From: "Rich Gauszka" 

All the articles I've read state that Vista's DirectX 10 (DX10) improves on
gpu performance. Although newer video card gpu s wouldn't hurt which is why
Nvidia and ATI are probably smiling a lot right now

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128275-page,1/article.html
Pipeline Power-Ups
The revamped, more powerful DirectX "allows us to do a lot more
processing on the GPU [graphics processing unit] and speeds everything up
immensely," says Chris Donahue, director of business development for
Microsoft Games for Windows.

DirectX 9, used widely for today's games, employs different parts of the
video card to determine the visual appearance of pixels and vertices (where
lines meet). A set number of "pipelines" handle only pixel
shaders, while others are just for vertex shaders. If creating a certain 3D
scene hits the pixel shader pipelines hard but uses only a few of the
vertex shaders, the extra vertex pipelines lie dormant.

DX10's Shader Model 4, however, uses the same hardware resources for pixel,
vertex, and even new geometry shaders. That approach allows GPU vendors to
design chips with pipelines that can run any type of shader, and also makes
it easier for GPUs to handle things like physics effects that currently
must run on the CPU. In general DX10 is more CPU-friendly, with less
processing overhead.

The end result? A more flexible graphics system, and one that makes better
use of the GPU's processing power.

"It's a step forward," says Mike Goodman, a senior analyst for
research firm The Yankee Group. "This is another way to take advantage
of the processing power of PCs that Vista will operate on."

"Gary Britt"  wrote in
message news:45d1e4df{at}w3.nls.net...
OK Maybe Vista does use a GPU in some ways, and what I've read previously
wasn't correct.  I'm still not convinced however for several reasons.

1.  The article you cite reads like the under NDA Windows 95 garbage and
deliberate misinformation that MS was shown to have deliberately lied about
with Windows 95 architecture at the time of its release.  It reads more
like a reprint of some MS marketing materials for writers and mag editors
than a real investigation of the facts pro and con.

2.  NT 3.1 had the graphics driver outside ring 0 kernel level.  NT 4 moved
it into the ring 0 kernel level to INCREASE performance.  Now that mag
article you cite just whips out the statement (without offering any
explanation or investigation or substantiation) that moving the graphics
driver back outside the ring 0 kernel level will somehow magically make the
graphics driver perform better.  Have the laws of physics changed since NT
4??

3.  The article gives a very basic broad brush look at how supposedly VISTA
talks to the GPU directly but fails to compare that and explain why its

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5