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04-11-13, 09:36 AM   #18
SDPhantom
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I was editing my previous post last night to put this explanation in when the WoWI database went down because of too many persistent connections.
There are 2 things that affect the performance difference between native fullscreen and windowed modes. The resolution of the rendering frames and overhead imposed by the operating system for other windows' repaint events. It's common knowledge, the larger the drawing area, the more time it takes the video card to render out a frame. Windowed mode also requires the operating system to take some time to update the display of other windows whereas native fullscreen allows the system to bypass these repaint events.

The need for native fullscreen solely depends on the quality of the video card and how graphics-intensive a program is. Generally, if you have a video card that's more than capable of running a program in windowed mode at a decent framerate, there is no need to switch to native fullscreen.
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