Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

More information on DirectX

steven_sinofsky — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:54:46 GMT

If you're looking for more information in DirectX see the blog http://blogs.msdn.com/directx/.

--Steven

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

Xenan — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:03:28 GMT

I'm glad to see this GDI bottleneck has been solved. I was always wondering why when application A was slow or not responding, switching to application B was slow as well. As application B was almost idle, not consuming much CPU power, this didn't make sense to me, other than thinking the whole graphic subsystem was single threaded. Because of the system wide lock this was in fact more or less the case. Fortunately this has been solved.

Keep up the good work!

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

locolorenzo — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:21:12 GMT

As I attempt to write drivers for the 852/855/915 GME this commenttary is timely.

With the results that I have been produced in my initial driver following the guides that are included in WDK Beta for Windows 7, I have started to appreciate what the Windows 7 Developers have gone through to make the graphics driver have a less significant impact on system performance.

I will go through some of the suggested to sites to understand this a little more deeply.

Thanks for the Great Work and this helpful Blog.

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

someone — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:32:47 GMT

This is one of the best topics covered on this blog and an excellent post too. Besides improved performance in WDDM 1.1, what are the other benefits? I know for one that it uses DirectX 10/SM 4.0 instead of DX9.0/SM2.0 and enables DXVA-HD. What are the requirements for Direct2D/DirectWrite, do they require WDDM 1.1? or D3D11 capable hardware? Besides a few handful of 3D games, is DX10 being used in any other OS component or third party app?

Also, when will Direct3D 11, Direct2D and DirectWrite be available on Vista? Are they included in Vista SP2?

Lastly, I've been seeing some display corruption using WDDM 1.1 (Intel GMA X3100) near the taskbar when the desktop is covered by an app window. Since WDDM 1.1 drivers are in beta, I hope it is fixed by RTM. My only graphics wish left now is if WDDM was updated to make the Win32 console-based apps work in full-screen mode.

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

Domenico — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:58:55 GMT

Nice post!!

I try more game with

Nvidia 8800 GTX

Nvidia 8600 GT (laptop)

Nvidia 7600 GS (old PC)

and work great!

next week i try Nvidia GTX 275 in Windows 7 .

Great Work!!

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

jestempies — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 01:51:46 GMT

Very impressive and much needed optimizations. Can't wait for the official release :)

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

cpupro — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 03:11:33 GMT

Great work in this area! I have been looking for this information to help understand what is going on in the background.

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

Manip — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 06:42:56 GMT

I'm extremely impressed. Really interesting post and a really interesting topic in general.

I'm glad to see that Microsoft is spending time considering desktop responsiveness issues.

That said, I didn't need to read this post to know that something was radically better on Windows 7, I just had to use it...

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

vg7265 — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 10:21:32 GMT

Look like this is the right place to ask this - Does Windows 7 have WDDM display driver for Intel 915 desktop board. I have seen a lot of blogging on the net about this, just wanted to confirm.

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

locolorenzo — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:13:13 GMT

@vg7265

The 852/855/915GME will never support a WDDM driver. I am only writing a driver so I can utilize the full display resolutions available in the card. The trade of is you can not play chess as soon as you evoke DirectX 3D and OpenGL...It is a legacy card and I now know why Intel and Microsoft do not produce drivers for it.

@steven_sinofsky

I am wondering when Windows 7 is RTM'd are early implimenters going to be able to purchase a licence before official release date?

And if it has not been considered, could you impliment it as a requested feature!

All I can say is Wow, Great OS, even better work!

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

fuchueh — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:57:00 GMT

improve color layout for currently using task icon

Taskbar color layout too bad.

If you using light color desktop background, you will don't know what is the using task icon.

Its brightness too high, so looks too blurred when light color desktop background.

Currently using task icon is recognize hard when light color desktop background.

improve color layout for currently using task icon

screenshot:

http://www.windows7taskforce.com/thumb/improve_color_layout_task_icon3.png/x/560

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

fuchueh — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:57:56 GMT

need keep Menu color layout consistency for Windows 7.

Please keep color layout consistency for Menu.

Why the 'Include in libary' used another color layout?

view snapshot:

http://www.windows7taskforce.com/thumb/mune_color_layout.png/x/560

Improve Start Menu and Appliaction Menu color style (suggestion consistency)

(discriminated Appliaction Menu color very difficult)

There is no consistency between the Start Menu and the Appliaction Menu.

To keep Start Menu and Appliaction Menu color style consistency, like Windows XP.

All use white color for background, light blue color for selected item.

view snapshot:

http://www.windows7taskforce.com/thumb/style_consistency5.png/x/560

keep theme style consistency for Windows 7

keep theme style consistency for Menu bar, Tool bar. like Windows XP theme style's consistency.

view snapshot:

http://www.windows7taskforce.com/thumb/style_consistency55.png/x/960

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

fuchueh — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:03:51 GMT

Stand-alone Pin Recycle Bin to Taskbar

Problem:

Currently, Recycle Bin was Pinned of the Windows Explorer Jumplist.

It is very unhandy. Because the Recycle Bin is a frequently used module.

But put on desktop often covered with other window...

Solution:

Stand-alone Pin Recycle Bin to Taskbar (default).

With not show Recycle Bin icon on desktop (default).

Of course, you can Unpin this Recycle Bin from taskbar.

screenshot:

http://www.windows7taskforce.com/thumb/Stand-alone_Pin_RecycleBin_To_Taskbar6.png/x/560

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows Fax and Scan's toolbar update to win7style

Problem:

Windows Fax and Scan's toolbar update to win7style.

like Windows Photo Viewer or Windows DVD Maker.

Solution:

Windows Fax and Scan's toolbar update to win7style

screenshot:

http://www.windows7taskforce.com/thumb/Windows.Fax.and.Scan_toolbar_no_win7style.png/x/560

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

complete remove Windows Mail from Windows 7

Problem:

Now Windows Mail already can't start. It's already unsupported in win7.

But it's still remain on the win7 (\Program Files\Windows Mail\).

If you go to the \Program Files\Windows Mail\ folder, you'll still find the Windows Mail folder and those files in them. And you can't run WinMail.exe.

Solution:

complete remove Windows Mail from Windows 7

Please delete WinMail.exe

Move other files to system32 folder.

Don't put them in \Program Files\Windows Mail\ (folder name wrong)

http://www.windows7taskforce.com/user/2721

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

Tihiy — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:39:15 GMT

You guys done the best job to improve Windows 7!

Reduced memory consumption is number one reason of Windows 7 success.

The only party-pooper is Intel with 945GM WDDM 1.0 chipset in millions of notebooks...

One question not covered here: what about GDI acceleration which i heard was brought back in WDDM 1.1? Is that true or optional, or not related with 1.1 at all? Why it's even 1.1 with such major changes =)

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

mludwig — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 17:28:27 GMT

I am not sure whether this is a graphics issue or what, but the main window of WinSCP 4.1.9 doesn't appear in Flip 3D, although it is present on the taskbar and in simple Flip. When this window is active and Flip 3D is started another window will appear on top of the 3D stack.

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

fakeasdf — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:09:19 GMT

Yeah, I've been noticing some data corruption or some sort of drawing issue with the taskbar open as well. This occurs mostly when I'm using IE. If you were to split the taskbar into 3 horizontal pieces the middle piece and the title bar of IE will flicker. I just installed a pre 1.1 driver and the issue disappeared (which I'm sure also made me lose the gain of the removal of the duplicate memory)

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

anonymuos — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:12:28 GMT

Will Vista users be offerred WDDM 1.1 drivers?

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

fakeasdf — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:23:48 GMT

I should have mentioned It's with the mobile intel 965 express chipset. I've also noticed a weird issue with the autocomplete from the address bar is being drawn behind the IE window. I've noticed this on the 965 graphics and other computers with different types of graphic cards.

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

d_e — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:32:09 GMT

Great read, interesting work!

Windows 7 still hangs quite often when you're using applications to access data on an unreliable network. But it's getting better with every release. Can I (as a regular user) report those things as well? Or is Microsoft already collecting all "This application is not responding" events?

You could make my life as developer a little bit easier if the drivers offered by Windows Update (or those on the Windows DVD) supported OpenGL 1.5 already. Or if there was a working, 1.5-compliant translation layer (like MSOGL) which let's OpenGL applications use hardware acceleration without having users to download new drivers. Vista's solution (MSOGL) never worked for my OpenGL 1.1 apps...

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

jtbworld — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:52:43 GMT

Will this also affect CAD application performance?

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

Leo Davidson — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:34:03 GMT

I watched the PDC talk on Direct2D / DirectWrite last night: Interesting stuff and it looks really easy to slot into existing code and take advantage of.

I haven't used it yet, and I'll need to support GDI for a good while longer (might go for two code paths to take advantage of the speed/quality of Direct2D where available), but it looks well designed. Nice work, guys!

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

locolorenzo — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 01:17:40 GMT

I am wondering if the Taskforce retoric could be removed from this blog.

Children should be supervised more closely, because I as a legitimate user of this site get tired of seeing this sort of childish demanding behaviour>

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

McoreD — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:14:20 GMT

Thanks for the great news. So I am thinking this is going to be included in the builds after 7100.

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

Alois — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:39:10 GMT

Very cool. Can we get this trace tool to analyze repsoniveness issues also for Windows Vista/Server 2008? This would help us a lot to troubleshoot performance issues in todays systems.

Yours,

Alois Kraus

Windows 7 (W)EI rating 1 - desktop dead

graham.lv — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:31:43 GMT

"... The performance requirements for these desktop scenarios are quite different from 3D games. In fact, this is the reason in Windows Vista Experience Index (WinEI) we give you rating for these two scenarios separately. ..."

So Ameet (6.3 & 5.5) does better at desktop and I (3.6 & 5.2) do better at 3D business (Oh, no, he's 5.5, damn)... I have always been confused by this - as a lay person. If I scored = 1 = would I have no desktop - or - no games or business? And if I scored 7.9 I would have a Windows experience that the other 999,999,999 users do not enjoy?

Don't see the point of WEI except if it printed OK - or NO, not good enough :-) Does the Windows desktop come with a rating? Hey, you need 4.7 to run Windows desktop.. I don't game, so I suppose they have a rating on them??

What about the other stuff? processor, RAM, etc.

I just don't understand what you can do about it???? Got 512 MB of video ram and card O/C'ed. What do I need?

You see what I'm getting at? I'm not sure the ordinary retail buyer understands it properly....

Bad responsivness when running in low gear

blub — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:49:17 GMT

Interesting post

I've noticed some performance issues with the DWM if you don't have any heavy graphic program running. Both in Vista and Win7 on more than one pc that are powerful enough. It can be seen when using flip3d and is even more clear in expose-clones using the DWMThumb API.

If you start the animation the first second or two will have really bad frame rate but after that it is really smooth.

But if you have a graphic intensive program running, like a movie in hd-format, then the animation will be smooth from the beginning.

This is really annoying because when switching window you don't want an animation longer than 2seconds anyway.

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

Saad — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:45:53 GMT

New graphic (vista model graphic engine) is some dark. also black shadow of windows explorer has perfected it!

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

BulentErdemir — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:18:14 GMT

What're the boundaries the application holds this global GDI lock ? If the application holds this lock from within each GDI call, then the a swapping application should not affect other applications's graphics performance. Every GDI call will acquire the lock and then release it before returning. In this scenarios, holding this global lock should not have any affect on other apps performance. (other than acquiring and releasing a global lock for each and every GDI call would be very costly IMHO).

On the other hand, if the global lock is held between multiple GDI calls, then what happens if the application forgets the call to release the lock ? Then all other apps will appear to be stopping. This certainly should not be the case.

How is the global lock used in this respect ? If I'm not missing something the global lock should not be a problem even in Windows Vista.

Obviously, I'm mistaken some way. Would you please explain how ?

Best regards,

Bulent Erdemir

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

DarkUltra — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:35:28 GMT

I have a better idea! Install XP! I'm serious, Microsoft is actually competing with themselves. Even simple file browsing is noticably sluggier in Vista, and 7, then in XP: Do we really need the extra thumbnail in the details pane and folder thumbnails?

Anyway, seems like Microsoft are finally making their user interface more multi-threaded. I remember how BeOS was very responsive, even in heavy cpu using scenarioes. It was because it was SMP programmed from the bottom. But windows XP is still instant responsive, so why all the extra work with Windows 7? Is it a workaround to all the bloat?

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

smbunn — Fri, 01 May 2009 04:43:05 GMT

I love Windows 7, mainly for its Media Center. However as a New Zealander we have DVB-T transmission of freeview TV in h.264 codec. Windows 7 decodes this using software only, when will we be able to use the hardware decoders in ATI and Nvidia cards?

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

mludwig — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:33:27 GMT

Having no more send feedback button, I have to write the annoyances I experience here. I like the new backup. I have a weekly schedule to be done during the night and I hardly ever notice it. However, last night I turned my PC off and the backup was done this morning when I turned it on. It took half an hour during which I couldn't use my computer. CPU utilization was only 40%, memory was maxed out (2GB, not cached), don't ask why, 'cause the first 5 processes with the most memory summed up 250MB only. Disk utilization was constant, however, with Backup having Normal I/O priority. I don't see any reason why cannot scheduled backup have a low or background priority.

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

MattJC — Sat, 02 May 2009 21:20:59 GMT

Some questions concerning gaming performance:

I was wondering if the Desktop (or parts of it) are shutdown when using DirectX in fullscreen mode. How much would this improve gaming performance? Does any part of the OS get moved to the page file or something when DirectX is in fullscreen mode?

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

DasFox — Tue, 05 May 2009 01:38:52 GMT

My Aero performance with a Nvidia Geforce 8200M on a laptop was slower then Vista, but my gaming performance was faster.

I was very disappointed to see my Aero performance slower so point score is slower then Vista.

Sorry Microsoft there is Aero performance loss going on here that needs to be addressed!

Resolution wrong after resume from hibernate

Henk Poley — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:11:05 GMT

Wonderful that the XPDM troubles from the beta are fixed in RC1. There is one thing left though. When my intel 82830 based Tablet PC resumes from hibernate (suspend to disk) it opens with 800×600 resolution but with the original 1024x786 oddly mapped on top of it. Vertically it is fully mapped, but horizontally stuff disappears in thin air at the right outside of the screen.

When I logon this problem remains. But if I then drop back to the Welcome screen the resolution returns to a sane state. This makes me believe the problem can be solved with an extra display 'reset' after resume. A simple fix for a widely used chipset in older laptops.

Would it be possible to include such a fix? Should I send driver information to somebody at microsoft?

btw, writing this on my tablet worked pretty well :D

Horizontal and vertical span

afterx — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:15:59 GMT

I have 3*24" monitor and 2 nvidia GTX260 in SLI + 1 nvidia 8800GT, is the span mode of xp would be in the RTM version?

I mean having a 'virtual' resolution of 5760x1200 instead of 3 time 1920x1200 ...

Many game, application, will benefit from that, it's the only reason i will stay with xp.

Thanx

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

sentabrina — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:48:16 GMT

Hello. i have ATI MOBILITY FIREGL 9000 on my IBM T40p. and on W7 i cannot run any game.. even couter strike or warcraft, and there is a problem in playing videos.. its horrible. when i tried to install drivers which are perfect on XP it gives me an error. even Fallout is not running. is there any chance to fix this problem??? if i need to send drivers to a developer, i will do it. please help me =(

Thanks

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

jeux moto — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:07:31 GMT

Is there any way to improve processor performances without changing it?

re: Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance

blu ray ripper — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 05:20:30 GMT

The perform seems nice-to-user interface.

TANHKS for your guide.