Windows Longhorn to make Graphics Cards more Important

Renegade334 writes "The Inquirer has a story about MS Longhorn and its need for better than entry level graphics cards. This is due to the WGF (Windows Graphics Foundation) which will merge 2D and 3D graphics operations in one, and 3D menus and interfaces that require atleast Shader 2.0 compliant cards. Supposedly it will really affect the performance of the new Microsoft OS." This has been noted before in the system requirements for Longhorn, but it would seem the full impact is slowly being realized.

Comments

Shocking..

[Gorffy]

Using Windows as a way to sell more hardware!

KDE should use this in their advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

"KDE: Gets 5000% performance out of your graphics card by using our patented 'It Doesn't Use Fucking Pixel Shaders Just To Display A Fucking Menu' technology!"

Re:KDE should use this in their advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

That would improve KDE so it will only be like 50 times slower than Linux then.

See, that's the brilliance of it. KDE's strategy was, rather than go to all the trouble of writing a fast GUI, just start out slow as mud and then just wait around until the Mac and Windows GUIs get even slower!

But...

[rune2]

Can it run Longhorn? oh wait....

Start menu - loading please wait

[g0dsp33d]

In other news, Microsoft issues critical security warnings about bugs that let hackers run 3D viruses and worms natively in windows.

Re:How silly

[grub]

Having 10-20% of the price of your PC being in a bare minimum graphics card just seems ridiculous. What's next? Requiring 5.1 digital sound with multichannel reverb so Longhorn can tell the user "You've got mail!" ?

End of the world!

[CoolMoDee]

It's the end of the world I tell ya. End of cheap PC's, an affordable mac. What's next? 100 dollar iPods?

BSOD

[datafr0g]

Wow! A 3D Blue Screen of Death? That would look really cool with Shader 2.0

Re:How silly

[stratjakt]

So what do unix users have to do with Windows?

Noone's threatening your Korn shell. Text mode isn't going anywhere. You can keep your CGA monitor. Relax.

It's all about timed release.

[Trejkaz]

Grandpa & Grandma will probably be dead by the time Longhorn comes out.

Re:How silly

[PornMaster]

It won't play "You've got mail!" unless it's in Windows Media format, and can verify with AOL that you're licensed to play it.

Re:How silly

[mattyrobinson69]

if they build it into internet explorer, how long before somebody finds a bug in the jpeg library that allows for a webpage to beable to set fire to your graphics card with a simple javascript?

but seriously, rendering a GUI with the GPU is a good thing.

Re:not so much impact

[LiquidCoooled]

If you have a REALLY crap graphics card, Windows longhorn will automatically switch to text adventure mode.

You have opened a window.
Above you you see the Titlebar, it has a Close button.
There is lots of text on the window, looking closely, it appears to say 'slashdot'.

You are likely to be eaten by a Grue.
>_

Okay

[SunFan]

So is Longhorn going to have any new useful features or just sit there and look pretty?