Slow WPF performance on GMA 500 integrated graphics

Question

My team is developing WPF applications to be deployed on an Intel Atom Z530 netbook hardware platform. The Intel Atom Z530 comes with Intel GMA 500 integrated graphics, which has a PowerVR SGX 535 GPU core. The PowerVR SGX 535 GPU core is the exact graphics core used in Apple's A4 chip set for the iPad.

My question: Why is WPF so slow with PowerVR SGX 535 graphics?

We actually turn hardware acceleration off for our WPF application to get better performance (screen to screen transitions, dialog transitions, 2D graphics interaction). The iPad technology stack is able to achieve much better UI performance with the same hardware graphics core.

Thank you for any insights!

Answer 1

Are you running .Net 4 on Windows Embedded Standard 7? I've found that WPF runs much better in Windows 7 than XP.

What are your specific performance problems?

If it's animation, try using cached composition (.Net 4 feature) to apply a BitmapCache to any background that you may be animated things over. Also, make sure to share and freeze all the brushes you use.

If it's charting, drop down to DrawingVisuals instead of using Shapes or other higher level contstructs. You can also use GDI+ to draw into WriteableBitmaps as a last resort.

Also, dual-core Atoms will also provide a significantly smoother WPF UI in my experience. Try an Atom D510 or D525 if possible. They use much more power and give off more heat but the user experience improvement was worth it for my product.

And keep in mind that iOS apps are native code. WPF provides a much higher level of abstraction and much faster development at the expense of generally slower performance, especially when hardware resources are limited.