Windows 7 Graphics Performance

[JonathanMarston]

I just noticed a post about Windows 7 Graphics Performance at the Engineering Windows 7 blog.

Here are a few quotes that I thought were especially interesting:

Windows 7 saves one copy of the memory allocation per application window by getting rid of the system memory copy entirely. Thus, for a GDI application window visible on the desktop, the memory consumed is cut in half.

This I already knew, but its still a very welcome improvement

We achieved the reduction in system memory by accelerating the common GDI operations through the graphics hardware - the WDDM drivers accelerate these to minimize the performance impact of the CPU read-back of video memory.

Windows 7 is getting GDI acceleration again, after it was removed in Vista. Nice!

Contention due to the global exclusive lock is avoided by implementing a number of fine-grained locks which are not exclusive but aid parallelism. The increased number of fine-grained locks adds a small overhead for scenarios where only a single application is rendering at a time.

Special attention was paid to GDI application compatibility as changing internal synchronization mechanism in the most widely used API stack could potentially give rise to timing issues such as deadlocks and rendering corruption.

This work also resulted in better rendering performance of concurrent GDI applications on multi-core CPUs. Multi-core Windows PCs benefit from these changes as more than one application can now be rendering at the same time.

After the GDI concurrency work was implemented in the Windows 7 builds leading to the Beta, we saw a large reduction in the number of desktop responsiveness issues reported by our testers which were caused by one application blocking another one due to GDI.

Better scaling for multi-core systems. Again, very nice!

[User6060]

7 really makes me anxious, can't wait for RTM. It will breath new life into this laptop

[kheldorin]

How can I check whether I am using WDDM 1.1 drivers?

[mzta cody]

How can I check whether I am using WDDM 1.1 drivers?

look in Device Manager, expand "display adapters". Should indicate whether or not WDDM 1.1

[Guest xiphi]

How can I check whether I am using WDDM 1.1 drivers?

Type "dxdiag" in the start menu and look on the display tab.

[kheldorin]

look in Device Manager, expand "display adapters". Should indicate whether or not WDDM 1.1

That just listed my graphic card's name.

Type "dxdiag" in the start menu and look on the display tab.

Thx that worked. It's still 1.0 :pinch:

Can't imagine my Win 7 experience getting faster but looks like it will :woot:

[Zain Adeel]

dudes..

i think i got it!!..

mayb the aero rating is not 7.9 for most ppl coz their drivers are WDDM 1.0 not 1.1 :D

[ToneKnee]

dudes..

i think i got it!!..

mayb the aero rating is not 7.9 for most ppl coz their drivers are WDDM 1.0 not 1.1 :D

I'm using WDDM 1.1 drivers and I still don't have that high of a score, even with a 1GB 3870x2..

[svnO.o]

Very good read. I also already knew about the reduced DWM memory usage but had no clue about the GDI optimizations for multi-core systems =)

[Defcon]

This is great news, but the Windows graphics stack is still screwed up. The big issue is what is the MS message for WPF? They still don't use it in the shell, or in any major app (except for Visual Studio). We now have D2D which is built on top of D3D, yet its not used everywhere (except for new features like superbar). At the very least, WPF should be using D2D, so there's a common 2D and 3D API, which in turn uses HW accel.

[hdood]

Both Direct2D and WPF have the same underlying layer which again sits on top of Direct3D. The problem is that WPF is a managed .NET framework and very resource-heavy. It's not an option for native code (which is most software, including all of Windows). Porting all of the shell and the bundled software to .NET and using WPF would make Vista on a 500 MHz Pentium III look good, so trust me, you really really don't want that.

Direct2D is a brand new framework and not even out of beta yet, you can't expect Microsoft to have written a brand new native GUI toolkit for it, and ported all their programs to use that. It's an extremely big task, even if it were to be done in the future.

[Defcon]

I know why WPF isn't used, for that matter the shell uses no managed code. They dropped this idea when they did the Longhorn reset. They really need to optimize WPF if they expect 3rd party devs to use it, as its a great framework and WPF+Silverlight is the recommended Microsoft way.

That's a different discussion though, I understand what you're saying.

[agifal]

Direct2D is a brand new framework and not even out of beta yet, you can't expect Microsoft to have ... ported all their programs to use that.

Not really true, since GDI/GDI+ in Windows 7 is hw accelerated because it has been remapped to Direct2D calls.

[hdood]

Not really true, since GDI/GDI+ in Windows 7 is hw accelerated because it has been remapped to Direct2D calls.

Nope. Windows 7 just adds the ability for the driver to accelerate certain GDI operations that it couldn't in Vista. Direct2D is a framework that sits several layers above the driver and has nothing to do with it (and doesn't have any relevant functionality anyway).

[Lord Ba'al]

dudes..

i think i got it!!..

mayb the aero rating is not 7.9 for most ppl coz their drivers are WDDM 1.0 not 1.1 :D

Nonsense :pinch:

Aero graphics already was 7.9 until build 7048, but they broke it in 7057 onwards. 7106 and 7100 show a little improvement there, but it's still buggy.

[The Patri0t]

Umm so can someone tell me if this is there in RC build 7100 that has leaked?

[Shaun N.]

Plenty that have leaked, google is your friend. But its RTM tomorrow wait for that.

Getting mine from my works MSDN account.

[The Patri0t]

No, I'm not asking how to get it. All I'm asking is if improvements that are being discussed in the blog post by Windows 7 team have been implemented and are present in build 7100!

[GamblerFEXonlin]

OK I have WDDM 1.1 drivers and a geforce 285 gtx, core 2 quad @ 3.3 ghz, but I still find scrolling large folders like windows\system32 with medium icons noticably sluggier then XP. This video demonstrates my notice.

Is it correct? That not every GDI operation is hardware accelerated, or does the fact that GDI windows render to a 3d texture before being handled by the composition engine make a big difference?

Sorry to bring up an old thread, but then we dont have to see the same arguments over.