Disabling Aero and such while running a full screen application.

I've been using Windows 8 for the past couple of days and I gotta say, I've been loving every second of it, I do have one question though, is there a way to disable Aero and all similar graphical effects (transparency/glass effects, etc) when running a full screen application? (to save VRAM).

I used to do it in Windows 7 all the time, in the .exe I wanted to modify I checked "disable desktop composition" and "disable themes".

Thanks!

I think there were some changes made to desktop composition and you cannot turn all things off just like in Win7.

In Win7 the aero effects/transparency is automatically turned off when in full screen mode so you don't need do do it manually.
There is an instant switch so you don't need to monitor it by yourself.

In Win8 there is no "official" way to turn off the transparancy in the taskbar (if any) only by swithcing the themename.theme from using Aero.msstyles to Aerolite.msstyles (aerolite has no transparancy but after a reboot or two it's possible it has). But again the desktop composition is automatically managed when in fullscreen. It should be also turned off when not needed so don't worry about performance.

Notice:
In Win7 the UAC prompt is in Basic theme style when in Win8 is Aero theme style. Also dwm.exe has more importance in Win8 and the composition is slightly different. We now have Aero-only theming instead of Aero+Basic+Classic.

There is no Basic theme so you cannot turn off Aero. Even if you get some ugly-looking-non-transparent thing displayed it's still the Aero core + all the 3D acceleration available.

The transparency you see has no negative impact on performance. Also keep in mind that Win8 has no glass-effect so the trasparency here is a bit lighter than it was in Win7.

Hopachi said:

I think there were some changes made to desktop composition and you cannot turn all things off just like in Win7.

In Win7 the aero effects/transparency is automatically turned off when in full screen mode so you don't need do do it manually.
There is an instant switch so you don't need to monitor it by yourself.

Click to expand...

That's interesting because disabling desktop composition and themes, etc... Freed up around ~130MB of VRAM when running Battlefield 3.

Hopachi said:

In Win8 there is no "official" way to turn off the transparancy in the taskbar (if any) only by swithcing the themename.theme from using Aero.msstyles to Aerolite.msstyles (aerolite has no transparancy but after a reboot or two it's possible it has). But again the desktop composition is automatically managed when in fullscreen. It should be also turned off when not needed so don't worry about performance.

Notice:
In Win7 the UAC prompt is in Basic theme style when in Win8 is Aero theme style. Also dwm.exe has more importance in Win8 and the composition is slightly different. We now have Aero-only theming instead of Aero+Basic+Classic.

There is no Basic theme so you cannot turn off Aero. Even if you get some ugly-looking-non-transparent thing displayed it's still the Aero core + all the 3D acceleration available.

The transparency you see has no negative impact on performance. Also keep in mind that Win8 has no glass-effect so the trasparency here is a bit lighter than it was in Win7.

Click to expand...

That's a shame, maybe Windows 8 handles all that much better, since there are no such options when right clicking an .exe/properties and going over the compability tab.

SlackerITGuy:

...since there are no such options when right clicking an .exe/properties and going over the compatibility tab

Click to expand...

Now that you mention this, there are other new options added in the compatibility which makes it better than Win7.

Some of the compatibility options are changed.

You now see a 16bit color mode available because all the 16bit graphics resolutions are gone (see graphic card list all modes).
In all Windows versions up to Win7 you could manually switch between the screen color modes in the advanced resolution tab.

Those 16bit color modes are only needed for older applications. If you saw this in Win7: after a 16bit color switch, Aero was automatically disabled (imagine how Aero would look if still on). So on Win8 since only Aero is available the 16bit color modes had to go.
There is still 16bit color mode in the compatibility tab and older apps still work. This is because the switch between screen modes happens automatically and Aero is turned off (hopefully) when not visible (a good thing).