> Doesn't make any sense to me either. Maybe the reviewer got their facts 
> wrong?

It seems from reading the MS site that it can be used to render when no GPU 
card is present, and then send the results over the network for remote 
viewing.  This is probably what the reviewer meant.

>> The reference rasteriser already supports all DirectX 10.1 features, 
>> that's the idea of it.
>
> So I'm guessing it's coded for correctness rather than speed. If that's 
> true, there's probably a few easy ways to speed it up.

Yeh, the MS site also says that WARP is based on the reference rasteriser. 
Apparently it is designed to make full use of SSE4.1 and multiple cores.

>> Amusingly I just tried it on one of the samples, 20fps on the GPU, 0.2fps 
>> on the CPU :-) I guess they made it a bit faster :-)
>
> Which GPU? Which CPU? ;-)

Quadro FX1700 and E8500.

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>> Doesn't make any sense to me either. Maybe the reviewer got their 
>> facts wrong?
> 
> It seems from reading the MS site that it can be used to render when no 
> GPU card is present, and then send the results over the network for 
> remote viewing.  This is probably what the reviewer meant.

Yeah, seems plausible. They didn't explain that part...

(Even so, if you're just worried about your PC booting up, it's already 
usable over the network. Hmm.)

>>> The reference rasteriser already supports all DirectX 10.1 features, 
>>> that's the idea of it.
>>
>> So I'm guessing it's coded for correctness rather than speed. If 
>> that's true, there's probably a few easy ways to speed it up.
> 
> Yeh, the MS site also says that WARP is based on the reference 
> rasteriser. Apparently it is designed to make full use of SSE4.1 and 
> multiple cores.

The review suggests it plain won't work without SSE. But yeah...

>>> Amusingly I just tried it on one of the samples, 20fps on the GPU, 
>>> 0.2fps on the CPU :-) I guess they made it a bit faster :-)
>>
>> Which GPU? Which CPU? ;-)
> 
> Quadro FX1700 and E8500.

Ah.

Isn't the Quadro designed for fast 2D work?

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> Isn't the Quadro designed for fast 2D work?

It's basically the same as a normal nVidia card, but they get to charge more 
for it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro

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scott schrieb:
> "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 what are they going to do, put the DVI connector on the motherboard 
> or something?  Sounds cool.

Well, I do have a machine with an onboard DVI connector. Nothing new 
actually - onboard graphics have been around since decades. The 
performance is far from the top of the crop of course, but perfectly 
sufficient for a Linux-based "render slave" (I don't have a display 
connected to it anyway :-)).

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>> So what are they going to do, put the DVI connector on the motherboard or 
>> something?  Sounds cool.
>
> Well, I do have a machine with an onboard DVI connector. Nothing new 
> actually - onboard graphics have been around since decades. The 
> performance is far from the top of the crop of course, but perfectly 
> sufficient for a Linux-based "render slave" (I don't have a display 
> connected to it anyway :-)).

What I initially thought when I read the article was that they were going to 
put the DVI connector on the mainboard and then have a slot for a 3D card. 
The 3D card would then feed the display signal back into the mainboard and 
out the DVI connector.  That was the only way I saw it possible to allow the 
CPU to keep showing a display when the graphics card is removed...

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Invisible escreveu:
> http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-cpu-gpu,6645.html
> 
> Crysis with no GPU? Now I've seen everything!

cool, now povray can target the GPU and expect to have a better 
performance on WARP! XD

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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scott wrote:
> But how is it going to work if the entire video card is "missing" like 
> they say?

I'm guessing the idea is you can use the video built into the motherboard 
and still do fast 3D graphics stuff on it.  Most motherboards still come 
with a lame graphics chip you can at least get into the BIOS with, and a lot 
of the Intel chips come with build-in video stuff in the chipset that uses 
system memory as backing store.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Understanding the structure of the universe
    via religion is like understanding the
     structure of computers via Tron.

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Le 27/08/2009 18:57, Darren New nous fit lire :
> scott wrote:
>> But how is it going to work if the entire video card is "missing" like
>> they say?
> 

They say (at least now): missing *video card driver*.
The video card is ok, but the driver could be corrupted/missing/gone
fishing...

Basically, they do the 3D operations on CPU and use the 2D/desktop
graphic card to display the result. (just like a basic movie player)

Nothing fancy.

Just look what happen when using a GPU at first install (before you
insert the driver CD/download the driver/...): the desktop is working,
but it's not as smooth as it can be. (and limited
capability/compatibility is provided: only 800x600/1024x768/.... no big
1920x1200 yet)

All you need is access to the video-memory, basic setting of ram-dac,
and there you go!

OpenGL in software has been doing that for year.
It's slow, it's ugly, but it works.

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>>> But how is it going to work if the entire video card is "missing" like
>>> they say?
>>
>
> They say (at least now): missing *video card driver*.
> The video card is ok, but the driver could be corrupted/missing/gone
> fishing...

It still says this bit on my browser:

"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."

After reading the MS website, I think what they mean is that even when your 
PC has no graphics card *at all*, the CPU can still generate graphics 
(including 3D stuff) and pipe the display down a remote desktop connection 
or whatever.

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scott wrote:
> "Systems built to take advantage of WARP from a hardware standpoint 


> After reading the MS website, I think what they mean is that even when 
> your PC has no graphics card *at all*, the CPU can still generate 
> graphics (including 3D stuff) and pipe the display down a remote desktop 
> connection or whatever.

They also say "from a hardware standpoint", which would imply maybe you need 
the routing to be right for the connector (for example) so that the graphics 
card plugs in between, rather than carrying the connector with it, for example.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Understanding the structure of the universe
    via religion is like understanding the
     structure of computers via Tron.

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