Vista - Recommended Graphic Card

What graphic card is needed to get RenderCapability.Tier == 2 in
Windows Vista Beta 2 (build 5270)?

I'm using a NVIDIA GeForce FX 6600 but only works with the drivers that
comes with Vista (LDDM), and RenderCapability.Tier says "0".

Thanks in advance.

Your card should be in Tier 2. It's probably the drivers or something with
the WinFX runtime because your card is powerful. I think even a GeForrce FX
5200 is a Tier 2.
--
Valentin Iliescu [MVP C#]


"lcantelmo@gmail.com" wrote:

> What graphic card is needed to get RenderCapability.Tier == 2 in
> Windows Vista Beta 2 (build 5270)?
>
> I'm using a NVIDIA GeForce FX 6600 but only works with the drivers that
> comes with Vista (LDDM), and RenderCapability.Tier says "0".
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
>

lcantelmo@gmail.com wrote:

> Ok, but I'd like to know which graphic card (and which drivers) I must
> use to get Tier == 2.
> I know that my card is powerful, but I'd like that somebody recommends
> me a graphic card with which I can take all the advantages of hardware
> acceleration that Avalon offers.

That card is definitely powerful enough, it's just a question of drivers.
I wish MS would lean on ATI and nVidia a little more to put out some newer
drivers that WPF people can test for them. It's a great opportunity for both
companies to get some testing from all these developers, I can't think of
any reason why they wouldn't want to do it.

Later,
Drew
___________________________________
Drew Marsh
Chief Software Architect
Mimeo.com, Inc. - http://www.mimeo.com
Microsoft C# / WPF MVP
Weblog - http://blog.hackedbrain.com/

We use a variety of cards from ATI, nVidia, Matrox, as well as machines with
Intel integrated graphics. The card range from quite old, like Radeon 9600,
to pre-release hardware.

If you want to buy a graphics card, I would recommend one of the cards in
the $150 range, with 256 Megabytes of memory. You can go higher if you want
better performance or greater resolution or multiple monitor support.

-Pablo

<lcantelmo@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1137774279.183271.188480@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Thanks. I know that. But what graphic card, and drivers, uses Microsoft
> to test their WPF developments?
>

Hi,

Does the minimum graphics requirements mean that ALL Avalon programs can run
at their best (maximum constant FPS), or just the Aero UI? I don't know how
to explain this but I mean can Avalon programs go beyond the Aero UI
graphics requirements?

So say if Aero (Tier 2) needs 256 MB VRAM for 1024x 768, does that mean no
matter what Avalon program you run the FPS will remain the same? You know
like in games where in some scenes the FPS goes slower because there's more
pixel/vertex/polygons to draw so that it slows down? I just wanna know if
this happens with Aero/Avalon/Vista.

Thank you very much for your assistance!


"Pablo Fernicola [MS]" <pablo@fernicola.org>
:%23fE5o6vHGHA.2040@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> We use a variety of cards from ATI, nVidia, Matrox, as well as machines
> with Intel integrated graphics. The card range from quite old, like
> Radeon 9600, to pre-release hardware.
>
> If you want to buy a graphics card, I would recommend one of the cards in
> the $150 range, with 256 Megabytes of memory. You can go higher if you
> want better performance or greater resolution or multiple monitor support.
>
> -Pablo
>
> <lcantelmo@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1137774279.183271.188480@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> Thanks. I know that. But what graphic card, and drivers, uses Microsoft
>> to test their WPF developments?
>>
>
>

Yes, you can write Avalon applications/content that will require/use higher
graphics performance than the Windows Vista desktop does.

As a matter of fact, it is not hard for you to write an application
(Direct3D or Avalon) that consumes more resources than the desktop. You
see, in developing the Windows Vista desktop we were careful in not being
too intrusive in our use of the GPU. It would not have been acceptable for
the desktop experience to take away performance/resources in a way that
severely detracts from the main thing that end users do, which is to run
applications. So, once the system meets our minimum requirement (below
which we could not provide a good desktop experience, or doing so would
impact the performance of applications in a negative way), we do not consume
a lot of GPU/CPU. On the other hand, when you write an application, you are
free to consume as much of the GPU resources as you want or is needed to
deliver the experience you want (games are a good example of this, where all
of the GPU resources tend to be used).

If you max out your GPU, you will max out on the number of frames per second
you can display or they will go down as the resources are consumed by
multiple applications. There are things in Windows Vista, the Windows
Display Driver Model (aka LDDM), which make the graphics experience more
robust when there is contention for resources (virtualizing the resources on
the graphics card, scheduling access to the GPU by multiple applications,
and moving more of the graphics driver code to User mode, improving
stability).

-Pablo

<Nicholas> wrote in message news:uRVoKMkJGHA.916@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> Hi,
>
> Does the minimum graphics requirements mean that ALL Avalon programs can
> run at their best (maximum constant FPS), or just the Aero UI? I don't
> know how to explain this but I mean can Avalon programs go beyond the Aero
> UI graphics requirements?
>
> So say if Aero (Tier 2) needs 256 MB VRAM for 1024x 768, does that mean no
> matter what Avalon program you run the FPS will remain the same? You know
> like in games where in some scenes the FPS goes slower because there's
> more pixel/vertex/polygons to draw so that it slows down? I just wanna
> know if this happens with Aero/Avalon/Vista.
>
> Thank you very much for your assistance!
>
>
> "Pablo Fernicola [MS]" <pablo@fernicola.org>
> :%23fE5o6vHGHA.2040@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
>> We use a variety of cards from ATI, nVidia, Matrox, as well as machines
>> with Intel integrated graphics. The card range from quite old, like
>> Radeon 9600, to pre-release hardware.
>>
>> If you want to buy a graphics card, I would recommend one of the cards in
>> the $150 range, with 256 Megabytes of memory. You can go higher if you
>> want better performance or greater resolution or multiple monitor
>> support.
>>
>> -Pablo
>>
>> <lcantelmo@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:1137774279.183271.188480@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>>> Thanks. I know that. But what graphic card, and drivers, uses Microsoft
>>> to test their WPF developments?
>>>
>>
>>
>
>

Thank you very much for your detailed explanation.

So an Avalon program can max out the GPU, it is just a concern whether that
will degrade the Aero desktop expereince given the Avalon program is a
windowed one. Because in theory if an Avalon program is using 90%+ of GPU
resources, all other Aero graphics should suffer. For example, if 20
sessions of animating Chess (the game in Vista) are running at the same
time, would that mean using Flip 3D would slow to a crawl?

Sorry I'm not too techinical on 3D technology, but maybe I'm just forgetting
there's this technology (can't recall the name) in 3D cards where any pixels
behind another pixel (or object) are not rendered, so I guess that won't
affect the Aero experience.

Thanks anyway!



"Pablo Fernicola [MS]" <pablo@fernicola.org> wrote in message
news:u7YMcovJGHA.2064@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
> Yes, you can write Avalon applications/content that will require/use
> higher graphics performance than the Windows Vista desktop does.
>
> As a matter of fact, it is not hard for you to write an application
> (Direct3D or Avalon) that consumes more resources than the desktop. You
> see, in developing the Windows Vista desktop we were careful in not being
> too intrusive in our use of the GPU. It would not have been acceptable
> for the desktop experience to take away performance/resources in a way
> that severely detracts from the main thing that end users do, which is to
> run applications. So, once the system meets our minimum requirement
> (below which we could not provide a good desktop experience, or doing so
> would impact the performance of applications in a negative way), we do not
> consume a lot of GPU/CPU. On the other hand, when you write an
> application, you are free to consume as much of the GPU resources as you
> want or is needed to deliver the experience you want (games are a good
> example of this, where all of the GPU resources tend to be used).
>
> If you max out your GPU, you will max out on the number of frames per
> second you can display or they will go down as the resources are consumed
> by multiple applications. There are things in Windows Vista, the Windows
> Display Driver Model (aka LDDM), which make the graphics experience more
> robust when there is contention for resources (virtualizing the resources
> on the graphics card, scheduling access to the GPU by multiple
> applications, and moving more of the graphics driver code to User mode,
> improving stability).
>
> -Pablo
>
> <Nicholas> wrote in message news:uRVoKMkJGHA.916@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
>> Hi,
>>
>> Does the minimum graphics requirements mean that ALL Avalon programs can
>> run at their best (maximum constant FPS), or just the Aero UI? I don't
>> know how to explain this but I mean can Avalon programs go beyond the
>> Aero UI graphics requirements?
>>
>> So say if Aero (Tier 2) needs 256 MB VRAM for 1024x 768, does that mean
>> no matter what Avalon program you run the FPS will remain the same? You
>> know like in games where in some scenes the FPS goes slower because
>> there's more pixel/vertex/polygons to draw so that it slows down? I just
>> wanna know if this happens with Aero/Avalon/Vista.
>>
>> Thank you very much for your assistance!
>>
>>
>> "Pablo Fernicola [MS]" <pablo@fernicola.org>
>> :%23fE5o6vHGHA.2040@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
>>> We use a variety of cards from ATI, nVidia, Matrox, as well as machines
>>> with Intel integrated graphics. The card range from quite old, like
>>> Radeon 9600, to pre-release hardware.
>>>
>>> If you want to buy a graphics card, I would recommend one of the cards
>>> in the $150 range, with 256 Megabytes of memory. You can go higher if
>>> you want better performance or greater resolution or multiple monitor
>>> support.
>>>
>>> -Pablo
>>>
>>> <lcantelmo@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>> news:1137774279.183271.188480@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>>>> Thanks. I know that. But what graphic card, and drivers, uses Microsoft
>>>> to test their WPF developments?
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>