Performance Troubleshooting Article and VS2010 SP1 Change
We are getting very near to the final release of VS2010 SP1 (if we were landing a plane the wheels would be down right now with the runway in front of us). Thanks again for all your feedback and stay tuned for the imminent release of the product.
We’ve concentrated heavily on fixing issues you have reported, including those related to performance and reliability. The team has collected the most common scenarios we see that may cause issues and published it here:
One of the interesting patterns we have seen is that Windows XP users are twice as likely to hit hardware graphics related issues than those using Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server. In some cases users report slower performance of VS2010 along with the potential for crashing behavior. Very frequently this turns out to be attributable to poor/old video drivers or other operating system components. You can manually turn off hardware acceleration in Visual Studio if you think this is impacting you. To do this, choose Tools, Options and turn off the automatic options:
Based on the number of machine reports we have found with video driver issues, we are taking the step of turning off hardware graphics acceleration in Visual Studio by default for Windows XP users when you install the final version of VS2010 SP1. This change will only impact the Visual Studio IDE, not other applications or your version of Windows. You can also easily turn hardware acceleration back on using the Tools, Options dialog above.
I generally really hate making setting changes like this; as a developer I don’t like it when my environment changes defaults. At the same time I’ve seen enough data about the issues people are hitting today and I want to ensure everyone has a good experience. I’m blogging about this change now to provide the background on the decision as early as possible.
Thanks again for your feedback on VS2010 SP1 and get ready for downloads!
Jason