Option to render desktop with the graphics card

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rastilin
Posts: 34
Joined: Wed Dec 08, 2004 12:26 pm

Option to render desktop with the graphics card

Post by rastilin »

If you have a system that has a decent graphics card then why not have an option to offload the desktop and window rendering to it. X.org and Longhorn are going to be shipped with this implemented and it sounds like a more efficient use of resources on those computers that can handle it.
GvG
Posts: 499
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 10:50 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Post by GvG »

This is one of the goals of ReactOS: to be able to use unmodified Windows drivers, in this case drivers for hardware accellerated video cards. Some drivers actually work already, some don't.
Len
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Feb 02, 2005 10:37 pm

Re: Option to render desktop with the graphics card

Post by Len »

rastilin wrote:If you have a system that has a decent graphics card then why not have an option to offload the desktop and window rendering to it. X.org and Longhorn are going to be shipped with this implemented and it sounds like a more efficient use of resources on those computers that can handle it.
It is. Mac OS X is loaded with "Quartz Extreme" witch takes everything from drawing windows to text anti-aliasing to the graphics card. Doesn't only make those 'pretty' effects faster but indeed unloads the CPU significantly. Since it is done with OpenGL 32 bit color is faster as 16 bit (then it has to dither). It needs a decent video card though.

If you do not have an interface with much 'nice' effects like shadows, transparancy, "scale"/"warp" effects, and 32 bit color sprites with an 8 bit mask I guess 'offloading' it is pretty useless. Most videodrivers take care of some basic 2D acceleration witch let you scroll faster trough documents for example (correct me if I'm wrong).
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