Performance issue

Is your laptop set to conserve power?

Often the graphics card on a laptop is set to use as little power as possible on the desktop and only speed up in games.  Some even use the intel onboard graphics on the desktop and only use the powerful card when it detects a game.  This tends to impact performance somewhat.

Also what resolution are you using?

Same here on a super duper OC'd desktop with 980ti SC

Window FX slows down windows UI and causes DWM to crash when binging up some windows.

It also made Starcraft II to run VERY sluggish. As soon as I turned WindowFX off the performance went back up again.

My laptop is on maximum performance and the processor uses an integrated Intel HD Graphics 530 when the 980M is not being used, which should handle the UI tweaks the WindowsFX offers... The feedback on WindowsFX from other people with hardware configurations different from my own indicates the problem is with the software rather than the hardware.

So after having reinstalled WindowsFX as suggested in the response to a support ticket I lodged, I've struggled on with WindowsFX for months now installing the latest WindowsFX or graphics driver version then removing WindowsFX again because it adversely affects the performance of my machine.

With WindowsFX's detrimental effect on performance and I've discovered bugs in other Stardock utilities such as Fences 3 not allowing new window creation under Windows 10, I certainly not going to renew my ObjectDesktop subscription for such poor quality software.

Unfortunately if you experience performance slowness the instant you enable the software it is highly probable that the issue is that your machine hardware is simply not up to the task.

All too often the video drivers are set to downclock the graphics to the lowest possible setting to save power and only increase clock speed when they detect a game is running.  As WindowFX does animations etc very briefly they often fail to detect it quick enough and so end up running slowly.  This is outside our control.

Machines with multiple graphics adapters also suffer from a problem with the wrong adapter being picked causing massive transfers of graphics data between the two graphics processors.  I cannot recommend machines with that kind of setup for WindowFX or DeskScapes as they will be very inefficient.  Those hybrid laptop setups also tend to be the cause of many a game crash.

If the slowness happens over time there could be something leaking which could therefore be fixable.

Something you did not answer is that resolution are you running at?  If it is top of the line I assume it is pretty high indeed.

Hmmm...

My laptop is an Alienware 17 R3 with a i7-6820HK & Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M (4Gig) and Intel HD Graphics 530 with resolution set at 3840 x 2160.

It is capable of playing all 30 games I have at the highest performance settings without detrement including the latest CoD games.

If the hardware is not up to the task as you suggest, just what is capable of running WindowsFX without a performance issue, perhaps a Cray Titan or IBM Sequoia?

Instead of blaming hardware, do you have some constructive recommendations on how to configure the OS and graphics drivers optimally to work with WindowsFX?

A significant part of the issue is your resolution.  How many of those games are you playing at 60fps on the Intel Graphics?

As a quick test, if you lower resolution to say half that does it all work a lot smoother?  Obviously you wouldn't do that usually, but it would decrease the load on the graphics hardware by a factor of 4.

In terms of what works, any computer with a standalone graphics adapter running at a reasonable resolution should work just fine.  Integrated graphics tend to not be up to the task and very high resolutions will make that worse.

As an additional thought, does the bios have an option to disable the integrated graphics completely and always use the NVidia?  Note that forcing WindowFX via NVidia settings will not help as multiple processes (dwm.exe and explorer.exe) would both need to use the very same processor or the impact would be negative.

I'm running an 8 core processor, an R9 290 gfx card with 4 GB ram, 24 GB system ram and my res is 5120x1440.

I have zero problems with WindowFX. Or Fences3, for that matter.  Just saying.

I can't say I've even known of, or expected to - have an integrated graphics adapter that could push 3840x2160.  If one did it would be unlikely to make it to 60hz.

If your laptop was set to ONLY run with the 980M I expect everything would be 100% trouble-free....;)

(Here is Intel's spec sheet on i7-6820HK):

http://ark.intel.com/products/88969/Intel-Core-i7-6820HK-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz