.NET 3.5 SP1 includes several significant
performance optimizations and improvements to WPF. Some of the specific
graphics improvements include:
Smoother animations
Hardware accelerated rendering of Blur and
DropShadow Bitmap Effects
Text Rendering speed improvements - especially
with VisualBrish and 3D scenes
2D graphics improvements - especially
with z-index scenarios
A new WriteableBitmap class that enables
real-time and tear-free bitmap updates. This enables custom
"paint"-style applications, data visualizations, charts and graphs
that optionally bypass the default WPF 2D graphics APIs.
Layered window performance improvements
SP1 also adds support for better data
scalability in WPF. The ListView, ListBox and TreeView controls now support "item container recycling" and "virtualization" support which allows you to easily achieve a 40% performance improvement with scrolling
scenarios. These controls also now optionally support a "deferred
scrolling" feature which allows you to avoid scrolling in real time and
instead wait until a user releases the scroll thumb (the default scrolling mode
in Outlook). This can be useful when scrolling over very large data sets
quickly.
