Roughly half of today's PCs won't be able to take advantage of the 'Aero Glass' compositor found within Microsoft's upcoming Vista software, due at the end of this year. The estimate was one of the conclusions cited in a report released late Thursday by Jon Peddie Research. The fault, Peddie reported, was that the low-cost integrated graphics controllers customers have chosen process the 2D windows of Windows XP and Windows 2000 just fine, but lack the bells and whistles necessary to process the Windows Desktop Compositing Engine used in Vista. About 63 percent of the 203 million PCs sold used an integrated graphics controller, JPR reported.
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Member since:2005-06-29
Yep, and so you'll want to have a 128MB card 
.
I asked a DWM project manager what Vista does when you run out of VRAM. He said it tells you you're out and tells you to shut it off otherwise it'll be really slow. I actually doubt many people with decent (128MB) cards are going to run into this problem often.
Say an average window is 800x600 pixels. At 32bits per pixel (24bit color, plus alpha) that's 800*600*4/(1024*1024) = 1.875MB. So, with a 128MB card you've got around 50 of those windows. They might be using a few more bits per pixel, but anyway I doubt you'll find yourself limited to fewer than 40 windows on a decent card, and we're talking about large windows too.
They could also implement a swap out to main RAM for the case of too many windows. Or, they could simply not store the buffer of the last seen windows, then draw it again if needed (both of these would incur more time if it's needed for a compositing, but I think they could be done quickly enough that the user wouldn't notice).
They could also compress old window buffers (they may be doing this, I have no idea). I imagine the buffers would usually compress easily to 75% of their original space.
You guys do realize Apple has been doing this for years and have you heard people (with enough system RAM) complain about how many windows they can have at once?
Member since:2005-07-06
They could also implement a swap out to main RAM for the case of too many windows. Or, they could simply not store the buffer of the last seen windows, then draw it again if needed (both of these would incur more time if it's needed for a compositing, but I think they could be done quickly enough that the user wouldn't notice).
Vista has virtual memory system and a scheduler for graphics. A graphics resource can exist exclusively either in GPU memory, system memory, or on disk, and depending on the GPU capability and driver model, can be swapped in and out of each store or used directly from the respective stores. I can't speak to the methods they use for window buffers (haven't checked).
Edited 2006-02-13 10:46
Member since:
2005-09-28
Yes but application require more VRAM for open more application windows in same time.
> And WPF will actually increase system RAM available. Because it will be moving:
> 1.) The main drawing buffer into VRAM
> 2.) Each applications drawn self into VRAM