WARP10 Brings in DirectX 10 CPU Acceleration

[btarunr]

Back when Redmond was gearing up for the launch of Windows Vista, the PC hardware industry had its own plans, of brandishing support for the new operating system. Microsoft then came up with its "Windows Vista-Capable" hardware tag, which eventually put the company into an embarrassing situation where users would rant about their hardware, more so branded PCs and notebooks, being anything but capable of the OS. That was because vendors sold PCs with dated DirectX 9 supportive hardware, which didn't quite qualify to be "capable" of the DirectX 10 API the OS shipped with. The company even saw itself facing charges for false marketing.

To avoid that happening with the next release of the OS, Windows 7, Microsoft shaped up the Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP10). WARP10 is a component of the DirectX 10 API that provides software rasterization for all DirectX 10 calls, using every available hardware component the PC has. Think of it as 100% software acceleration in the absence of compliant hardware. It is shipping in beta form in the November 2008 DirectX SDK. Now, even a Pentium III 800 MHz will be "capable" of rendering Direct3D 10 scenes, as Microsoft puts it. With this, Microsoft guarantees that any and every PC or notebook carrying the "Vista Capable" sticker would be able to use every single feature the OS has to offer, including DirectX 10. WARP10 benefits from multi-threaded and multi-core CPUs, with specific benefits coming out from the availability of SSE4.1 instruction sets. Microsoft claims that even the CPU in Windows Vista's minimum system requirements list will be capable of WARP10. The excitement however, dies down when you find out just how capable today's CPUs are in accelerating 3D: An Intel Core i7 was able to "run" Crysis, on a resolution of 800 x 600, churning out a proud 7.36 frames per second (at least it managed to beat Intel's best integrated graphics). To learn more about WARP10, visit this page.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[btarunr]

Many Thanks to Imperialreign for submitting the news.

 

[sideeffect]

Software based Directx10 LOL. I can almost see the 99% CPU usage just to rendor Aero glass

How is this helpful to anyone except as a gimmick?

 

[Necrofire]

Does this mean Aero for any system?

I like the benchmarks.
What I want to see is a benchmark for a game that's actually played more often, like WoW or CS:S, or even Quake 3 arena. Anything besides that pretty pos Crysis.

 

[btarunr]

How is this helpful to anyone except as a gimmick?

It indeed is a gimmick. Tomorrow one can't sue MS for false marketing, and it doesn't affect the business of discrete graphics manufacturers anyway.

 

[Binge]

So... now people with skulltrail can get a 7fps boost in crysis w/dedicated proc? AWESOME!

 

[Necrofire]

Who actually plays Crysis on a daily basis?

It doesn't take much to render aero, so why would my cpu be pegged while moving a window around?

 

[ThorAxe]

Who actually plays Crysis on a daily basis?

Me...and I still love it.

 

[Binge]

Me...and I still love it.

+1 Crysis Wars Battlefield TIaction every day

 

[polaromonas]

The Future is Fusion??

This WARP10 will put AMD in the very good position. It will bring AMD's "The Future is Fusion" strategy to user sooner before AMD even bring its hardware fusion to the table. Good call MS. Although I'm wondering about the power efficiency with this technology because GPU will do this task with less power consumption while CPU is originally not design for it.

 

[Assimilator]

All we need now is for MS to take this a step further and allow WARP10 to utilise GPUs that are only capable of hardware DX9 (and lower). I'd very much like to see what sort of numbers a 7950 GX2 running WARP10 would be able to pull - I'll bet it would kick the ass of many of the lower-end 8000- and 9000-series cards.

Looking further ahead, it would be great if NVIDIA and AMD could get CUDA/CAL running on older GPUs - think of how much more folding power would be available.

Also, 7FPS on Crysis, using only CPU acceleration, is pretty f'n impressive when you consider that Crysis brings most dedicated graphics cards to their knees anyhow.

 

[Mussels]

purely for OS use. not for gaming at all.

Look at it for laptop use, for example: its one more way to cut back on the GPU's and focus on faster CPU's.

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

purely for OS use. not for gaming at all.

Look at it for laptop use, for example: its one more way to cut back on the GPU's and focus on faster CPU's.

so the person that benefit most is intel no?

 

[Mussels]

so the person that benefit most is intel no?

until the star trek people sue them for using warp 10, lol. then everyone loses.

P.S anyone find that press release utterly idiotic, they rant about 'dx9' hardware not running the 'dx10' os, when all of aero and so on is purely rendered on SM2.0, a DX9 class feature?

 

[Octavean]

If they can do this they can get DX10 to work in XP,....

 

[Mistral]

until the star trek people sue them for using warp 10, lol. then everyone loses.

P.S anyone find that press release utterly idiotic, they rant about 'dx9' hardware not running the 'dx10' os, when all of aero and so on is purely rendered on SM2.0, a DX9 class feature?

Beat me to the Star Trek comment...
The rant not about dx9 hardware but about dx9 "supportive hardware", which I take it in most cases means Intel's integrated 3D decelerators.

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

Beat me to the Star Trek comment...
The rant not about dx9 hardware but about dx9 "supportive hardware", which I take it in most cases means Intel's integrated 3D decelerators.

declerators lol, its not funny i have one

 

[Lillebror]

If they can do this they can get DX10 to work in XP,....

Not really. Its alot more technical than that

 

[v-zero]

I'm sorry, but "slapped with sues" isn't English.

 

[Octavean]

Not really. Its alot more technical than that

I know.

I don't use XP anymore nor do I really care to use XP, I was just kidding

 

[imperialreign]

If they can do this they can get DX10 to work in XP,....

kinda my thinking - but, MS personnel have said before it could be done, MS just didn't want to spend the money on the development of an XP implimentation . . . they've also said in hind-sight, it was a dumb move on their part not to. Sad thing is, there were independant users who had started the project of coding DX10 features to XP, but the project fell apart for reasons unknown (conflicting user ideas, IIRC) - either way, they were off to a great start, sad to have seen it collapsed . . . .


I think this is more of a "cover-their-butts" kinda move with the new OS - to ensure they don't recieve the brunt of the blame if new OEM pre-built rigs meet the minimum specs for OS7, but don't really cough up the performance needed for it.

The whole "Vista Capable" thing was a huge fiasco, and I don't think MS is 100% to blame for it, either. I think a lot of the OEMs were trying to capitalize off the yet-unreleased OS, and all the hype and publicity surrounding it.

 

[niko084]

Now this is what I was talking about like 2 years ago... Finally.

 

[Error 404]

So my Dell laptop will be able to run Aero?
This release should be interesting though: we might see a kind of SLI between GPU and CPU!

 

[Scrizz]

any acceleration is good in my book

 

[lemonadesoda]

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