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Forcing software-based rendering of WPF graphics

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In our application we use a CAT5 USB to Ethernet extender to achieve a 50 ft distance from computer to monitor. At the monitor end we then use a Startech USB to VGA adapter. We found that with this configuration there is an issue with screen redraw whenever we run a WPF-based application – it shows up as flickering screen artifacts, portions of background windows showing through the foreground window, etc. Clearly wrong behavior, very repeatable, and only seen when a WPF application is running (it effects the entire display and any/all other applications currently running).

After much investigation we found that this could be fixed by a registry key that forces software-based rendering of WPF on a system-wide level, and setting this key completely solves the problem (with, we would assume, a degradation in WPF performance but it certainly isn’t noticeable to us):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Avalon.Graphics\DisableHWAcceleration DWORD set to 1

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa970912%28v=vs.110%29.aspx#overview

My question is, how would this setting affect the performance of your charting controls? In our application we certainly wouldn’t be pushing the speed of your real time charts, probably maximum update is 4 to 8 points per second added to the chart, but I am concerned that it doesn’t cause display issues or result in undue processor utilization.

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Hello,

That’s an interesting setup you have there!

The SciChart software is mostly CPU (software) rendered (assuming HighSpeed or HighQuality software renderers), meaning, all the drawing algorithms are done on the CPU, so as far as we’re aware there isn’t much impact on SciChart from dropping WPF down to software rendering.

That being said, you will see a degradation in performance from WPF itself, especially if you use a lot of transparency or gradient brushes or effects, or, you have a large display size (as there are a lot of pixels to composite and display).

My advice is – give it a go, if performance becomes a bottleneck you can always profile and find out why and make adjustments as necessary. SciChart is pretty CPU efficient and the the refresh rate you are talking about isn’t high so it should be ok. Nevertheless, test it and let us know.

Best regards,
Andrew

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