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At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference
downix writes "At Toms Hardware they're running an article where they discuss the next-generation Windows graphics system. The big part of the scoop, it's being done via DirectX. Have to validate those 2Ghz CPU's and GPU's that need their own nuclear power plant to run somehow." Some other interesting things there - quiet PCs, more about the Oqo, etc.
...how the PC industry is going to take Apple's styling, innovations and designs and incorporate them into Windows hardware. I guess its better late than never...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Graphics hardware gets to power the Windows shell, and compositing is going to be the big deal. Windows will be treated like surfaces, as opposed to rectangular blocks of bits, as they are now. Everything, in effect, is a texture. GPUs certainly know how to move textures around, and manipulate them, and work with them. Longhorn puts the pressure on the 3D engines of GPUs, and Microsoft is exploring minimum hardware requirements and standards for OEMs to aim for.
If windows are textures, it seems like it will be pretty difficult to get perfect 1-to-1 mapping of pixels via a graphics gpu. Right now, the only thing that is a big deal is "jaggies", but noone expects a perfect image of textures. I know part of this is the game itself, but it is very hard to make textures fit exactly how you want them to.
Sounds neat tho, if they can pull it off. Middle of the next decade indeed.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
Yeah...my thoughts exactly.
Have to validate those 2Ghz CPU's and GPU's that need their own nuclear power plant to run somehow."
Ya, and they can use the cooling towers to cool those bad boys too!
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Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
Personally, I see little driving the next generation windows boxes. I mean seriously, most computers that are 3 years old will do most things the average person could ever want. It'll burn CDs, play DVDs, read email, do word processing, email, blah blah blah...
What's next to drive people to upgrading? Will the game market be enough to drive the market?
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Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
Ensuring that my 7ghz machine with 40 gigs of ram and 520 TB of HD storage will still choke on a mp12 while scrolling with my MS MindMouse.
As Pratchett said (in The Truth), do they mean transparant as in you can see through to their motives or transparant as in you can't see their motives at all.
Microsoft staffers spent a long time hand carving this imposing statue of BillG at the entrance to WinHEC. Based on Native American folklore from the Northwest apparently it wards off government lawyers. :)
Nothing, and that's the beauty of MS's strategy. Windows releases are always endorsed by celebrities, big promo events, etc etc (didn't 'The Rock' help plug Windows XP?). When Microsoft, the OS company, releases a new version or updates their old products, everyone has to have it...regardless of how well their old systems (whether that's hardware or software) work to fit their needs.
Effective marketing, goddman them all.
Well, I think what's happening is companies are tired of seeing office machines being given 3-4 year old graphics cards! :) Most machines for the office don't need (or so someone says) a nice graphics card so now office workers put up with slower graphics because they have a Riva or something to that effect in thier machine. Used to be there was not much difference in a office machine and a home machine. Not anymore. I think Nvidia would like to lower the price of their high end but can't because there are many (I am one of those!) who don't see the point in buying thier firebreather when a Geforce 2 MX works just fine for about 95 percent of the people....even some games can be played just fine on a 2 MX. No Microsoft is feeling the pressure from the hardware folks because for some reason, they can't convince OEMS to use thier firebreathing Geforce and P4 chips in machines that are sold to grandma's (many more grandma's then hardcore gamers). If they could sell more of those, then they don't have to charge 300+ for one of those nice cards. If the OS used it more, then people would be forced to go get that new graphics card. The demand would be up and the price would take a plunge. It's ALL about eyecandy. Users dig it! (I don't need it all of the time, but I dig it too if it can look good and be fast!)
Gorkman
Quote from article:
24-bit True Color, or 8 bits per pixel, is not enough. Microsoft is pushing graphics board vendors to implement greater than 8 bpp in order.
This is great! Its so awful being stuck with only 256 colours to choose from! Think of all the different shades of blue they'll have in the next version of windows!
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
The article mentions that the entire desktop will be made in vector graphics. That was mentioned several years ago, and, there is a (slowly developing) project for Linux named Berlin which also is a vector based desktop.
http://www.berlin-consortium.org/
Hopefully that will pace up!
Yeah, because at less than .10 cent per *kilo*watt hour and, umm, 24*30, uhh, 720 hours per month, let's see, err, that's 216000 wats used, max, AKA 216 kilowatts, well, uhh. Hmph. That's a whopping 21.6 cents per month. Good gracious, time to get that second job working nights, or maybe just recycle a few aluminum cans to finance such an astronomical power bill. :)
:)
average cost of electricity in US as of 1999
That said, I've got about 5 computers and matching monitors (there's where the power's eaten up) running 24x7, and totally understand the desire to keep power use down...
You slipped a couple of decimal places. 10 cents per kwh, not .10 cents. So burning 300 watts of electricity costs $21.60 per month, not $0.22.
A decent 250W one is enough for most typical PCs, that is, one or two hard-drives, one or two optical drives, and one or two fans on top of the internal PSU fan. PSU are one more thing where buying quality stuff pays out in the end...
When your AthlonXP 1800 eats 85W by itself, I wouldn't be in a hurry to test this. insufficient voltage can be bad for chips and expansion cards. However, I do agree with the high quality PSU sentiment.
Heh, A Powermac uses a 125W PSU. That's for TWO processors, an optical drive, zip drive, up to 4 HD's, two fans, tumbler digital audio amplifier, AND flat panel display. If there's one thing they've got down at Apple is low power consumption. I wish they'd look into rackspace applications, since in that market, their HW wouldn't be any more than PC counterparts.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
The higher wattage power supplies are of higher quality. Just because its rated for 300 watts, doesn't mean it uses any more than a 200 watt power supply when idle. In fact, the larger diameter copper windings and larger capacitors may increase its efficiency. Operating lifetime is improved, since power components are under less stress.
My computer has a 300 watt power supply and draws less than 40 watts (ok, its a 486, but...)
"Some"? Holy heck, welcome to the problem. I've just built a machine for my brother. An XP 1700+, 256Mb of DDR 2100 and a 64Mb GeForce 2 MX 400 with TV out. We debated hardest on the card. He wanted to go for a GeForce 3 TI to future proof himself. Here's how my reasoning went:
Logic prevailed. Oh, he still wanted the 3 TI, because game mags say it can run at a squillion fps @ 1600x1200x32, but we did manage to establish that the noticable benefit would be zero, because he doesn't have a monitor that can handle that.
I'd advise anyone else thinking of buying a high end graphics card to do this calculation. Unless you've got a 1600x1200 @ 80fps monitor, what the heck do you need a GeForce 3 or 4 TI for? Don't spend money "future proofing": all you're doing is paying a premium on hardware that will be a lot cheaper when you do find yourself needing it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Yes, absolutely. Running computers really is expensive over a long period of time.
300 watts is more than the typical computer really uses. 60 to 100 watts continuous is more realistic judging from my UPS data output. Even then, $84/year is not trivial (this is the cost of a good component upgrade, these days).
There are reasons why initiatives like Energy Star exist. World-wide, I would bet the equivalent of an entire power plant output is devoted just to keeping our computers idle. It is easily argued that this is lots of money and other resources going straight down the commode.
What portion of California's recent energy crisis was due to tens of thousands of computers running unused?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Hey, at least they're making SOME progress. I've got a 10+ year old SGI Indigo2 at home, and it still does smoother 3D than my modern Windows XP box.
Maybe he didn't have the extra 75 dollars? Maybe he DOESN'T play Wolfenstien? There are PLENTY of games out that run fine on the 2MX400. How about Unreal Countrstrike??? It's still popular. So is Q3A. The only reason you could need that big graphics card is so you CAN run games like those and so you CAN spend 50 bucks on that game (instead of doing like I do and wait until they hit the bargin bin). Not everyone has a Slashdot Editors budget for hardware. Also, I can see most everything just fine at 640x480 as well. Sure, I like running the higher resolution as well but the game CAN be played well at 640x480. ALso, for someone who only plays games occasionally, it just costs way to much to buy one of these hot video cards.
Something I think game devlopers have forgotten lately is how to make a game fun. Now it seems all they and the hardcore gamers care about is eye candy. Sure, looking at these things will make your jaw drop, but who care how pretty it is....is it fun? To me, no. The games that center on deathmatching are no fun for me to play occasionally because there are so many players who have more time then I do and thus are much better then I ever will be. I am not saying that they should make it easy to play. I want to be challenged, but to depend on lightening quick reflexes is too much. I respect those who are real good at deathmatches as much as I respect athletes. I also believe there are some people, like myself, who will never be good enough to do well at the game. Just like i will never be as good as Michael Jordan. But to have fun in these games you have to be that good and it feel terrible to get killed every 2 minutes. If I want to feel like that I can just go and try to play basketball. Then I would get the same feeling.
I enjoy games that help you use your brain. Games like Roller Coaster Tycoon and The Sims challenge you to use your brain to be good at them. Quake, Wolfenstien and the upcoming Doom 3 while they would be fun enough to me in one player mode, just would not be fun at all in deathmatching. Sure they do challenge your brain in some ways, but after that, it's mostly quick reflexes and how quick you can move yer stick. Some say games like Starcraft are like this, and they are, to a point, but one can also win with stragtegy. That's where they differ.
Gorkman
You can buy a power meter if you want. Or you can use the power meter on the side of your house. Most power meters have a spinning wheel that turns X number of times per unit of energy. The rating should be listed on the power meter.
This is what you do: turn off all the PCs for just a few minutes. Useing a stop watch count the number of revolutions in a minute (or ten seconds, or whatever). Do the math and you will be able to get you baseline power consumtion. It is best to do this with as much as possible turned off. Now turn just the PCs on. Count the number of revolutions, do the math and you have your total power. Subtract your baseline power consumption and you have just the PC power consumption.
I have done this myself and compared the results with a decent power meter. I was only off by 10%.
Go look at some of those same benchmarks, particularly for newer games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The GF2MX400 64M barely runs the game adequately at 1024x768. And that's just average frame rate - what kills you are the spikes where the framerate drops through the floor.
And in all likelihood this is just because of crappy coding. Look at games like Grand Theft Auto 3 on the PlayStation 2. They're pushing more polys than the average PC game, with what's already an outdated graphics system and a 300MHz processor with 8K--yes, EIGHT kilobytes--of data cache. On the PC the developers get the latest graphics cards and high end machines, then grudgingly give a little thought at the end of the project toward making it run on something sane.
Odds are that you'll see Return to Castle Wolfenstein ported to a console like the PS2 or Game Cube and it will run faster than it does on the PC and require a factor of four less memory.
A GeForce 2 MX is still a real beast, BTW. It's better than what's in a PS2 in many ways. But while the PS2 coders are going nuts with that hardware, people are sneering down their noses at the GeForce 2 MX. That's a laughable situation. 3D has gotten so fast in recent years that no one knows what to do with it. In all honesty, even the power of Voodoo 2 era cards is rarely, rarely maxed out. Developers just write some half-assed OpenGL or Direct3D renderer and then blame the graphics card, not even looking at their code and realizing that it takes hundreds or thousands of cycles to process a single triangle--or even a vertex--on the CPU side.
Oh, I should have warned fanboys up front to cover their eyes before reading this, so their little worlds aren't shattered.