Microsoft details Windows 8's improved graphics performance

There's a nice video of this here: http://youtu.be/qtpnVdnkUL0 (HardOCP embedded it in its new item).

My understanding is that D3D 11.1 will be available on 7, too, but probably the OS speed improvements won't be implemented there (but it will still be great for game and application writers).

Honestly I am excited for Windows 8 and I will buy a system builder license of it once my new rig is built. Most people just hate it because they hate change or are too "stuck in the past" to give it a fair chance. I don't doubt there are some legitimate scenarios where it may be worse than what we have, but the people those scenarios are applicable to are few and far between I'm sure.

Nothing new, these were available since DirectX11 and tessellation is independent from CPU. You just upload a basic/cage geometry with a (few) heightmaps to the (DX11 level) GPU, then geometry will be tessellated based on view distance and other factors.

And I think those faster rendering speeds are because of absence of eye candies provided in previous Windows versions. I won't call it a big optimization.

Unfortunately you can't simply put the whole democratic into the category of "They will adapt" and I also don't see this as people being "stuck in the past" more along the line that people like what works, and I'm sorry to say Windows 7 GUI just works better, simply put its more efficient use of the workspace available. I gave it a chance and don't see a need for it to exist. I'm glad to see rectangles will now render 438% faster, and it has to, the GUI is filled with them. I honestly don't care how fast it renders Paragraphs and Lines because its not likely to be noticeable, this is just Microsoft throwing around numbers for the sake of throwing around numbers. If you enjoy the change that's fine with me, I just evolved past the finger painting stage of my life when I was 5 years old.

Well said. Neither do I call it a BIG optimisation. I think it's quite small in fact...

While I agree with you that this graphic rendering improvement won't be noticeable to regular users, and that it might not be enough reason to persuade folks from upgrading from Vista or Win7, it is still a welcomed improvement. It also means we can run Windows 8 with lower hardware specs and archive better performance than previous Windows. Improvement in software efficiency is too often neglected due to the advancement in hardware. I am quite excited about Win8 improvement, although I am still up in the air about Metro UI after using it for a few months.

Depends on what you call low spec hardware, no idea about NVIDIA but AMD isn't going to release any Windows 8 compatible drivers for pre RadeonHD 5000 graphics cards which they (RadeonHD 4000 specially) still kick *** of the some new 5000 and 6000 series. Yes, Windows 8 is equipped with some standard drivers for previous cards but don't expect them to provide great performance while using OpenGL and OpenCL powered applications/games on Windows 8.

So in action you won't see any difference because they are forcing new hardware; Just a few useless charts and bars IMO.

That's nice Microsoft... Still Aero>Metro. Mouse>touchscreen. Icons>tiles.

I wonder what hardware they tested this on?
Anyone know?

This better 2D hardware acceleration includes Windows 8 Aereo ???

It's nice that Microsoft made some improvements, that's what I would expect from a newer OS, otherwise why upgrade. In reality I don't see these improvements making that big of a difference, I for one can't read multiple pages of text in a couple of seconds, so the fact that the computer can display them quicker doesn't really mean much. Also, you will need the proper graphics card with updated drivers to get these increases.

In the end it's going to run at 60FPS to sync with monitor and your GPU will always stay idle. Are you seriously going to stress a highly threaded monster with a few ugly rectangles scattered around screen? Give me a break

Ok, I'll admit limited knowledge here. How will this improvement affect how Adobe flash player works? Will you be able to see a marked improvement in frame rates here as well? My PC is currently running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit with a 2.8 Ghz dual core processor and the maximum 4 GB memory. While flash does run smoothly most of the time, I do still occasionally experience some slow down. If Windows 8 will improve how the flash player operates, I would definitely be on board for a new operating system.

Oh, so you like AMD. That explains it. Next you'll tell everyone you voted for Obama too.

Wow. 0 for 2. I run an Intel Pentium D and I did not vote for Obama. Anything else?

If only they woke up to the fact that everything could still work with the classic aero interface...

ROFL
+1

Windows 8 doesnt have aero