A look at Windows 7 graphics
Nvidia jumps on the Windows 7 bandwagon, saying that its graphics cards are fully prepared. Nathan Taylor delves into the building blocks of Windows 7 graphics.
Perhaps it’s because Vista hasn’t exactly been the critical success that Microsoft hoped for, but Microsoft and its various partners have been very keen to talk about the new operating system.
Nvidia is the most recent to jump on that bandwagon, saying that its graphics cards are fully prepared for Windows 7 when it comes out, and it already has beta drivers for the new OS, which it is supplying to developers at WinHEC this year. To quote from a press release we received today:
“WinHEC attendees will receive a pre-beta version of Windows 7 along with a driver from Nvidia Corporation validated by Microsoft and designed specifically for the next-generation operating system from Microsoft. Nvidia drivers will be released to end users through Microsoft’s Windows Update service. Those drivers will include a high level of support for all current Windows Vista features as well as the newer features being introduced in Windows 7 such as WDDM 1.1, Direct3D 11, GDI acceleration, Direct2D, DirectWrite, and DXVA HD.”
So what do all those things mean? Well, here’s the breakdown:
WDDM 1.1: Windows Display Driver Model 1.1. This is the driver architecture for the new OS, upgraded from 1.0 in Vista. We don’t actually know just yet the full extent of the changes, but one of the reputed features of this new driver model is the ability to mix and match graphics components from different vendors. It likely doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to combine ATI and Nvidia chips in SLI-type configurations, but you may be able to use one for graphics and the other for physics.
Direct3D 11: There are a number of new features in DirectX 11, but the three biggies are tessellation, multi-threaded rendering and stream processing support.
The first is designed to dynamically increase the polygon count of 3D models on the GPU. The GPU can receive a relatively low-polygon 3D model and dynamically increase the level of detail. It means that a less detailed model can be stored in memory, but the GPU can increase the details as necessary. Theoretically, at least, it can make hair and fur (or even slightly “bumpy” surfaces like brick walls), for example, look much more realistic close up.
Multi-threaded rendering allows some CPU-based rendering tasks to be split off into separate threads (where previously they had been all done in a single thread). In theory this should make better use of multi-core processors, though we’ll have to wait and see how much difference it makes in practice.
The third major element, the compute shader, allows stream processing, very similar to what I talked to a few weeks ago in respect to GPGPUs. It’s very much the equivalent of Nvidia’s CUDA, and it’s designed to allow graphics cards to do more than just graphics. It will also enable physics calculation using GPU horsepower, for example. It’s not identical to or compatible with CUDA, but the good part is that both ATI and Nvidia cards will support it.
Finally, we should note that Direct3D 11 is not going to be exclusive to Windows 7. Microsoft has realised the huge mistake it made by making Direct3D 10 Vista-only, which resulted in developers stucking with Direct3D 9. A version of Direct3D 11 will be available for Vista – though probably not for Windows XP.
GDI acceleration, DirectWrite and Direct2D: a new rendering application programming interface for Windows 7, built on top of Direct3D. In practice, it brings a lot of the elements of 3D processing to the 2D desktop space, including improved font rendering, hardware anti-aliasing and advanced vector graphics and geometry operations. It effectively supplants GDI/GDI+ for the desktop interface.
DXVA HD: DirectX Video Acceleration, High Definition. DXVA has been around for a while now – it’s designed to allow the graphics hardware to assist in decoding compressed video. Near as I can tell, the purpose of DXVA HD is to allow the hardware to assist in decoding H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video streams. H.264 is used in Blu-ray discs and increasingly in Internet downloads, and while it’s a very-high compression system, it’s absolutely brutal on the CPU, especially in HD.
Other Blog Entries written by Nathan Taylor:
Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
Comments: 1
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hacker16
Nov 6, 2008 3:37 PM
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UMM I THINK ITA ALL GOOD BUT 1 QUESTION?WILL WINDOWS 7 BE ABLE TO RUN ON MY VIA/S3G UNICHROME PRO IGP 64mb VIDEO CARD?PLEASE REPLY ON MY EMAIL alzain16@gmail.com |