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

Yes.

[James_Duncan8181]

In other news, Intel graphics chips said to be designed for minimal power draw rather than all out performance. This power draw is decidedly not beaten by running a software renderer that will stress the CPU till it sucks power like an electric chair as the CPU is only general hardware, not specific. More at 11.

Re:Yes.

[GigaplexNZ]

Servers are plugged in at all times, and we still want minimal power draw to save money and heat output (and for people who care, the environment). It isn't just about battery life.

Re:Yes.

[afidel]

Yes, but running something like a 9600GSO will require less power than pushing 8 cores on the Core i7! The TDP on the Core i7 is 130W, my 9600GSO has a max power draw of 65W. Not only that but you can get PLAYABLE framerates, like 30fps@1080P.

Re:Yes.

[MadMidnightBomber]

Aye; "wannabe computer companies worry about clock speed. Real computer companies worry about cooling."

Unbalanced comparison: cost

[Anonymous Coward]

How much is an 8-core system going to cost vs the system with integrated graphics? At that point, it seems wiser to invest more money in a graphics card than in faster CPUs if that's what you're going to be doing.

By far the more useful thing is that it's probably better for development because the driver developers will have a reference point of how the graphics are supposed to render. Also, larger game companies will be able to point out these differences to get bug fixes out of the graphics card companies. "Your graphics card renders this incorrectly with regards to the reference, fix it" is much more forceful than "your graphics card behaves differently than your competitor".

Re:Unbalanced comparison: cost

[Lord Crc]

Also, larger game companies will be able to point out these differences to get bug fixes out of the graphics card companies. "Your graphics card renders this incorrectly with regards to the reference, fix it" is much more forceful than "your graphics card behaves differently than your competitor".

DirectX already contains a reference rasterizer, which is better suited for that. This thing seems instead to be meant for applications that doesn't necessarily need more than "interactive" frame rates, but do need to run on a broad class of machines. Or for easing development of applications which could benefit from hardware acceleration when available (image processing f.i.).

From the MSDN page on WARP:

We don't see WARP10 as a replacement for graphics hardware, particularly as reasonably performing low end Direct3D 10 discrete hardware is now available for under $25. The goal of WARP10 was to allow applications to target Direct3D 10 level hardware without having significantly different code paths or testing requirements when running on hardware or when running in software.

From the summary:

[ben0207]

"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."

So the game went from unplayable at the lowest settings possible, to being still unplayable at the lowest settings possible?

Great move MS, youv'e really solved a problem there.

Re:From the summary:

[WTF Chuck]

Except the integrated graphics on a bunch of 'Vista Capable' laptops DON'T do DirectX10 or Aero... but if a patch to Vista (or Windows 7) will get Aero working on directX10 on the CPU... a buttload of PCs that CAN'T currently do Aero, now CAN.

But at what performance cost. If we are talking about the whole "Vista Capable" debacle, aren't we talking about low spec machines that coughed and wheezed when running the low-end version of the OS. Great, lets add 3D rendering to the processor load on those machines.

I like the idea of rendering the graphics in the CPU rather than an expensive accelerator card for one-off situations, as long as that feature can be turned off. But then, I'm not a gamer, and I'm not into all the eye-candy. If I were a gamer or into eye candy, there's no way this side of hell that I would want to render the graphics in the CPU. I would get the best video card money could buy.

Re:From the summary:

[jonaskoelker]

be able to run Aero. Running Crysis was just a way of demonstrating the capability.

I think running Aero at would be a better way to demonstrate that capability.

Re:From the summary:

[Bert64]

And if the CPU is pegged rendering the GUI, what effect is this going to have on whatever the user is actually trying to do?

Grrrreat!

[Chordonblue]

Does anyone else remember the 'good old days' when certain 3D graphics cards (the ViRGE comes to mind), were actually SLOWER than software renderers?

The term used then was 'decelerator' and I think MS's stupid decision to (once again) bow to Intel on this should share the same term.

How long will it take for true 3D acceleration to become an expected standard feature on PC's?

Re:Grrrreat!

[A Life in Hell]

Sadly, never as long as the GUI works most Joe and Jane sixpacks will be just fine; and yes I do know about the Vista debacle but I think the point is still valid.

How is that sad? If people don't need it, it seems like a waste of money to me.

Well...I think it's kinda cool.

[Antlerbot]

Say you get a new computer with a decent CPU, but no graphics card for work. You guys remember that thing, right? Work? Spreadsheets and documents and...yeah. That stuff.

Anyway, now you can play Tomb Raider on it. The original one. Sweet.

lol

[DigitalisAkujin]

/. is silly

they made this to run the desktop effects

not crysis xD

Re:lol

[Cyberax]

DirectX 10 on CPU is _NOT_ intended for games.

It'll be used for rendering the Aero interface. And it requires several orders of magnitude less computing power. Hell, even my old 4-year old ATI Radeon 9600 can render Aero just fine.

Games make a useful test-case, though.

Re:lol

[Cyberax]

Sure. But you also need good-quality 3D drivers. This way Microsoft will be able to run Aero even on plain VESA framebuffer.

Also, consider this: the upcoming Intel Larrabee graphics card will consist of 64 independent programmable x86-compatible cores. NVIDIA CUDA also allows direct GPU programming.

I bet this renderer will be adapted to run directly on such GPUs bypassing their 'native' rendering pipelines. That'll give Microsoft freedom to experiment with new feature such as ray tracing without any help from hardware vendors.

Imagine a DX 10 game on an 800mhz CPU -SSE/MMX

[WiiVault]

To think that anybody would want to run a DX10 game on an 800mhz no SSE CPU is insane, even considering the company involved. Perhaps for DX 7,8 and perhaps 9 games this might be reasonable (though not likely) but jesus, no thanks!

Re:For server use, I guess?

[DigiShaman]

My guess is that Microsoft wanted their next OS to be virtualized on a server and yet still be able to run applications written for Direct-X.

Re:For server use, I guess?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Is MS going to rewrite their GUI layers on top of their 3d API a la Apple?

They did that in Vista. They did it so poorly that customers sued over being sold "Vista-capable" machines which weren't -- including Intel video cards that weren't enough.

Meanwhile, Ubuntu runs on Compiz, which does just fine on Intel -- and Apple has been so far ahead that someone took the audio from one of the original Vista presentations, and combined it with video from Tiger, thus showing that really everything "new" about Vista was just playing catch-up with Tiger, while Leopard was just around the corner.

More to the point: I believe it's now possible to run a Windows Server without a video card -- or, indeed, any GUI at all, depending on what apps you need.

Re:Quickly, bash microsoft.

[RiotingPacifist]

How about the vendors learn to code and stop writing shitty drivers! I mean they have the full spec on the cards and still cant produce a driver as stable as some guys reverse engineering! Vista had a driver model ready for how long? Its not even like the change was unexpected.

Re:Quickly, bash microsoft.

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

And it's not just the GPU companies. Creative took their sweet time releasing Vista drivers for their previous generation of audio cards. I believe they were actually released after Vista was, and they're still just dreadful.

My Audigy 2 is not that old, but after much fighting I still couldn't get 4.1 sound and EAX to work in any capacity. Part of it was Creative insisting on their own competing implementation of how to configure speakers which does not play nicely with the one included with Vista. Other issues are due to the general crummy nature of the drivers. Still other issues apparently only occur on Vista64 with 4 or more GB of RAM. Just awful. Eventually, I had to stop using the Audigy and use the onboard RealTek branded Intel HDA chip which seems to work fine, though the sound is less clean than what I got with my Audigy.

Another piece of hardware, a Playstation/Gamecube/Dreamcast to USB controller adapter, from EMS Production (http://www.hkems.com) won't work with Vista64 either. Two years in and the company, still alive, has yet to release any Vista64 drivers and the Vista32 drivers are still listed as "beta".

The annoying thing here is that the damn thing shouldn't even *need* an adapter. In Linux it is simply recognized as a HID gaming device and works fine. Vista actually recognizes it as such and DirectX controller diagnostic program can properly read values from the controller, but Vista steadfastly refuses to list the device in the "Game Controllers" control panel dialog, making it pretty useless for anything.

Sigh... at least both these pieces of hardware work perfectly well in Linux...

Re:Oh boy.

[Spy der Mann]

I had been always confused by software advertising (especially Microsoft's). When they say it (i.e. a new version of Windows) would run faster than previous versions, I thought: "Hey! This will work great on my old computer!" - until I saw that the product requirements included the next generation of CPUs. WTF?

Granted, it may be for some of the new CPU instructions that eliminated latency, but still, I felt kinda deceived.

Re:Oh boy.

[supernova_hq]

In every quake (except 4), all hit areas are equal.
Please hand over your geek card.