MS Says Windows 7 Will Run DirectX 10 On the CPU

arcticstoat writes "In what could be seen as an easy answer to the Vista-capable debacle, Microsoft has introduced a 'fully conformant software rasterizer' called WARP (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform) 10, which does away with the need for a dedicated hardware 3D accelerator altogether. Microsoft says that WARP 10 will support all the features and precision requirements of Direct3D 10 and 10.1, as well as up to 8x multi-sampled anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering and all optional texture formats. The minimum CPU spec needed is just 800MHz, and it doesn't even need MMX or SSE, although it will work much quicker on multi-core CPUs with SSE 4.1. Of course, software rendering on a single desktop CPU isn't going to be able to compete with decent dedicated 3D graphics cards when it comes to high-end games, but Microsoft has released some interesting benchmarks that show the system to be quicker than Intel's current integrated DirectX 10 graphics. Running Crysis at 800 x 600 with the lowest quality settings, an eight-core Core i7 system managed an average frame rate of 7.36fps, compared with 5.17fps from Intel's DirectX 10 integrated graphics."

Comments

Re:Quickly, bash microsoft.

[Ralish]

I'm sorry, but Peter Gutmann is not a reputable source for accurate information on Vista graphics, or anything related to Vista at all. Several of his claims have been widely proven to be exaggerated or downright false, and when asked to provide proof, he has refused. His claims have been picked apart on numerous sites both directly and indirectly through the sourcing of benchmarks.

I suggest you read these articles for instance, which provide a good overview:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=673
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=718

Some of his points are admittedly valid, there are genuine flaws in the new graphics driver device spec., but he's clearly most concerned with pushing an anti-Vista agenda, even if that requires resorting to FUD.

Choose your "experts" carefully.

Re:Oh boy.

[RedK]

Windows 95 didn't invent disk compression. Stacker and Doublespace were some products that did the same thing for DOS.