Windows 7 will give boost to PC hardware
Windows 7 will be more than just a better interface. Under-the-hood changes will allow chips from Intel, Nvidia, and Advanced Micro Devices to ratchet up Windows 7 performance above previous Microsoft operating systems.
Microsoft on Wednesday said it has finalized the code for Windows 7, set to ship with new PCs starting October 22. Improvements will include how Windows handles multitasking, graphics acceleration, and solid-state drives.
Windows 7 will enable better performance for multitasking, graphics acceleration, and solid-state drives.
(Credit: Microsoft)Microsoft is working closely with Intel, whose chips will power the vast majority of PCs running Windows 7. A July 22 post from Intel's Joakim Lialias, Alliance Manager responsible for Microsoft, described how Microsoft and Intel "saw unique opportunities to optimize Windows 7 for Intel processor technology" in the areas of performance, power management, and graphics.
In his blog, Lialias focused on improvements to multitasking based on "SMT Parking," which provides additional support to the Windows 7 scheduler for Intel Hyper-threading Technology. With Hyper-threading, the operating system sees a single processor core as two cores. For example, a quad-core system would be seen as having eight cores, thus potentially improving multitasking--or doing tasks (threads) simultaneously.
Hyper-threading is back in vogue at Intel after being pulled from Intel Core 2 chips (it debuted in the Pentium 4 processor). Nehalem Core "i" series processors use Hyper-threading, as do Atom chips. Intel, in fact, now includes Hyper-threading as part of a chip's core specifications. The Core i7-975 processor, for example, is listed as "4 Cores, 8 Threads."
Lialias also mentioned enhancements to boot and shutdown times. "Our mutual goal was to provide the most responsive compute experience possible." (Lialias' blog was cited in a PC World article.)
Windows 7 will also do more than previous operating systems with graphics--and here, DirectX 11 stands out as the most highly anticipated technology. A recent AMD blog describes a "beast called the tessellator...which enables games developers to create smoother, less blocky and more organic looking objects in games." The blog discusses how DirectX has been redesigned "to ensure that it is much more efficient" at using multicore processors, such as the AMD Opteron chip.
Beyond games, Windows 7 has the potential to turn a graphics processing unit (GPU) from AMD or Nvidia into a general-purpose compute engine, used to accelerate everyday computing tasks like a CPU. Specifically, "the compute shader" can be used to speed up more common computing tasks. The buzz word used to describe this technology is a mouthful: GPGPU or general-purpose graphics processing unit.
In an April interview, Sumit Gupta, product manager for Nvidia's Tesla products, described GPGPU in some detail. "What that essentially means to consumers is, if your laptop has an Nvidia GPU or ATI GPU, it will run the operating system faster because the operating system will essentially see two processors in the system. For the first time, the operating system is going to see the GPU both as a graphics chip and as a compute engine," he said.
Gupta gave an example of launching an application. "For example, when you launch (Google) Picasa, that is completely run on the CPU. (But) the minute you choose an image and apply a filter, that filter should run on the GPU," he said.
Another beneficiary of improved Windows 7 technology: solid-state drives, which are typically faster than hard-disk drives and gaining ground in niche markets such as high-end laptops, gaming PCs, and servers.
SSDs will be able to take advantage of Windows 7 technology called the Trim Command. In a recent interview, Troy Winslow, marketing manager for the NAND Products Group at Intel, explained the significance of the Windows 7 Trim Command, which clears up free area on a solid-state drive.
Even when blocks of data get deleted on a solid-state drive, the drive still looks like it's full, according to Winslow. "Trim allows you to release those blocks for reuse and maintain the performance. Every drive will degrade somewhat over time. With Trim, you're able to stay more in that the virgin state," he said.
Brooke Crothers has served as an editor at large at CNET News, an editor at Dow Jones' Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, and a senior editor at InfoWorld. His CNET blog covers chip technology and computer systems, and how they define the computing experience. He also contributes to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. Follow Brooke on Twitter @mbrookec. 
with Vista as well.
Just a bloated OS under the hood!
Windows 7 is the final nail for the dying Mac, sorry you dont like it but it's true.
"Improvements will include how Windows handles multitasking, graphics acceleration, and solid-state drives."
Where does it say anything about needing better hardware troll?
Win7 runs fine on Pentium 3
@bacon
depending on your hardware, Win7 *can* be faster than XP
Microsoft is fooling you fools by releasing Vista SP3 as Windows 7 and you ****** are forking out
money to them!
Wait & Watch -- which OS is dying?
[CNET editors' note: Personal attack deleted.]
And what is Snow Leopard lmfao?
You trolls are horrible.
Snow Leopard is primed to do the same thing.
I know that I'm waiting for Windows 7 before replacing my Mom's laptop for her. Using it recently on a visit, I was appalled at just how slow it was, and this was under XP SP2. It's a middle of the road Dell from 2 years ago, but man is it lame compared to modern machines. But our goal was to skip Vista entirely, so she'll tough it out until October. Getting a Vista machine now only to upgrade to W7 in a few months is not something I want to worry about supporting from across the country.
I can see within a year netbooks and ultrathin notebooks that use the next-generation Intel "Atom" CPU with dual cores and hypertheading that will run Windows 7 decently fast, since Windows 7 was designed to work with relatively low-level hardware.
I understand that win 7 64b can use XP 64b drivers successfully.
But then I tried just plugging the printer in via USB and it was detected, installed all the necessary drivers and had the printer/fax/copier portions all fully functional within 30 seconds after plugging it in. That was faster than I could have done with HP drivers even if they had made drivers for it.
That's the sort of experience that will turn around user opinions.
Overall, better than on Vista, but not as fast/efficient as on OSX 10.5 (same rough hdwe specs) though it is about on-par with OSX 10.3 (on an old dual G5). Not sure how it would compare to XP. I used a rough (and unscientific) benchmark of render times, system responsiveness, and load times (for both app and file). You can test it out yourself by downloading the free app DAZ|Studio (which also includes a 30-day trial of their add on IBL and GI shader plugins for really beating the crap out of your render times :) ).
I try DAZ last year with XP, it lag bad even before I render it. My Compaq isn't what it use to be, but still serve me will for basic 3D projects
1) Software will have to be written to take advantage of DirectX11 to take advantage of GPGPU enhancement that are specific to Vista. There will be no automatic performance increase for any program not written for this.
2) Blender is written around OpenGL for cross platform compatibility which, as the GPGPU enhancements in DX11 are specifically incorporated into Direct3D, won't ever take advantage of anything so Windows specific.
If Blender is ever going to take advantage of GPGPU it will have to do so using OpenCL. This does mean that the same capabilities will be available across Windows, Linux, OS X, BSD, etc. (hardware support allowing) but it does also mean that it won't be available just because DX11 is. When it becomes available depends entirely on the schedule for a usable release of OpenCL on all supported platforms.
Of course, it does also mean that the capability may (emphasis on 'may') be available on XP when it is available.
==
"Software will have to be written to take advantage of DirectX11 to take advantage of GPGPU enhancement..."
Problem is, nearly the entire CG industry uses OpenGL. It doesn't matter if you make an API set that does your laundry... if it's difficult to write for and limits your options, it simply will not get used.
If you want a parallel, compare a couple of CG formats that were supposed to prmise much the same thing as far as performance and portability: COLLADA vs. FBX. In spite of their promises, the majority of the planet still passes around .obj, .3ds, and .dxf files (the latter thanks almost entirely to AutoCAD).
You also can't really say Collada hasn't been adopted as it's supported by all Autodesk 3D programs, Lightwave, Houdini, Modo, Sketchup and Photoshop (yes, Photoshop). You may not have encountered it in day to day use for the simple reason that it's intended for games development and may include physics data.
DX11 Compute Shaders and OpenCL, are designed to unify GPGPU in the same way Direct3D and OpenGL unified 3D hardware acceleration in the '90s. As Glide is to OpenGL, CUDA and Stream are to OpenCL. It's likely to be adopted, not only because it's being supported by both ATI and NVIDA, but because it will save a great deal of having to do the same job twice (or thrice if Larabee ever gains any traction). It also has support from Apple who, like them or not, hold a lot of sway.
Realistically, OpenCL will be used for the same reason OpenGL is used so prevalently: minimal rewriting of code for a variety of hardware with different operating systems. There are already a number of programs using CUDA for everything from medical scanning applications (lots of vector maths for data interpretation) to volumetric sculpting (see 3DCoat). This use of CUDA may or may not have been decided on with the unfulfilled promise that ATI would have it as well under license from NVIDIA but they'll probably only ever run on NVIDIA hardware now. It's a shame as some of it is really good.
When bringing the computer out of sleep, the difference is huge. When running Vista it probably takes 15 seconds or so before I can type in my password to bring it out of sleep. With 7, by the time my monitor turns on, I can enter the password. When I didn't have a password, it brought it out of sleep almost instantly.
All my hardware works, all the drivers work, I don't think it ever crashed in the last few months I had it running. I was indifferent about Vista, as compared to the difference between 98 and XP, but I'm really excited about Windows 7. Even if the final code does not run faster, I'm happy.
If hacking Macs is so easy, why don't you post a detailed description of the exploit, and how to take advantage of it? After all, if hacking hacks is so easy, anybody on here should be able to do it, right? Oh yeah, and the Java exploit doesn't count because it was patched by Apple during the last update.
First of all, everything I've read about Windows 7 has been positive. I tried the beta out for myself, and found no problems with it.
However, let's keep in mind that Microsoft is bound by their customers to support backward compatibility with previous versions of Windows. Thus, there are several constructs that simply won't go away:
1) The registry
2) DLLs
3) Win32 APIs
4) Other remnants of the DOS era
5) Administrator access by default for new users
Again, I'm not arguing that Microsoft is technically incompetent. I'm saying that their business model prevents them from making a fresh start and getting rid of flawed constructs in Windows that more modern OS's like OS X (formerly NeXTStep) don't have to deal with. These are still present in Windows 7.
1) BSD and NeXTStep may not be newer than WindowsNT, but that code is certainly more stable and more internet friendly than WindowsNT code was, and certainly more so than the Windows 3.1 branch. Why is a Windows user an admin by default but not on OS X, where it's very difficult to give any user account direct root access (sudo doesn't count).
2) If it's easier to break into OS X, why don't you explain to the readers the details of how you would go about doing so, and forget the Java exploit because it's been patched. Also, user engineering doesn't count.
3) How is Jobs ignorant? The guy obviously knows his business, since he took a company that was in serious financial trouble and gave it a market cap larger than Google. That's not easy.
Oh, and Vista is a bad OS - slow, clumsy, and incompatible.
Linux, on the other hand, runs faster and generally works and looks better than W7. Apple OS X is best of all for looks and ease of use. It is also, probably, the most technically superior personal OS utilizing a BSD UNIX core and has a UNIX 03 certification.
I do like the Hyper-Threading support in W7, although it is a little late in coming and should have been is Vista and should be offered as an XP patch. I wrote about it in 2002: Intel Hyper Threaded programming on Linux Platforms, Intel, October 2002 http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/methods-to-utilize-intels-hyper-threading-technology-with-linux/
Conclusion: W7 is a good fix of Vista but will not make me run out and buy a new computer. It is a fix and not a new OS. I may take up the 50% discount offer for a pre-release purchase and upgrade my Vista Business machine to W7, but it grates on me that I have to pay for what Vista should have been in the first place. Since most of my clients remain on an XP Pro platform I will most likely use my downgrade option and change the machine to XP Pro.
I'm waiting to see what the Google OS has to offer and play with Android on my netbook.
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysinternals/ht-windows.mspx
HT support has been in Windows products for a long long time.
If I take my Linux install and pull out my ATI card and put an Nvida card in what do I get?
Driver support? Huh... you are loosing me. I have a 7 year old P4 3.06 with an Nvidia TI 3200, with 1gb of ram and running it fine. So I am lost as to what you are talking about.
Upgrading from Vista to Win7 ?? Any drivers from Vista will work in win7......
This past weekend I played Orcs and Humans with out issue on my Win 7 box. not an issue.
Boy your post is so full of holes.. its sad.
Use OS X to get things done.
Windows can do more than OSX =P
And windows does everything I need it to do. So why do you constantly continue to troll?
"Case point made and rested" not really. You could make that same argument to prove McDonald's has the best food because more people eat there.. .Get the point.
if you are going to say Windows is better.. tell us why. That said.. you probably haven't used a Mac in the last 5 years or so.. so you would just be adding to the noise.
Cody
Awesome! I never sell my Windows XP away but XP is very best one and that is mine one great for old and new games in history.
what 1 to 2
Actually that was iPhone sales not Mac sales.
http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/earthlink-net/mw-news.asp?GUID={4E807C55-9D56-4E6B-A21C-0B025691E94B}&destination=&symb=AAPL
BTW, when is the mf 14 going to turn 15?
Flatline.
There is nothing wrong with just accepting the facts as they are. MS is down.. Apple is up. If you are going to make arguments.. don't dance around the facts... they are what they are. There are a lot of reasons why MS might be down.. although it's probably not the economy.. unless people don't get the "buy us because we are cheaper" message. There is also the 7 anticipation.. although the largest portion of MS installed-base (business... unsavy users) don't care about 7. The people that are waiting for 7 likely represent a very small portion of Windows users.
The other possibility? MS waited too long to refine their OS. Win 7 may be great.. but is at least a few years behind Leopard in the "refined" category (OS10 has been out for a while now).. and it will show. That, and MS's burden of having to play on an unlimited number of hardware configurations will guarantee a few headaches for early adopters. All you are going to need is a few high profile people having trouble with installation and the media is going to jump all over it. Just like when we here about exploding iPods when there was one dude in Japan that thought his iPod was too warm in his pocket.
At length and at last the OS/2 Gene Pool in Windows are finally showing up big time. Wow!
Just goes to show that - Code-Base OS/2 will always be Code-Base OS/2!
Cool!
I ordered Windows 7 to run in OS X. Just like I used to run Windows inside OS/2.
Baconstang isn't nearly as obnoxious as several other people here. Overall I think he's got some good points to make and admits when he's wrong. I have no issues with them. I don't think your comments apply to his behavior *in my opinion*.
As for C Spock here, he's consistent in his Quixotic quest to promote OS2. Got to give him credit there for a lost cause.
You have to ask yourself what people want to use their computer for. If it's gaming or hard core graphic intensive stuff, then a desktop is their choice. If it's internet use, home usage, etc, then a laptop is a good choice.
- by jwissick July 26, 2009 9:31 PM PDT
- Win 7 gets a boost? You mean it will stop slowing the hardware.
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- by eadeguzman July 26, 2009 10:58 PM PDT
- Wow, "through the roof"... Not sure what that means. Hmm... does that mean that Mac sales are now more than 50% compared to PC sales? There are more Mac users now than PC users?
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- by antech71 July 27, 2009 4:56 AM PDT
- wow i wanna know what drugs come with the new macs? cause you mac fanboys swear you sitting on top of the world. Wake up! stop dreaming ... because bellow that shiny Apple coating you have nothing more than an over priced PC. Lemme know when mac reaches 90% market share but till then stop playing the violin to the rest of the Windows world. We don't go to your forums (at least i don't) to bash on your precious mac and its OS so plz don't come here talking that trash. Stay in your so called perfect mac world and i will enjoy being part of a larger well known club ... "Welcome to the Windows PC"
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- by ckh1272 July 27, 2009 7:06 AM PDT
- antech71says-"We don't go to your forums (at least i don't) to bash on your precious mac and its OS so plz don't come here talking that trash. Stay in your so called perfect mac world and i will enjoy being part of a larger well known club ... "Welcome to the Windows PC"
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- by Vegaman_Dan July 27, 2009 11:34 AM PDT
- @jwissick:
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (129 Comments)Dying mac? You're high. The Mac sales are through the roof and PC sales are not doing well at all.
Windows is the one that is hurting, not Mac.
Mac sales are impressive, but I wouldn't call it a slam dunk.
But let's see how things work by this time in 2010 if Mac sales will continue its ascend. We've already seen price cuts on Macs recently which goes to show that they are as vulnerable as their PC counterparts.
You are so wrong my friend and I think People like Mr. Dee, websterphreaky, crashpad63, and monkeyfun14, can attest to that fact, as they frequent the mac discussions all the time. Maybe all sides would do well to just keep certain opinions to themselves.
"The Mac sales are through the roof and PC sales are not doing well at all. "
Apparently you know something that Apple doesn't since they posted a decline in year to year same period sales for Macintosh computers. Their iPhone sales kept the profits up and the bottom line improving.