How can I speed up Visual Studio 2010 text editor render speed?

Question

Visual Studio 2010 moved to using WPF for rendering the editor. This is leading to slowdowns while I am editing code, especially if I'm running something else that uses other video capabilities.

How can I speed this up? A new video card? New drivers? Settings?

What technologies does WPF use to render and what video card would complement it?

Answer 1

WPF uses DirectX for rendering, so a new top of the line video card would certainly help you out here. Any solid ATI or Nvidia card nowadays supports the latest and greatest DirectX.

Answer 2

The answer from @Charlie is absolutely spot on; and I thought about saying this on a comment but then figured I should put it as an answer.

Under certain circumstances (certainly on my desktop at work, which uses a workstation NVidia card), which are listed in the installation issues (connected with Hyper-V in particular), VS2010 fails to enable video acceleration even if it is available.

Open up Tools->Options, and on the very first options panel you'll see a group in the middle 'Visual Experience'. Just make sure that everything is checked in there and that it says 'Visual Studio is currently using hardware-accelerated rendering...'.

I don't think the hardware requirements for VS2010 are particularly heavy - but your card certainly must be DX capable.