Windows 7 allows DirectX 10 acceleration on the CPU

Windows 7’s new WARP system can run Direct3D 10 and 10.1 on the CPU, doing away with the need for a hardware 3D accelerator in some circumstances

It turns out that Intel isn’t the only company that’s looking at performing Direct3D in software; Microsoft has just announced that it’s also planning to introduce a new feature called WARP in Windows 7 that allows you to run Direct3D 10 and 10.1 on the CPU.

In what could be seen as an easy answer to the Vista-capable debacle, where there was some confusion as to what 3D graphics hardware you specifically needed to run Windows Vista’s Aero interface, Microsoft has introduced what it calls 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 details the new feature in this document on MSDN, in which the company says that WARP 10 will support all the features and precision requirements of Direct3D 10 and 10.1. The feature also supports up to 8x multi-sampled anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering and all optional texture formats. The minimum CPU spec needed is just a simple 800MHz CPU, and it doesn’t even need MMX or SSE, although Microsoft says that WARP 10 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.

Of course, this low level of performance isn’t going to threaten ATI and Nvidia in the world of PC gaming, but it could mean that Windows 7’s 3D desktop interface will now be accessible to everyone, whatever graphics card they own.

Microsoft says that the technology is also targeted at casual games, explaining that ‘the majority of the best selling game titles for Windows are either simulations or casual games, neither of which requires high performance graphics, but both styles of games greatly benefit from modern shader based graphics and the ability to scale on hardware if present.’ Microsoft also points out that the technology could be useful for ‘emulators and virtual environments that are attempting to display advanced 3D graphics.’
Resource - Custom PC

Lightweight Windows 7 pre-Beta on Eee PC 1000H looks very promising

Sure, Windows 7 will run just fine on a thick slab of screaming desktop, but what everyone's really wondering is how it'll perform on laptops, or better yet, down-market netbooks. The very same stage that put Linux into the grubby hands of the Wal-mart consumer and forced Microsoft to extend the life of XP just to stay in the game. It's all pre-beta stuff for now mind you, but Laptop loaded up its early Windows 7 build onto an Eee PC 1000H (10-inch, 1.6GHz Atom, 1GB RAM) with decent results. For the most part, it ran "pretty well" with Laptop managing to get the netbook's features working from the XP drivers supplied by ASUS. And just as Microsoft demonstrated, the relatively lightweight Microsoft OS required just 485MB of RAM when Windows 7 was fully loaded, sans applications of course. Hot. There were some problems with graphics performance as demonstrated by jumpy, 720p video playback and video conferencing over Skype. Still, pre-beta is exactly that, pre-beta. Drop a gold-release Windows 7 OS onto an Eee PC convertible touchscreen and Microsoft and ASUS might be on to something come mid 2009.
Resource -Engadget

Why 7?

There's been a lot of lively discussion since I confirmed yesterday that the official name for the next version of the Window client operating system will be "Windows 7" about how we got to the number "7."

I'll say up front, that there are many ways to count the releases of Windows and it's been both a trip down memory lane and quite amusing to read all the different theories about how we got to the number "7."

Anyway, the numbering we used is quite simple. The very first release of Windows was Windows 1.0, the second was Windows 2.0, the third Windows 3.0.

Here's where things get a little more complicated. Following Windows 3.0 was Windows NT which was code versioned as Windows 3.1. Then came Windows 95, which was code versioned as Windows 4.0. Then, Windows 98, 98 SE and Windows Millennium each shipped as 4.0.1998, 4.10.2222, and 4.90.3000, respectively. So we're counting all 9x versions as being 4.0.

Windows 2000 code was 5.0 and then we shipped Windows XP as 5.1, even though it was a major release we didn't' want to change code version numbers to maximize application compatibility.

That brings us to Windows Vista, which is 6.0. So we see Windows 7 as our next logical significant release and 7^th in the family of Windows releases.

We learned a lot about using 5.1 for XP and how that helped developers with version checking for API compatibility. We also had the lesson reinforced when we applied the version number in the Windows Vista code as Windows 6.0-- that changing basic version numbers can cause application compatibility issues.

So we decided to ship the Windows 7 code as Windows 6.1 - which is what you will see in the actual version of the product in cmd.exe or computer properties.

There's been some fodder about whether using 6.1 in the code is an indicator of the relevance of Windows 7. It is not.

Windows 7 is a significant and evolutionary advancement of the client operating system. It is in every way a major effort in design, engineering and innovation. The only thing to read into the code versioning is that we are absolutely committed to making sure application compatibility is optimized for our customers.

Resource - Windows Vista Team Blog