DWM is short for Desktop Window Manager. It's Windows Vista and beyond's compositing window manager. Basically your GPU draws the whole desktop as 3D object surfaces rather than the CPU making up a canvas and sending it to the GPU to be displayed as a flat image.

Compositing window manager's have been around since the original Amiga but that's besides the point...

DWM causes alot of problems, and annoyances. DWM even nags you if your VRAM is low (which obviously happens if you play any modern game of today)

dirkmirk wrote:

If they really want people to use the new operating system all they have to do is price it reasonably, I upgraded from windows xp to 8 last year(I think?) when I bought it at retail for about $55, I was happy to pay that for a new legitimate OS but over $100 turns people off and that's when they look for the pirated copies etc, $50 though not worth the hassle.

What's Mac OS X pricing like? 😉

You mean from the hardware company?

DracoNihil wrote:

DWM causes alot of problems, and annoyances. DWM even nags you if your VRAM is low (which obviously happens if you play any modern game of today)

It is worth pointing out (you aren't wrong btw) that WDDM1.1 (Win7) and later did do a lot to reduce memory consumption by DWM (I can't find the THG article that benchmarked it, but basically WDDM1.1 is able to use a much lower amount of memory when drawing multiple windows/applications compared to 1.0). Having said that, I've never noticed DWM or Windows notifying of anything about VRAM being low, even on my laptops - never had issue-one with games (and I would assume Hitman: Absolution classifies as "modern game of today"). OFC YMMV depending on hardware, configuration, etc. 😊

But yes, DWM *can* cause problems with some old applications; I don't know on 8.x, but I know on 7 and Vista you can temporarily suspend it for a given application to run (the setting is something like "Disable desktop composition for this application").

Stiletto wrote:

What's Mac OS X pricing like? 😉

$130+ every major revisions - they're on 10.9 as of right now and 10.10 is coming. Ignoring that OS X has abandoned a lot of hardware in its wake (over roughly the same length of time as Windows XP was out), if you'd followed the Apple Update Express you'dve spent upwards of $1000 on upgrades just to OS X alone over the last 10+ years vs a single copy of Windows XP and downloading service packs, hotfixes, etc for free. In actuality that's probably more like multiple thousands as you'dve had to migrate from PowerPC to Intel at some point to continue receiving updates and support, and Apple hardware isn't cheap. 😊

Thats why if desperate, hackintosh.

I get the nags everytime I'm playing Unreal Gold or Deus Ex with d3d10drv running in a window, no texture enhancements or anything just stock everything sans the renderer.

I also get the nag whenever I play modern games like SupCom: Forged Alliance and DX:HR... More so than I get with Unreal engine 1.x games running d3d10drv.

DracoNihil wrote:

not being able to disable DWM needs to be fixed in Windows 9, seriously. That's my #1 major gripe hands down.

^That.

To be honest, at first I didn't hate Windows 8.1 when I installed it on my netbook. The only thing that spoiled my first impression was that I had to log in with my live account or otherwise I wouldn't be able to install any metro app from the store and use several other features. That's politics making life difficult for a normal user, right there.

Also, when you log in for the first time, the system starts synchronizing. That means if you have two Windows 8 machines but you want to use different settings for one of those, you're screwed. There is an option to choose what you want to synchronize but you can only access it after you've logged in which means you have to quickly go to the control panel and disable what you don't want before the system manages to download the data. You'd better be quick.

Other than that, though, I liked it. The thing looked nice and clean, the metro interface was awkward to use at first but when I got used to it, it actually wasn't that bad. Also, I saw benchmark results indicating that Windows 8.1 is slower than 7. Let me tell you, it's really not. The interface itself runs very smoothly even on my netbook, which definitely cannot be said of Windows 7, especially with Aero on. Windows apps ran as well as on 7, as far as I could see, and the metro apps ran very smoothly indeed. They were designed for the rather limited power of smartphones and tablets, after all.

And then I install Re-Volt, my favorite racing game, and suddenly reality strikes: Windows 8.1 is utterly useless because of dwm.exe incompatibility causing certain games, especially older ones, to run at really low fps.

So, if Windows 9 can look good while performing nicely and if they fix the bloody dwm.exe problems, and if there's decent support for legacy software, then I think I will gladly say goodbye to Windows 7. I'm actually optimistic about this one.

Yasashii wrote:

And then I install Re-Volt, my favorite racing game, and suddenly reality strikes: Windows 8.1 is utterly useless because of dwm.exe incompatibility causing certain games, especially older ones, to run at really low fps.

Re-Volt rv1.2a14.0208 with the -emulatefullscreen command runs fast.

No, it doesn't. It runs slightly faster. Not anywhere near how it's supposed to run.

I get over 800 fps max at 1920x1200. Even more (over 1000) with lower graphics settings. Too slow?

Yeah, that's you. My netbook is another story. Simple fact: it ran perfectly smooth on Windows 7, it's sluggish on Windows 8.1 even with the patch.