WPF/Silverlight performance while using GPU intensive applications

Question

I might be mixing apples and oranges in this question since I'm noob in mentioned areas, so please try to understand what I mean.

I read that WPF (and Silverlight, as an extension to it) uses GPU acceleration to render itself on the screen.

If so, what happens when I have GPU-intensive application already running (say, game in windowed mode), and then run WPF/Silverlight application, which needs some GPU time/power? Who gets greater priority? Do they both start "stuttering"?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I think it would be safe to say that you'd have similar issues as a CPU intensive task running...it will starve other tasks of processing time. So yes, you may see lowered performance all around, but it all depends on whatever is involved :).

Generally speaking, intensive games are usually written to use most/all the computers resources, expecting that this is the only thing a user will probably be doing. Other, nicer applications will lower their need for processing (ie lower FPS) when the window is not in the foreground. Windows itself actually will give more priority to the foreground window (unless configured otherwise), but you never know what other programs do to their own thread priorities.