Strange Choppy WPF Animation

Question

I am making an app that scrolls information on the desktop. The window is transparent. I am starting out simple, trying to find the lowest CPU use for animating things and

Answer 1

I am having a very similar issue with a program I recently created using the WPF. It works fine on the build machine I am using which is running windows server 2003, but when I switch it to an XP machine with more than sufficient resources to run the program, it becomes extremely choppy. Basically it gets one frame per second. Every tick the animation will move along. I have heard of this problem where it goes away after the animation completes one cycle (through the animation) but for me it stays like this forever.

And I am not using the AllowsTransparency property, so if anyone else has any ideas I would very much appreciate it.

(the machine its failing on is also a Core 2 Duo)

Thanks, Eric

Answer 2

Ok, I just solved the problem after posting my previous statements. It turns out I hadnt installed my graphic drivers on this computer yet, and after I did it started working very smoothly. Perhaps it was using some software graphics rendering previously or something. So I recommend you update your graphics drivers to the most recent available to see if this helps the problem. The original poster seems to be having a different issue however, since it seems he has his fx drivers properly installed. I am not sure if there are any problems with nvidia 8800 cards with directx though.

Thanks, Eric

Answer 3

If you are using the AllowsTransparency property you will have performance and compatibility problems.

The technical explanation is here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/dwayneneed/archive/2008/09/08/transparent-windows-in-wpf.aspx

from my personal (and painful) experience some display drivers will crush your program and others will make Windows work erratically when you have a WPF transparent window on screen for a long time, I recommend you try to re-write your GUI to not use transparency.