Read more.Desktop applications to get a significant graphical speed boost.
Read more.Desktop applications to get a significant graphical speed boost.
Since Direct2D and DirectWrite maintain interoperability with some of the previously well known APIs such as GDI+ and DirectDraw, this shouldn't really be anything new for the developers on Windows platforms. Microsoft is well known for renaming much the same tech and spinning it a bit differently come new products. Remember OLE (object linking and embedding)? Well, we've seen same programming principles, same routines and much the same system-wide support later in COM, DCOM, "Automation", ActiveX,... you name it. Sure, interfaces have progressed (matured?) to where individual OSes were at the time, at the low level though, they remained much the same. They might have addressed some issues with past releases of their APIs, adding new procedures and function calls with same name as the old ones, only with a suffix "Ex" (or maybe some new suffix this time around?), and voila - a "new" product. This time around MS might have thought it would be a good idea if they actually started using their own APIs in their own GUIs, like the rest of the world was doing since the introduction of app accelerators of this and that kind (many of which weren't even developed by MS), besides that - nothing much has changed. I'm accelerating apps I write for windows (or any other OS for the matter) for at least 10 yeas now. About bloody time MS started as well! I wonder how long it will take them to realize they have same resources distributed over literally thousands of different DLLs and compact Windows 9 footprint to ~100MB? Now that would be the ultimate optimization!
So what have you being using for hardware acceleration of desktop apps on Windows for the past 10 years? To my mind an awful lot has changed in that period of time..
I'm not sure really what you were getting out other than all software is derivative (it is) but architecturally we've seen several major shifts on Windows with quite distinctly new opportunities for developers (e.g. WPF/Silverlight, Direct2d/write, Desktop composition, and Metro) wishing to use the MS ecosystem.
They are desperately trying to make Win8 sound better because so many people (myself included) have no interest in it at all!
It offers nothing for my wife and I over Windows 7! In fact it is worse as the Start screen is just an annoyance, the new look ugly and dull, and there's actually not a lot of improvements in it for the Average Joe over Windows 7.
They should have kept the Desktop versions and the Tablet versions separate, and then made it (for the Desktop) an upgrade for Windows 7 (Windows 7.1?).
Most software that everyday people use don't take advantage of the power that's there as it is! I'm an exception as I use Cinema 4D and 3D Studio Max, video editors, etc. but they run fine on Windows 7 and would benefit more from extra CPU cores, memory, SATA6Gb than a few measly tweaks to the OS...
GDI+ is out since WinXP to name one example. GDI has been out even long before but was really a rather poor attempt at accelerating 2D graphics.... DirectX, well, I can't even remember when it was first introduced,... anyway, before we even started accelerating in 3D we've been accelerating 2D. All this just using MS graphics solutions, I don't even wanna start listing any others, be it from other companies or on other areas (storage, network,...). Just to remind you, current Intel's or AMD's architectures instruction sets are way larger than what x386 stands for, one of the most notable ones being 64bit execution pipeline. Yes, we're more dependent on hardware being capable of accelerating "stuff" for us than having developing libraries providing us with easy to implement interfaces. The latter has been way more advanced in terms of features even in their first few implementations decades ago than even current hardware cares or is able to "accelerate" in any way. Regardless of all this, my point was that MS didn't care much to implement their own solutions system-wide, most obvious one being GUI. You really think those drop-down lists in Windows (any version, so far) sort using highly parallel GPUs that would do that orders of magnitude faster than using some funky named CPU based sort? Well, they haven't. They could've, though. For example.
What, you mean just like how they blogged about Windows 7 during development and pointed out things they'd improved? Damn them!
That may be true, and it's your choice not to buy it. However that said..
..you haven't bothered to find out or have chosen to ignore them. Informed opinion helps!
Don't forget the phone version too - that should be separate too right?It's 6.2 internally fyi for compatibility again.
...like faster rendering? Good point.
I'm sure getting bored of people telling me how terrible 8 is when they have an issue with one part of the OS that (for the most part) you don't use very much in practical terms. I get it, the start screen is all different and frightening and you don't like it but I'd sure like to see some concrete posts criticising something else. There's a lot to like in 8 for desktop users, chosing to ignore it all doesn't make it less true. I have no interest whatsoever in selling 8 to you, nor do I care if you chose to stick with 7 (it's a great OS) but I don't see the sense in writing off a whole OS based on the the start menu being changed. I too don't like how it's implemented in the RP - it's far from perfect - but it's hardly the core thing to my day using it for the past few months.
cameronlite (24-07-2012)
So, really, unless you were wrapping DirectX yourself for the past ten years then you've not really being using anything like what we have now as a toolset? The topic here is hardware accelerated desktop graphics (i.e. GPU) and really you haven't been able to do anything like what's on offer here (or even what's in 7) previously. That's kind of the point. It's also world's apart from GDI acceleration (which MS actually killed off at one stage). What exactly do you expect MS to provide you with that would be revolutionary in your terms?
Nothing. They already have provided us with tools "revolutionary in my terms", as you put it. It's just everyone else was using these tools way better and way before they ever did. That was my point. Another one, subtler as it might be and considering my previous point, is they only now "found out" (by actually using them) they can accelerate them way faster, make them easier to implement,... You see, most of the benchmarks provided in this article's charts are not some new accelerators at all. In fact, most of them were "accelerated" decades ago. You see now where I'm getting at? It does not really matter how they spin it, the fact they're competing with themselves proves my point. Does their newly discovered faith in themselves warrant a new sticker on an old product? You be the judge. I'm off to "accelerating" my knowledge in OpenCL (I roll my own, sorry!)![]()
Must say that I was on the fence when I last tried Windows 8 (before the current RP) and it didn't work well for my laptop on an SSD along with driver issues and slow performance and freezing I went off it quite quickly.
Out of pure curiosity I decided to once again try it out but this time, on my desktop! And I have to say after almost 3 days (very small time frame) I love it, overall it is a great improvement over Windows 7 and sure there's the new metro GUI but I don't really give a crap about it, its a much better job than Windows 7 start menu. My use of Windows 7 start menu consisted of hitting the windows key (who cares for a button... if you're a power user you use shortcuts!) and typing in the file/application I wanted to launch, it was far to much of a faff using the all programs menu just like it was in XP and versions before it, to slow but with the great search born from vista it was piss easy to just search for it in an instant (SSD based system makes it even better!) and hit enter there we go my programs launched, or I would have it as a shortcut on the desktop or pinned to the taskbar... None of this has changed for me, so far I have a few applications pinned to my taskbar no problem and ive even put shortcuts on the desktop but that part I still dont like, MS needs to sort that out before release and im hopeful they will as currently you have to go to metro and find it in all programs and right click then click open in browser (or file location?) then right click that new shortcut in the explorer to send to desktop, should have an integrated 'Send to desktop' in the metro right click menu and I guess it would be easy todo.
Now that is the only flaw ive seen so far, metro running at full screen doesnt bother me, when im searching for a program I dont have my eyes on opened applications so it doesnt bug me infact it makes it easier as I can search amazingly fast (even faster than Windows 7, insane) and if I want I can just use the metro as a big favourites bar type thing, the type that was on vista/win7 where you had like 7 applications in the start menu, as the metro interface is so customisable ive organised all mine to show MS Office suite in one section, Games in another and popular applications are immediately on the left, very very easy to find!.
Performance is great, no slow downs and it seems very nippy especially boot where its taking a mere 3 or 4 seconds to get into the desktop (post on my asus p8z68 is slowing me down now). Metro GUI is amazingly fast anyways and its just everything seems, better. The whole OS has had a level of refinement that I would say is worth an upgrade, the file transfer now has pause and it shows alot more information now than ever and its actually useful, much better than the previous implementations!. Task manager is also a massive improvement, I never really enjoyed task manager as it always felt like that old program left in the corner to die as it never really had much improvement over the years, it now looks nice and has a very SIMPLE interface for less experienced users and for the power user we have a lovely GUI that shows crap loads of information and is usable
, its the little things like it running smoother and easy to filter along with things like data usage (nice to see if you have a rogue application, i know its mostly due to tablets/phones but I find it a useful addition to desktop aswell ), startup programs are very quick to find and see what effect it has on booting, it was the clever thing to do as I never understood why it was in msconfig as it is an important factor as im sure we have all suffered from some silly program deciding it will autostart and the developers didnt think about giving you an option (HAMACHI im looking at you!). However they still have a startup tab in msconfig which needs to be deleted as all it says is " To manage statup items, use the startup section of task manager." also provides a link to open TM.
Oh and you also have services, along with a quick link to the actual services.msc, I think they have finally gone and asked themselves why is task manager so empty when it should be the heart of any 'tasks' the system has to perform so it was obvious that services and start-up programs needed to be accessible there, its just a massive win in my opinion.
Can really fault the system yet, apart from what ive mentioned and the little niggle of starting in metro as sometimes you just dont want to boot straight into the metro GUI, you want to boot to desktop so instead of doing a long winded work around I just installed the stardock thing, MS needs to add this simply option as it is needed. I would also like to say that keyboard shortcuts are a massive win now, they always have been but its even better now, maybe im blind or my memory is foggy but i dont recall windows key + X doing much in previous versions but now when you do that shortcut it brings up a menu (like a right click) that has quick access to pretty much everything a power user needs.
OH and one last thing, it maybe me but I swear alt tabbing has been greatly improved, its very fast switching from desktop to starcraft and vice versa.
Windows 8 is feeling great, minor niggles and thats just because it isnt finished.
By your own (odd) logic OpenCL is nothing new eitherAs I said, all software is derivative but to claim little has changed is nonsensical given the raft of changes in both Windows and the toolsets to use them in the last decade. If anything you could accuse MS of being too experimental, abandoning things far too quickly. If you expected "nothing" I don't see what your issue is..
You sir, get my thanks not for the fact you like it but taking the time to explain why. I really don't care if people don't, but it's pretty hard to explore why when it's "cos it's all ****e".
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)