Windows 7: Play Crysis Without a GPU
This week, Microsoft unveiled one of Windows 7’s new features, which will allow games and other DirectX 10 and 10.1-based applications to run fully accelerated on obsolete graphics hardware, and even on systems with no graphics acceleration at all.
Dubbed Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform or WARP, the new graphics layer for Windows 7 will utilize the system CPU as the graphics engine to assist old graphics cards, and take over completely in some cases. Microsoft indicates that WARP will be fully dependent on how powerful the CPU is in a system, but will require one that supports at least SSE2 extensions.
According to Microsoft, even the lowest-end discrete graphics solutions these days are typically 4 to 5X faster than a CPU-only WARP system. Although the performance differences between CPU-only WARP and discrete GPU accelerated graphics is large, WARP offers several advantages: users will still be able to run their 3D applications fully-accelerated when a video card driver is corrupted, missing, or improperly installed/configured. Systems built to take advantage of WARP from a hardware standpoint will be able to display graphics even when the video card is missing—or toasted. So if you’ve nuked your graphics card from a bad BIOS flash, fear not on a WARP-capable system. At least you will be able to boot back up until the video card is replaced.
WARP documentation indicates that the technology will take full advantage of multi-core CPUs and, given today’s technology, Intel’s Core i7 CPU tops the charts.
The following are benchmarks from Microsoft’s own test of Crysis, running at 800x600 with the lowest quality settings:
| CPU | Time | Avg FPS | Min FPS | Max FPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core i7 8-Core @ 3.0GHz | 271.75 | 7.36 | 3.45 | 15.01 |
| Core 2 Quad (Penryn) @ 3.0GHz | 351.35 | 5.69 | 2.49 | 10.95 |
| Core 2 Duo (Penryn) @ 3.0GHz | 573.98 | 3.48 | 1.35 | 6.61 |
| Core 2 Duo @ 2.6GHz | 707.19 | 2.83 | 0.81 | 5.18 |
| Core 2 Duo @ 2.4GHz | 763.25 | 2.62 | 0.76 | 4.70 |
| Core 2 Duo @ 2.1GHz | 908.87 | 2.20 | 0.64 | 3.72 |
| Xeon 8 Core @ 2.0GHz | 424.04 | 4.72 | 1.84 | 9.56 |
| AMD FX74 4-Core @ 3.0GHz | 583.12 | 3.43 | 1.41 | 5.78 |
| Phenom X4 9550 Quad-Core @ 2.2GHz | 664.69 | 3.01 | 0.53 | 5.46 |
| Discrete GPU | Time | Avg FPS | Min FPS | Max FPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS | 23.58 | 84.80 | 60.78 | 130.83 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT | 47.63 | 41.99 | 25.67 | 72.57 |
| NVIDIA Quadro 290 | 67.16 | 29.78 | 18.19 | 79.87 |
| NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS | 59.01 | 33.89 | 21.22 | 51.82 |
| ATI Radeon HD 3400 | 53.79 | 37.18 | 22.97 | 59.77 |
| ATI Radeon 3200 | 67.19 | 29.77 | 18.91 | 45.74 |
| ATI Radeon 2400 PRO | 67.04 | 29.83 | 17.97 | 45.91 |
| Intel DX10 Integrated | 386.97 | 5.17 | 1.74 | 16.22 |
Notice that Intel’s Core i7 quad-core solution with Hyper-Threading, running at 3.0 GHz, outperforms Intel’s best integrated graphics solution.
According to Microsoft’s WARP documentation:
When WARP10 is running on the CPU, we are limited compared to a graphics card in a number of ways. The front side bus speed of a CPU is typically around or under 10 GB/s whereas a graphics card often has dedicated memory that is able to take advantage of 20-100 GB/s or more of graphics bandwidth. Graphics hardware also has fixed function units that can perform complex and expensive tasks like texture filtering, format decompression or conversions asynchronously with very little overhead or power cost. Performing these operations on a typical CPU is expensive in terms of both power consumption and performance cost in cycles.
WARP Capabilities:
* Fully supports all Direct3D 10 and 10.1 feature
o Fully supports all the precision requirements of the Direct3D 10 and 10.1 specification
o Supports Direct3D 11 when used with FeatureLevel 9_1, 9_2, 9_3, 10_0 and 10_1
o Supports all optional texture formats, such as multi-sample render targets and sampling from float surfaces.
o Supports anti-aliased, high quality rendering up to 8x MSAA.
o Supports anisotropic filtering
o Supports 32 and 64 bit applications as well as large address aware 32 bit applications.
* The minimum specification for WARP10 is the same as Windows Vista, specifically:
o Minimum 800MHz CPU.
o MMX, SSE or SSE2 is *not* required
o Minimum 512MB of RAM.
Clearly WARP won’t be the ideal way to run the latest games. Nor do we expect enthusiasts with Core i7s to also be replacing integrated graphics. Thus, it’ll be interesting to see where Microsoft goes with this feature. WARP will be compatible on both x86 and x64 systems.
*me tries in vain to plug the DVI cable into a USB port*
Oh noes?
(basing my reply on the numbers posted on the techreport article)
(basing my reply on the numbers posted on the techreport article)
That, from a massive enterprise point of view (28000 users / 46000 desktops & laptops) is a very nice feature. We have to deal with blown video cards monthly, and when it happens we're either waiting for warranty vendor to come & replace (a few hours) or scrambling to find an older one from an old clunker... either scenarios mean the user isn't able to work.
Definitely looking forward to WARP
So, MS is going to tout this as a feature of Windows 7, eh?
i don't know or care about the running games using your cpu alone, but cranking up 3d performance this much? hmmmm.. first i hope it works cause high-end gaming can become so much cheaper, second, it'll be interesting to see where games can go from there because of this..since consumers will be able to buy mid-to-low end graphics cards and still be able to play games.. game creators can start cranking up the graphics alot.. also, the biggest problem with pc gaming is the price/performance ratio.. it's MUCH cheaper buying a ps3 to play games, so the pc game industry can get back on its feet again! AND, in 2-3 years, we'll start having photo realistic games!!! yummy!
but that's if the crap microsoft just spouted up there is true...lol
DX is theirs, so it doesn't matter how they spin it, wether they say "we're finally building an OS that can support the DX10-10.1 feature to boot up Windows without any gfx card" or "we're introducing a new feature in Windows 7" is basically the same thing.
*me tries in vain to plug the DVI cable into a USB port*
Oh noes?
You joke but there is the possibility we might switch video to usb in the future, or even smaller form connector.
However, for the time being there will be a regular DVI output on the motherboard close to where your usb ports are so calm down.
Perhaps just logging in remotely...but this means using another computer anyways...hmm.
Good point radman, users of laptops will definitely get a huge benefit if they are able to port this over the laptop and be able to increase the lifespan of the battery or even the laptop myself.
On another note, there's 2 items that I want to ask:
1) How are nVidia and AMD going to react to this when they find out their integrated graphic chipsets will not be needed when Windows 7 comes out? This will seriously affect their revenue and their business model.
2)If graphics will now be computed on the CPU instead of the GPU, will this cause overheating issues and reduce the lifetime of the CPU?
Just some thoughts...
Is this another F...... from MS ? the same way they did with the vista capable logos ?
Now if we could get the copper out and put fibers optics in or something that sends information by light... hmm thinking we could send the amount of a 100 graphics cards they a special hook up like usb 9.2 or something. Well the cpu's are already small, just no one has a reason to make graphic chips so powerful unless windows 10 comes out. thinking it could be amazing 3d Imax kind of experience, gaming, movies and everything else you could think of. memory of love ones from pictures. feels like your their with them. i am sure we could take things far beyond this if we had the needs to.
Perhaps just logging in remotely...but this means using another computer anyways...hmm.
I don't know of any remote-loggin utilities that allow the display of anything drawn in DirectX (including video). I always see the "No Capable DirectX video output found" message. Maybe this is a limitation of the current DirectX and will be altered with WARP.
As for getting local display output, maybe it can bypass the defective GPU and interface directly with the RAMDAC, in a similar fashion when you have no graphics drivers installed?