Los Angeles (CA) - Microsoft unveiled here at PDC 2005 the new 3D hardware acceleration dependencies of Windows Vista that will be realized even for ordinary 2D renderings. Tom's Hardware Guide learned that Microsoft intends to offer a "tiered" experience - the basics will run on an integrated chipset, but all the bells and whistles will call for a capable 256 MByte discrete graphics board.
In a session here Wednesday, one of Windows Presentation Foundation's chief developers, Pablo Fernicola, told a large crowd in one of the convention center's larger halls that developers of graphic tools for the Foundation can expect to write to a basic hardware platform. "One of the things that we've done, Fernicola said, "is set a minimum level of graphics capability that machines must have in order to have a Windows Vista logo. This is so important. You as a developer can count on any and all machines that have a Windows Vista logo to have, as a minimum, DX9 [DirectX 9.0] capability. This is great from a developer point of view. That means that your application, your content, can rely on certain features, can rely on, and just be able to count on providing much better experience to the end user."
We wondered what those "certain features" are. Do they include, for instance, graphics memory requirements? Fernicola referred us to a document released in April 2005, at a Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, recently re-entitled "Windows Vista Logo Program System and Device Requirements, Draft 0.6." But in the latest version of the 215-page document, dated 29 August, almost all the text under the heading "System memory meets minimum requirements" was redacted, and replaced with the following notice: "Due to the fact that objective benchmarks are not available, this requirement will be updated by the .7 release. Until definitive numbers are available a guideline of 512 MByte is recommended." The document did not specify 512 MByte of what, though it's likely the document is referring to system RAM, not graphics RAM.
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Tom's Hardware Guide
Sep 16, 2005, 11:39 PM
