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

Welcome to the Present

[Oculus Habent]

Mac OS X uses the graphics card heavily for much of its interfaces. All Macs sport at least a Radeon 9200 (Mobility in the iBook G4), and Apple takes advantage of those cards in plenty of apps... note the multi-person video chat layout & details in iChat AV, or the compositing

That's not a knock on Windows - just an aside, really. The consumer graphics of PCs have been steadily improving, and there's little reason to not make use of that power. The only problems could be in the low-end motherboards offering cheap integrated video. Inevitably, some people are left out in the cold. Time to start moving to nForce or Radeon IGP, PCChips!

I wonder if they'll have a cool Genie effect for minimizing... ;)

Re:Welcome to the Present

[mcc]

Making use of the available graphics power just makes sense, and Apple was smart to be the first to realize this. After all, window compositing is something you're going to have to do at some point anyway; why not offload that task onto that part of the hardware that's actually designed to composit things?

But when you step into the realm of "hey, we've got this power-- let's waste it on something!". Then you're doing something really bad. Using pixel shaders to draw drop shadows on semitransparent textured menus or somesuch begins to fall into this territory.

In the first case you're taking the present advantages offered by the hardware and leveraging them to improve the consumer experience. In the second case you're taking advantages offered by your hardware and eliminating them-- removing the power of your 3D hardware (which technically is there for the applications, not the OS, to use) by making sure that the 3D hardware is continually tied up running the particle engine floating around the talking paper clip or Enlightenment logo or whatever. This degrades the potential consumer experience because it means the consumers don't get to use the hardware they paid for, the OS is too busy using it.

The difference between these two situations may be a little bit subtle and a larger bit subjective, but do you see the distinction here? Because given the curve of resource usage their OSes have followed in the past, I kind of doubt Microsoft does...

Re:Welcome to the Present

[fyngyrz]

Making use of the available graphics power just makes sense, and Apple was smart to be the first to realize this.

Mmm, no. Commodore was the first to really do this. The original Amiga had native graphics capabilties that still aren't available (like multiple resolutions onscreen) in PC hardware. The OS used them, and used them well. When a more advanced Amiga came with more graphics capabilities, the OS automatically configured them and used them as well. Apple was me too, much later. :)

But that's OK. Apple knows how to market -- that more than makes up for coming expensive, late and/or weakly with a number of things. Plus they provide a really nice end user experience.

Re:Welcome to the Present

[Junks Jerzey]

Mmm, no. Commodore was the first to really do this. The original Amiga had native graphics capabilties that still aren't available (like multiple resolutions onscreen) in PC hardware.

In the interest of historical accuracy, the Atari 400 and 800, first publicly available in 1979 (six years before the Amiga), allowed mixing multiple resolutions on screen. You built a display list of modes and the hardware interpreted them. You could mix text, graphics, and various resolutions of each. You could also trigger interrupts to occur on a specific display list command.

Re:Welcome to the Present

[pipingguy]

Hey, I *like* drop shadows and semi-transparency on menus and the like, it provides a "rich" environment and also helps to prioritize open windows. Perhaps you are a command line guru, I work with CAD software a lot and I appreciate the eye candy as a visual indicator. Then again, if it were up to me we'd toss all the CAD software and hardware and go back to board drafting - less "it's easy to revise because it's on the computer so let's do it a lot" attitude and more forethought required when designing.

"Keeping up to speed" these days has more to do with updating one's computer knowledge quotient and not enough to do with actually doing real-world stuff and improving skills in the disciplines that we use computers to help us with in the first place.

Shocking..

[Gorffy]

Using Windows as a way to sell more hardware!

Yeah, but today's high end

[Anonymous Coward]

Will be low-end by the time it actually gets released.

How silly

[grub]

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?)

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!" ?

Re:How silly

[Tasy]

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*

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.

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:How silly

[tc]

Okay, cluehammer time:

First, the GPU is the processing unit, the framebuffer is the memory where the bits are stored. Both are involved in any kind of rendering operation, 2D or 3D. The GPU operates on the bits on the framebuffer.

Second, modern graphics devices don't have any dedicated 2D hardware left in them. They all just use their 3D cores to do basic blit operations. Why waste silicon on specialist 2D blitting when you've got a gajillion megapixels of fillrate sitting right there in the 3D core?

Third, you are obviously unaware of how modern shader technology works. If I want to stream down 2D coordinates then I can do that just fine. In fact, shaders don't really care what all the numbers are, they just know that they are getting a certain number of inputs. If you choose to write a shader program that interprets them as coordinates to be transformed, then that's merely the common convention. Heck, I could just stream down 1D coordinates if I wanted to (actually, this is genuinely useful, if the coordinate is time and the shader is computing, say, a particle system). So there is really no inefficiency in using the 3D core to do 2D operations, because I can just transmit the minimum amount of data necessary by means of a suitably chosen shader.

As if windows wasnt slow enough

[TouchOfRed]

I really fail to see how this will be useful, and help productivity. Personally, i dont think an operating system needs to be that fancy. Just like those who use the console now, "back in my day, we had to use 2d interfaces"

Re:As if windows wasnt slow enough

[LincolnQ]

As I've experienced it, having an accelerator render your windows is really very helpful for usability. Rather than having things pop into place, you animate them. You run your animations quickly, so it's not annoying -- but a bit of motion can do several things:
- Draw your eye towards whatever is moving. Your peripheral vision can see something moving better than it can see a sudden pop.
- Give you a better sense of what is happening. If I press Minimize and the window disappears, I sometimes have to go hunting around my screen for where it disappeared to. If it animatedly shrinks, it helps your spatial memory to find it again. Having a decent graphics card to render the shrinking effect makes the transition smooth and nice.

Having a graphics card for your windowing system also allows for reflection, transparency, and other effects like that. I haven't seen a good use for those effects in user interface yet, but I think they could turn out useful.

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!

No biggie.

[stratjakt]

You can get a card today for ~80 bucks that fit the bill. Even PCI models, if you're that far out of the loop. By the time longhorn is released, they'll be commonplace.

Frankly, I can't wait to see this. All that GPU power of my 9800 is basically being wasted 99.99999999% of the time right now.

But...

[rune2]

Can it run Longhorn? oh wait....

not so much impact

[diegocgteleline.es]

IIRC, longhorn installer will check your graphics card (if it's lower than X fps then...) and will enable or disable 3D functions depending on if you've a good or bad graphics card

In short: the "3d mode" it won't be the one available. There will be a much lighter desktop available (somewhat like current XP or something like that, you'll miss all the 3d stuff but...)

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.
>_

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.

Great, but.

[PenchantToLurk]

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.

Re:Great, but.

[bogie]

That is the $64 question isn't it? Can Microsoft learn to make an OS that doesn't slow down massively over time. I just did a fresh install on my one machine that runs XP and its night and day. Over time XP just gets slower and slower. Of course the battle cry for MS defenders is "its the fault of 3rd party drivers and apps". Well, then make freaking OS that doesn't let "3rd party" apps run it into the ground. Why do I even need to use an app's uninstaller? Why by default doesn't XP know exactly how to remove every last bit of registry crap that got shoved in there in the first place? How come it take 10 minutes for the start menu to come up after I've been using the OS for a while? How come many explorer operations still lock up the OS and stop whatever work you doing cold? When will MS make an OS that you can actually multitask on no matter what's going on in the background? MS has a lot of work to do and somehow I get the feeling that they haven't learned their lessons yet.

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

Why spend $200-400 on a new card?

[csoto]

Just plunk down $500 for a Minimac.

Quartz Extreme makes good use of the graphic hardware of any Mac. Many applications use this to their advantage.

Re:3D Interfaces?

[akac]

No, not 3D interfaces in the way you're thinking. Think of it this way: every window is now an DirectX object. No need for redrawing by an app. Since every window is now a 3D object (one with only one pixel depth), you can do simple things like moving all the maintenance of a windows' DC from the app itself to the OS.

That's what Quartz Extreme does on OS X. This is just Quartz Extreme on PC.

Microsoft never was good at copying Apple...

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

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.

Re:Lobby

[stratjakt]

Oh shut the fuck up. 200 dollars my ass. I seriously am sick to fucking hell of "computar linux exparts" spouting such nonsense. Mod me down, call me a MSFT astoturfer or whatever. I absolutely hate intellectual dishonesty.

A Radeon 9200 is 36 dollars.

And no, you don't need it. Don't buy longhorn.

I don't know if you'd noticed, but you can't buy anything BUT a 3D card new these days. By the time longhorn is out, if you don't have a 3D card with PS2.0 support, that would make your PC about 5 years old. If you want the latest software, sometimes you have to upgrade.

I like the idea of using it for something other than games.

This will boost the market

[KalvinB]

There's been a slump in the computer sector due to the massive roll out around 2000. Not too many people buy a new computer within a couple years. It wouldn't surprise me if most people were still using the systems they bought 4 years ago. If they're using XP, it's a software upgrade only.

When XP came out my dad, a programmer for a large corporation, eventually bought a new computer from Dell with XP on it about a year ago. His previous system was a 350Mhz Dell. A programmer myself, my top system is a 1.2Ghz Duron running Win2K. I've had it for a couple years.

When Longhorn comes out it's time for an upgrade anyway and most people are going to buy prebuilt systems. Those prebuilt systems will have a (barely) sufficient graphics card.

GeForce FX 5500's are well under $100 already. In a couple years when Windows needs that kind of card to run, they'll be dirt cheap and onboard.

And it'll be just in time for when people are looking to upgrade their computer hardware anyway.

Complaining that MS is forcing upgrades is as silly as claiming ID Software forces hardware upgrades. I still use 2000, could use 98 if I wanted. I could also play Wolfenstein 3D and stick to a 386. Something needs to drive the market. If there was no need for better hardware, there'd be no better hardware. It's all artificially driven anyway. There's no objective reason why we need fancy pants graphics in any software. There's no objective reason we need high quality, drive space/CPU/Memory eating, audio/video.

In short, who cares that MS is making greater graphics demands for it's OS? They've done this with every release. Even Linux is making greater and greater demands. If you want the all the graphics pizzaz of Windows 3.11, use Windows 3.11. Some of us like an OS that looks "pretty."

If you want a plain text OS, then use DOS or ditch the GUI of Linux and have fun.

It's all about timed release.

[Trejkaz]

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

Not just eye candy

[miyako]

I'm anticipating that a lot of people are going to bitch and moan about how it's pointless eyecandy, but if Microsoft is able to do what Apple has been doing, then it could really add to the UI.
Things like expose and translucent windows can come in amazlingly handy in OS X (I've never found anything quite as useful as transparent terminal windows in OS X allowing me to have code open in one window, and documentation in the window behind it, and look through the code window to read documentation, especially when working with an API your not familiar with).
I think that as 3D accelerated UIs become more common, we'll see even more useful features popping up. It's not like there is any good reason for new computer to have a video card that won't run this, and the type of person who would upgrade would probably either already have a newer videocard anyway.
I just wish this would make it into X, but alas I suspect that it's the sort of thing that might take a while to get properly implemented and supported.

Re:Lobby

[jellomizer]

Guess what things change. Back in the 80s when the Mac was released People said the same thing. Why do you need a GUI Interface where we can get all that we need done in text mode. GUI is only for games and cute apps. Then by the Mid 90s GUI became nessary for most modern computing needs. Besides just allowing ability such as WYSWYG Word Processing. The windowing interface made it common to have multible apps open at the same time where you can see information on one app and the other. Yes Desqview could do that too in text mode but it was difficult to get the data you needed without the resolution. Then you were paying $200 or More just for a card that can do "Ultra High Resulution" 640x480 at 16 colors. Shortly after all the computers needed them there production price went down to match competition.

The same will happen with 3d cards after longhorn is released in some times in the distant future. The prices will go straight down, because there will be more then just 2 that will make a Longhorn compatible Video Card.

I can't justify this... if it was an option, sure, no problem, but a necessity... Nobody is forcing you to upgrade you will not be put in Jail if you use your 8088XT with MS DOS 2.0 with 256k of RAM and a CGA (2D 4 Colors at 320x240, 2 Colors 640x240, 16 color Text Mode) Video card. But honestly as time goes on the system requirements for new systems increase. It is the same for Most Linux Distributions, Mac OS, BSD, Solaris... It happens deal with it.

Well...

[i0wnzj005uck4]

I'd say that 3D acceleration is a Good Thing. After using QuartzExtreme on multiple macs, I have to say it makes a massive difference in most apps. It *does* speed up even moderately easy 2D things, like word processing apps. Also, where you notice the most difference is when switching between programs. Basically you've already got the images loaded in video ram, so a lot of stuff is instantaneous. And yeah, iChat AV wouldn't be quite as pretty on Win XP.

But the real question is: why are pixel shaders needed? Unless you're doing strange reflections or simulating bumps or playing around with reflectivity in realtime, I can't imagine a use for them. I certainly can't see why you'd need anything more than simple textured quads or triangles. Oh, and some sort of alpha support for shadows. All of that sounds like a TNT2-era card, like the one I used to use to do Quake II.

What this really feels like is Microsoft pushing hardware adoption again. Ever notice how new motherboards don't come with USB drivers for Windows XP? How you have to upgrade to the latest service pack to get USB support? Partly piracy curbing, and partly I think to keep a hold by forcing people to use approved hardware.

Re:Funny

[tomstdenis]

No the argument is the wording is misleading.

Just as /. types bitch that "MPAA cracking down on torrents" makes BitTorrent look bad so does saying "hardware X doesn't work in Linux [when comparing to Windows]" make Linux sound bad.

The reason why most wifi hardware doesn't work in Linux isn't a lack of trying. It's that hardware manufacturers GO OUT OF THEIR WAY to not support Linux.

For example, my friend got a "v4 Linksys" 802.11b card [iirc it was Linksys....] and found out that only the v3 card works in Linux.

Similarly the "SoundMAX" cmpci asus chipset [at least when first introduced] was purposefully different from the original cmpci chipset [and didn't work at least in the 2.4 kernels].

So it's not that Linux developers don't develop drivers [or try to] it's that hardware developers change specs and don't document things.

In the future just say "Linksys doesn't support their customers [*]" instead of saying "Linux doesn't support Linksys".

[*] Any BS about not being enough Linux users is just stupid. The benefit from taking the time to write competent Linux drivers [or just release the specs] would far outweigh the cost of doing so.

Tom

Okay

[SunFan]

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

Re:Is this necessary

[eV_x]

Let us all not forget that many years ago the video requirements of modern interfaces were substantially different than now. Things must progress and evolve. Interfaces will become heavier on some levels but easier on others, but you can clearly count on the advancements of technology to help OFFLOAD the strain to new devices and components. By Longhorn doing this, my guess is that my CPU will actually get less of a load on most things by making the graphics board do what it does better than a general purpose CPU.

You can't stop evolution simply because you can't keep up or you get comfortable.

I am consistently blown away by people who make comments like this:

"Am I one of the only ones who prefers usability, stability, and performance... to eye candy?"

Do you watch TV? Do you look at magazines? Style is here to stay my good friend. I don't know about you, but I DO care about what my OS looks like. If I wanted my OS to look and feel like a windowless brick room with flickering flourescent lighting, I'll skin it that way myself.

Do you even use modern software? Almost all of it is skinnable. Why do you think that's popular? Because people are bored? No, because modern software is generally an extension of your personality. My guess is yours is like vanilla ice cream.

On top of that, you are CLEARLY in the minority.

A couple scenarios:
Do you drive an old beater for a car because it "does the job"?
Do you live in a tiny room with an integrated flip down bed and sit on the floor to eat because it's a more efficient use of space?
Do you wear burlap clothes because it seems more practical?

I'm sure you talk tough on computer crap, but you probably are wasteful in other areas. People like me DO care. I care about my car having the latest features. I care about my house being more than just a few walls with a ceiling. I care about personality and enjoying what I'm working with and where I live.

"But do I really need to get new hardware... for eye candy?"

Mr. Vanilla: Do you realize that every game id and Valve release sells new hardware? Oh, that's right, you wouldn't know because you're too busy with your CGA graphics board playing pong so you're not forced to "upgrade".

Rock on - now excuse me while I go play my 8-Track.