GDI/GDI+ Hardware Acceleration removed in Vista?

El Corazon

Scope wrote:

Does the Desktop Window Manager only work with the WPF

Yes, and no. That seems to be my answer for a lot of things lately. This issue came up for OpenGL as well. Yes the Desktop Window Manager only works with the WPF, per se. However they put hooks into it for 3rd party hardware acceleration links for GDI, OpenGL and anything else the hardware vendors want to support. This was not the original intent, but it is the current status of resolution for the complaints on support of hardware acceleration under Aero. So the answer is No, as long as nVidia or ATI, or you make the interface for any other API.

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

Christian Graus

Google did. I found a power point from MS. This is the bullet point: Reduced hardware acceleration in Windows Vista Necessary to accomplish WDDM implementation Continue to tune before release Sounds like it means they did this mostly because they were out of time.

Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog

El Corazon

Christian Graus wrote:

Sounds like it means they did this mostly because they were out of time.

probably the case, not that we will ever know for sure. :)

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

Scope

"So the answer is No, as long as nVidia or ATI, or you make the interface for any other API." So as of today there is no support for GDI/GDI+ acceleration in the DWM ? Why would nVidia, ATI and other vendors be interested in implementing such? This probably means that the answer is yes and will be yes, which makes me kindof sad, since you now HAVE to use the .NET framework to be able to get hardware acceleration. The WPF applications are very bloated, I wonder how much memory we will need when all applications we run have their GUI in WPF. I dont like Vista at all with its content protection and now this :sigh:

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El Corazon

Scope wrote:

So as of today there is no support for GDI/GDI+ acceleration in the DWM ?

As far as I know... not yet.

Scope wrote:

Why would nVidia, ATI and other vendors be interested in implementing such?

For the same reason that they ARE working on OpenGL bindings to the WPF: draw in customers. If nVidia did OpenGL 2.0 full and GDI, but ATI only got OpenGL 1.5 and no GDI. Then your applications run faster on nVidia, nVidia has bragging rights to faster Vista operation. :-D When confronted with supporting multiple Graphics inputs to the WPF, Microsoft settled on passing the buck. OpenGL will be first, that is already in the works. Without OpenGL acceleration through this binding mechanism, OpenGL is 1.0 and run on the CPU through software emulation. After that is fixed then the hardware vendors will consider more.

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

Shog9 0

Greg Schechter describes some of the changes that GDI is going through on Vista.[^] AFAIK, huge parts of GDI+ were never accelerated (and it showed). For most apps, it really isn't going to make a big difference whether line drawing and raster ops are implemented in hardware or software. Since DWM apps always draw to an off-screen buffer, there's actually some potential that they'll run faster, especially if they do a lot of reading from their drawing surface. Is it a tad unsettling? Yes. Is it really a big deal? If you have to ask, no.

Scope

Well for applications like trillian with its own SkinEngine based on GDI/GDI+ operations it might be a huge difference. Using alphablending and shadows is out of the question, you are forced to use WPF. So you probably have to rewrite your whole application. Same goes for me I have my own SkinEngine based on GDI/GDI+ which runs very fast in XP with hardware acceleration for alphablending/blitting/font drawing etc. I have buggish ATI drivers which will disable the hardware acclerations if I use only a single display and enable it with two displays. So I can see a huge difference in speed when the drawing is not accelerated. I find it very unsettling... Edit: And what is more unsettling is that Trillian is coded in C++ and I am coding in C++ and Visual Studio offers no integration with WPF using C++/CLI! Although Microsoft claims that they will be adding it later (I think Nish wrote that somewhere). -- modified at 16:32 Wednesday 10th January, 2007

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Shog9 0

Scope wrote:

Using alphablending and shadows is out of the question, you are forced to use WPF.

Now, as far as i've heard, alphablending / shadows still work in Win32 / GDI[+] programs. I suspect that layered windows (dropshadows, translucent windows) could be much, much faster with decent drivers, as the composition engine no longer has to deal with non-composited windows (as in Win2k / WinXP). I haven't tested this yet though (it's on my list...). As for GDI+ drawing (within a single device context), i can't really imagine it getting much slower. I use it for the convenience, but it's - at best - slow on all the machines i've tested on (and let's not even get into Terminal Server performance - in one scenario, i use straight GDI blits instead of GDI+, as the performance was just awful otherwise).

Marcos Meli

This sucks !!! I hate Vista too and for much more reasons, and I try to don't use it for at least 2 or 3 years, I´m with you in your appreciation of Vista and all their needs to win market at all cost !!! is amazing to see them giving away notebooks, free learning, free books, free versions, etc, protecting the Office Ribbon with a completely hiden supposed patent over it. In fact today I see the Codeproject/Vista contest for good articles about Vista, a lot of M$ contests to make FREE DEVELOPERS ! to create Gadgets for their Windows System !! For the mother of GOD !! We need to stop the marketers and the "ONLY THINK IN FORWARD" PEOPLE AT M$ NEAR ALL US ARE WORKING IN REAL ENTERPRISE AND NOT IS TIME TO PLAY WITH NEW TECH AND FANCY AERO, SHADOWS, EFFECTS, 3D... I LOVE ALL THAT STUFF, BUT AT WORK THE ENTERPRISES NEED BUSSINES VALUE AND NOT FANCY TECH. The last thing that I want to said is that M$ is also killing the Open Source ecosystem, you dont notice the reductions of release of the main Open Source products for DotNet ?? (only the corporation financed ones are up and continously evolving) And now this, hahah is so much that I need to :laugh:. Sorry for my English An Angry Open Source Developer (Ex Microsoft FAN) Go to the Hell Microsoft :mad: !!!

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Joel Holdsworth

I have a pathalogical hatred of people who use M$ - it's frustratingly meaningless, and only script kiddies (who everybody hates) use it. What does it mean? They're taking all your money? Get linux! Or does it mean they have lots of money? - probably because the have world's most successful OS.

Joel Holdsworth