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Interesting article about 2D acceleration for Windows

hohum

hohum

hohum

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http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2d-windows-gdi,review-31795.html (I hope it's ok to link to here?)

First decent article I've read on Toms in a while. Covers a lot of stuff, such as why Vista can feel more sluggish on the desktop compared to XP/7, and how newer cards actually manage to perform worse at 2D stuff than older cards (Nvidia's GTX285 and ATI's 5870 both get utterly trounced by an onboard Geforce 7050 chip!).

Can be a bit technical in places, but I found it interesting. Worth a read, considering the majority of us spend most of our time on the desktop when using a PC.
 
Was tempted to post this myself, a very good read. Will be interesting to see how the companies respond over the next few months..
 
Although the 5x00 series gets hammered, they all do a pretty bad job considering...
This goes to show that people have really forgotten 2d performance, the good thing to come out of the report is AMD saying that basically no-one had considered it and they will rollout some driver improvements in future Catalyst updates....
 
read part 1 while back, good to see ati saying they found a prob and will fix it. haven't seen anything from nvidia but presume they've taken note and will work on it as well.
 
It's interesting that in one of the tests they run, all the modern cards get destroyed by an ancient 3Dfx card! Clearly priorities have changed over the years, but it's surprising that performance has been allowed to drop so far behind considering how many apps out there will use GDI for some time to come. It also leaves a bitter taste for people who fork out hundreds for a high-end card, only for it to have 2D performance considerably lower than that of older/inferior cards.

Edit: Have just tried the benchmark tool they've used, here's my results (Q6600 @2.4GHz, 8800GTS 640MB (196.21), Windows 7, Aero enabled):

2dbench.jpg
2dbench2.jpg


Be interesting to see what the rest of you get on your setups.
 
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The question is what uses the 2d power of the chip? And do you really need to render more the 25k characters/sec, most programs off load this to the 3d chip these days (Photoshop to name one).

Interesting but nothing more than a none issue
 
LizardKing said:
The question is what uses the 2d power of the chip? And do you really need to render more the 25k characters/sec, most programs off load this to the 3d chip these days (Photoshop to name one).

Interesting but nothing more than a none issue
Click to expand...

I think you'll find almost all programs are still using GDI or GDI+ so lots of things still use the 2D power of the chip, it's not a none issue at all.

From the article

For Which Programs Did We Find Concrete Issues?

* CorelDraw, Adobe illustrator, Adobe Freehand MX, Nemetschek AllPlan (2D functions)
* Adobe Photoshop CS3/CS4 (general vector objects on various layers)
* Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft PowerPoint, and various home layout packages
* Microsoft Excel when rendering larger charts, or big spreadsheets with area fills
* Various construction tools, including those for electrical, plumbing, and HVAC drawings
* Various industry-specific tools (drawing annotations, site plans, landscaping plans, etc.)
Click to expand...

Hardly a non issue.
 
LizardKing said:
Except it is as none of the programs have any inverse affects due to the 2d power of gfx cards
Click to expand...

I'm presuming you mean 'adverse effects'. Quote from Tom's article:

In this context, it’s important to observe that, currently, it can be quite vexing to work productively with 2D graphics in Windows 7. For example, using a Radeon HD 5870 and the latest drivers, we found it difficult to produce simple vector-based graphics, to render simple or complex CAD designs, or even to play 2D games in higher graphics quality modes. We mention this not as a criticism, but instead as an approach to a definite problem that we sought to analyze and understand as fully as possible.
Click to expand...

So low 2D performance does have an adverse effect. Besides, who wouldn't want better desktop application performance/snappiness in general? Just you, presumably? Please read both articles properly before jumping to a conclusion.

krooton said:
The Brotherhood of Nod must be ****ed!
Click to expand...

:p Haven't played that since the 90s...
 
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