Submitted by “One of the areas of any release of Windows that receives a significant amount of testing and scrutiny is the performance of graphics – desktop graphics all the way to the most extreme CAD and game graphics. The amazing breadth of hardware supported for Windows and the broad spectrum of usage scenarios contributes to a vibrant ecosystem with many different goals – from just the basics to the highest frame rates on multiple monitors possible. In engineering Windows 7 we set out to improve the ‘real world’ performance of graphics as well as continue to improve the most extreme elements of graphics. […] This post looks at this spectrum of engineering as well as the different ways performance is measured. Ultimately we want to inform you about what we have done in engineering Windows 7, while we leave room for the many forums that will compare and contrast Windows 7 on different hardware and in different scenarios.”
the GDI are great! I wish they had implimented this kind of thought process a while ago.
It’s very nice to see such a coordinated effort to improve already quite snappy Windows graphics. Memory savings also look impressive.
Thank you for the awesome link – it really goes into detail as to the features added and improving GDI performance because that was a major let down since Windows Vista which resulted in GDI being unaccelerated. With the acceleration hopefully it’ll mean greater snappiness. With that being said, however, it would be great if vendors invested some of their healthy profits into porting their applications from GDI/GDI+ to Direct2D and DirectWrite.
We’ll probably see that once important parts of Windows make the leap. Today Explorer is still using GDI since there wasn’t enough time/alignment of the various components to do it this release. But as with anything, you first have to line you ducks up in a row before you can start shooting them.
True, I truly hope they do – but I am not hopeful given that they have failed to update their bundled applications to use the latest command control/widget kits. I really would like to see some improvements but Microsoft seem to more concerned about something else besides fit and finish.
Sure, I can understand wanting to keep the old libraries for backwards compatibility but at the same time I think that what they should do is ensure that all the components are using the latest technology bundled with the operating system. Nothing is worse than a company who says, “we’ve got this awesome technology with all these great features – but we’ve decided not to use it”. Doesn’t exactly spark confidence to the third party software vendors as to whether the investment is worth their while.
Edited 2009-04-28 13:14 UTC
From what I see; there’s a very good reason for MS to do that — their v1.0 generally always suck. They tried to use “WinFX” api and I think they stopped “eating their own dog-food” since then.
Look at the articles on the Engineering blog, almost all of them show reliance on “real-world data”. Maybe it’s because Vista happened to be a rushed product…