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Win 7 Desktop Graphics Loves Multi-core CPUs

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11:21 AM - April 27, 2009 by Marcus Yam

Graphics performance is one of the most scrutinized part of modern computer systems. The Windows 7 team is working on boosting the upcoming operating system’s graphics performance.

Here on Tom’s Hardware we like to measure graphics performance by running 3D benchmarks but gaming is only relevant to a small segment of Windows users. Even those of us who spend hours playing games spend more of our time in the 2D desktop UI.

For that reason, it makes sense for the Microsoft software engineers to devote a significant part of their time trying to make the desktop environment as snappy as possible. The challenge for Windows is that it must take into account a countless combination and wide range of hardware configurations and try to make it all work.

We detailed in a previous article the lengths at which the team has gone to improve the response time of the start button. Now in the latest Engineering Windows 7 blog, the team has revealed a couple more changes it has made to the graphics system that will make working in Windows better.

One problem that some Windows users experience (prior to Windows 7), is slight pauses or even freezes. Using testing data, Microsoft analyzed thousands of reports where the tester experienced a frozen desktop anywhere from 100msec to several seconds.

The way Windows Vista does it

“The type of issues ranged from an antivirus blocking disk access for all applications while updating itself on the vendor’s website to an application doing network access from a UI thread,” explained Ameet Chitre, a program manager on Microsoft’s Desktop Graphics feature team.

Microsoft found that a large portion of ‘freezes’ came from multiple applications waiting around for one another to be finished with the GDI (Graphics Device Interface) before each could update the desktop with a new render.

In Windows Vista, a single application could hold a system-wide lock on the GDI, basically creating a bottleneck, especially if there are other applications waiting in line to access the graphics stack. While such a design decision may have been okay in the past, it’s been re-engineered for Windows 7.

The way Windows 7 does it

“The solution to the problem was therefore to reduce the lock contention and improve concurrency by re-architecting the internal synchronization mechanism through which multiple applications can reliably render at the same time,” Chitre wrote. “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 shift in architecture adds a small overhead cost when only a single application is accessing the GDI at a time, but trade off to aid in multitasking is worth it.

“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,” Chitre said, adding that the improvements worked to reduce response time issues. “Without the Windows 7 GDI concurrency, the rendering throughput of these applications is effectively limited to the performance of a single CPU core. Since only a single application can acquire the global exclusive lock while the others are waiting, this scenario doesn’t benefit from multiple CPU cores. This demonstrates that GDI applications in Windows 7 are now much less dependent on one another.”

Frame rate of each application window a quad-core CPU system

Changes such as this are immediately appreciable by all Windows users, particularly those who feel that Windows Vista’s performance wasn’t up to snuff. No new drivers are required for this as the new GDI system will work with any Vista (WDDM 1.0) driver.

Source : Tom's Hardware US

Talkback
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ProDigit80 04/27/2009 6:00 PM
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-9+

Great! Improvements! Now ask MS to improve defrag (to defrag by folders and their content), and not by spreading necessary bootfiles of programs all across the disk, and Win7 will become awesome!

gwellin 04/27/2009 6:02 PM
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-7+

So better desktop graphics is great, but it would be better for me to see a large improvement in gaming graphic performance as well.

bustapr 04/27/2009 6:04 PM
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marokero 04/27/2009 6:15 PM
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-4+

Would this be something that can be implemented still in Vista or will it only be available for 7? I'm getting 7 either way, but it would be nice if I could use it in Vista in the mean time.

deltatux 04/27/2009 6:22 PM
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-3+

They should also backport this to Windows Vista and not just DirectX 11. This will be a highly welcomed fix.

However, I've never ever ran into issues like this in Windows Vista ... come to think of it. I have multiple applications, and my system never stalled. Quadcore or not. Before I got this quad core, on my dual core system, desktop never froze once.

downix 04/27/2009 6:35 PM
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-2+

backport, not just to vista, but XP! This has been a known issue with Windows for years, dating back to even the 3.0 days that I am aware of.

tayb 04/27/2009 6:41 PM
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dreamphantom_1977 04/27/2009 6:43 PM
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-0+

I always wondered about those pauses. I just thought it was me or something I was doing wrong. Really looking forward to windows 7. Now only if they could add a button on the taskbar. Thats my biggest petpeave. watching a movie and screensaver pops on.

jsloan 04/27/2009 6:56 PM
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-4+

sounds great, im moving to windows 7 rc as soon as it is made public.

rocket_sauce 04/27/2009 7:00 PM
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captaincharisma 04/27/2009 7:03 PM
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-11+

Quote :backport, not just to vista, but XP!


enough with XP already! its time to kill it

dreamphantom_1977 04/27/2009 7:18 PM
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-2+

Dreamphantom_1977 :
I always wondered about those pauses. I just thought it was me or something I was doing wrong. Really looking forward to windows 7. Now only if they could add a button on the taskbar ^for the screensaver. Thats my biggest petpeave. watching a movie and screensaver pops on.



*oops Need edit button for the posts

A Stoner 04/27/2009 7:35 PM
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-8+

Ah, Microsoft is trying to win me over... This looks very promising for me, as I am highly multi-tasked.

jacobdrj 04/27/2009 7:39 PM
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-0+

I agree with most peoples' comments about W2K. But I was a huge 98 supporter because of the speed and ease of repair. XP was slow initially. Not until SP2 was it usable. Hardware has caught up with it, and now it is where W2K was... And it has better networking functionality than 98 or W2K. Much like that, Vista has superior networking, and some other very nice functionality over XP, particularly regarding new tech and drivers. However, it lacks backwards compatibility and speed... In comes Windows 7! Joy and Hallelu... Built in XP, with hopefully driver support... That would be awesome. DOS should also be included. Virtualization is the way to go. Way to go on picking up the obvious finally Microsoft!

jerreece 04/27/2009 8:00 PM
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-2+

Thank goodness M$ is finally doing this. It drives me absolutely nuts when my system freezes for a couple seconds when the CPU is sitting at like 10% usage. It just never made any sense to me. ;)

It'll be nice to have a system that runs much more smoothly at the desktop. Especially having a Quad Core with 4GB of RAM, GTX 260 Core 216, and I'm still wondering how it's possible to hang the GUI while simply opening FireFox or some other program.

JeBuSBrian 04/27/2009 8:05 PM
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-1+

Marcus, proof-read!

Nossy 04/27/2009 8:14 PM
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Win 7 should be free for all Vista owner. This will only slightly make up for the messed-up Vista experience.

jacobdrj 04/27/2009 8:19 PM
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Nossy :
Win 7 should be free for all Vista owner. This will only slightly make up for the messed-up Vista experience.


Agreed.

AdamB5000 04/27/2009 8:19 PM
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-2+

I hate to jump the gun, but I'm almost anxious to buy and install 7 over XP on my main rig on opening day.

.. almost. I'll wait at least a couple months and see what the overall feel is. :)

mtyermom 04/27/2009 8:27 PM
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-2+

I'm assuming this has been built into Win 7 all along, and not referring to a 'planned' feature. I have noticed Win 7 is all around more responsive and less apt to 'bog down', even under heavy multitasking. I have thoroughly enjoyed using this OS, it has improved my productivity over XP. I always have multiple firefox windows with several tabs each, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, FTP client, and IM client all running while I am working. The 'aero peek' helps me switch between my apps/tasks faster and more accurately, and with a quad core CPU with 4GB ram I never get the sluggish feeling I would in XP.

norbs 04/27/2009 8:27 PM
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dark_lord69 04/27/2009 8:43 PM
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NICE! This has been a speed issue that many people have experienced it's good to see that MS is finally addressing this.

tayb 04/27/2009 9:02 PM
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fracture 04/27/2009 9:33 PM
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-1+

Weird, it's Windows 7 that freezes on me. It'll freeze for like 1 minute or so and then everything catches back up. I put Vista back on and it doesn't freeze like that. And now I just stuck on 7100 and it goes back to freezing. It's weird, when I play WoW it disconnects me from WoW after the system comes back on. And when I'm listening to music, you can tell that there's slight hesitation in the OS because you can hear the music stretching a little. I don't know, it doesn't do this to me in Vista.

salem80 04/27/2009 9:36 PM
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Curnel_D 04/27/2009 9:54 PM
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eddieroolz 04/27/2009 10:13 PM
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marokero :
Would this be something that can be implemented still in Vista or will it only be available for 7? I'm getting 7 either way, but it would be nice if I could use it in Vista in the mean time.



My guess is that this will be Win7-exclusive, largely because of the overhaul in the coding this will require for Vista.

Windows 7 keeps getting better every day though! Only 8 more days until RC!

Dave_69 04/27/2009 11:19 PM
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-1+

Yeah but aren't they going to release a Vista SP2? If so, they might address this issue there.

ravewulf 04/27/2009 11:35 PM
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bustapr :
Does this mean that all the crap that nvidia said about core i7 and core 2 duo is the same for gaming was a wrong statement when it comes to windows7?


No, what NVIDIA said is true. GDI is for 2D (regular) programs, it does not affect 3D gaming.

ravewulf 04/27/2009 11:41 PM
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downix :
backport, not just to vista, but XP! This has been a known issue with Windows for years, dating back to even the 3.0 days that I am aware of.


Not gonna happen. This is a recent improvement for new OS's only that takes advantage of multi-core and parallelism. This is quite a bit more integrated into Windows than a simple DirectX update. Also, XP does need to die already.

ravewulf 04/27/2009 11:46 PM
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-4+

norbs :
ZOMG something new besides a pretty GUI.


Hmmm. Maybe you should read the articles and Engineering Windows 7 blog posts more often instead of just looking at the pictures


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