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Windows Longhorn to make Graphics Cards more Important

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the eye-candy-overkill dept.

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.

4 of 714 comments (clear)

  1. How silly by grub · · Score: 5, Interesting


    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.

    That's just plain stupid. Grandpa & Grandma want to check their email and pics of the grandkids, why on earth should they require a Radeon MegaXP293823-XtremeSLI+ to do that? I hope there's an option to disable all that cycle-wasting crud or MS may be shooting itself in the foot: how many offices will spend a few hundred dollars on individual video cards just to upgrade the OS? What about those machines with onboard video (ala Dell?)

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    Trolling is a art,
    1. Re:How silly by Tasy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think something most people don't realize is that by using the GPU to render, you are actually taking load OFF of the CPU, not adding to it. Bravo to Microsoft for this.

      Now all we have to do, is pray they don't leave some loop hole open that lets someone burn your video card. Can you imagine, built in Windows overclocking?

      *shudder*

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  2. Great, but. by PenchantToLurk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've used Windows since 3.0. I'm a Windows (.Net) developer. And I agree that the gee-whiz factor will be great. Animations, depth to menus... it'll be gorgeous.

    But... It doesn't matter how fast computers get, Windows Explorer Shell always seems to become less snappy, even on fresh installs. XP made the start menu slower than ever as it retrieves nonessential metadata on the shortcuts. Myriad Shell extensions, over time, bring the Explorer UI to a crawl.

    Sexy is great, but I have to use it every day. It's just not worth making the UI dog even worse.

  3. Microsoft never was good at copying Apple... by Dominic_Mazzoni · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is this going to be another case of where Microsoft tries to copy Apple, but misses the point?

    Mac OS X 10.2 introduced "Quartz Extreme", which uses your graphics card to composite your screen. This meant that dragging windows around now required almost no CPU power at all. In 10.3, they introduced several 3-D effects to enhance the interface - most notably a rotating cube when you switch users.

    There are two key points that Microsoft seems to be missing, though:

    * Mac OS X looks exactly the same if you don't have a powerful enough graphics card, and screen redrawing is not too slow. Having a graphics card just makes the system more responsive because the CPU is doing less of the work.

    * The system degrades gracefully - if you don't have a powerful enough graphics card or run out of video RAM, certain 3D transitions may be skipped. But everything will still function, and everything will look the same.

    It's too early to tell, but it is starting to sound like Microsoft may be creating a new interface that requires a super graphics card, leaving those with only cheap integrated video with a completely different interface. To me that sounds like a recipe for tech support hell - novice users won't understand why their screen doesn't look like someone else's.