It’s time for another long post from the Building Windows 8 Blog, this time it’s about Windows 8 graphics acceleration. In the post it details the hardware acceleration features in Windows 8 and how it’s not just about 3d performance.
It’s interesting to see how much the performance has increased particularly around titles and headings.
When we started to plan the work we’d undertake for graphics in Windows 8, we knew that we would be creating a new, visually rich way for users to interact with apps and with Windows itself. We also knew that we’d be building a new platform for creating Metro style apps, and that we’d be targeting a more diverse set of hardware than ever before. While we had a great graphics platform to start with, there was more work to do in order to support those efforts. We came up with four main goals:
Ensure that all Metro style experiences are rendered smoothly and quickly.
Provide a hardware-accelerated platform for all Metro style apps.
Add new capabilities to DirectX to enable stunning visual experiences.
Support the widest diversity of graphics hardware ever.
While each of these focus on different aspects of building Windows 8, they all depend on great performance and capabilities from the graphics platform.
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