it?

Radiant · Wed 17/05/2006 21:42:26

Depends... if the game's resolution is different from your desktop resolution, that's a major slowdown. Transparency effects are also very noticeably slower in a window, likely for mostly the same reasons.

Candle · Thu 18/05/2006 01:36:02

I grab a new driver for the video card and it seem to help with running in a window.
Still not perfect but better.

Gilbert · Thu 18/05/2006 02:09:14

Also, colour depth can also be a problem, since if the game is switched to fullscreen, the display mode would be set to match the game, if it's run windowed, the graphics card/driver/directX might need to do some real time conversion works when the colour depths don't match.

Candle · Thu 18/05/2006 02:46:58

Well now that I think about it the game maker games did the samething to me.
So not sure what that means. I know the card is old so looking at getting a new one here soon when I can afford it.

Gilbert · Thu 18/05/2006 04:11:59

Additionally, when in windowed mode, the computer has to do other graphical stuff like updating the part of your desktop graphics aside from the AGS window, etc. So it's doing much more stuff than you might have thought. And by having a 18" monitor I'll expect you're using some very hi-res modes for your desktop (like 1280 x 1024 and up), which can further slow things down (I'm still using 14" @ 800 x 600 at work and 17" @ 1024 x 768 at home

).

Candle · Thu 18/05/2006 04:17:26

It is a 19 don't know why Belarc said it was ? and i run it at 24x768.
And the screen does seem to refresh a lot when I'm doing somethings.

Gilbert · Thu 18/05/2006 05:33:28

Quote from: Candle on Thu 18/05/2006 04:17:26
And the screen does seem to refresh a lot when I'm doing somethings.

It's probably running in low rate like 60Hz, did you change it to higher rate? 19" monitors should be able to run 1024x768 at decent rates. just an advice (and a bit offtopic), try setting to higher rate to prevent from further damage to your eyes.

Candle · Fri 19/05/2006 10:15:14

It goes to 85 so I just changed it so will see what happens.