- Aug 25, 2001
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From this link on MS's site:
I guess then, the trend, or even the possibility, of mixing and matching multiple graphics adaptors in a system for a multi-mon configuration will come to an end.
That is slightly disappointing to learn, since I have a couple of nice 20" Sony fixed-freq tubes, that are tied to a pair of Matrox Millenium 1 PCI cards.
There is more about Longhorn's graphics support requirement in that linked article too. It's a pretty good, if technical, read.
There are apparently three "levels" of UI presentation quality, and requisite performance. Think of it between the "low", "medium", and "high" quality settings of a video game.
"low" is mostly software-based rendering, likened to what W2K/XP do now. However, both medium and high require some decent video accelerator hardware.
"medium" is called "Aero Experience", and requires:
At least 32 MB graphics memory
Support at least 32 bits per pixel (bpp)
Support 3D hardware acceleration with capabilities equal to DirectX 9
Pixel Shader 2.0
high bandwidth AGP 4X or PCI Express 8 lane bus on discrete GPU solutions
"high" is called "Aero Glass Experience", and requires:
At least 64 MB graphics memory (Recommended: 128 MB or greater)
Support at least 32 bits per pixel (bpp)
Support advanced 3D hardware acceleration with capabilities equal to DirectX 9
Recommended: Vertex Shader 2.0; Full Screen Anti-aliasing (FSAA); hardware accelerated Texturing and Lighting (T&L)
There are also some other interesting requirements for video cards under Longhorn:
These are interesting, because in ordere to properly support "Palladium"/TCPA, MS and the hardware vendors especially, have to implement hardware-level memory-protection, just like on the CPU itself. The reason is, current PCI-bus hardware is able to access any and all addresses within the standard 32-bit 4GB address range. Thus, even if the CPU's memory-protection hardware features prevent a program from accessing arbitrary memory, if that program can command, or otherwise trick the OS, into instructing a piece of hardware (video card bitblit, IDE disk controller buffer read/write, network card buffer read/write) to access that restricted memory, then the benefits of the CPU's hardware memory-protection can be completely bypassed.
From what I understand, PCI Express-capable chipsets should have this ability to restrict address-space access by devices on the bus in hardware. I don't know how this is achievable with AGP 8x cards, as it seems to indicate in the above quoted specs that some AGP 8x cards will be usable under Longhorn.
It's also good news, that it looks like the required minimum VRAM for the card for Longhorn has dropped from an initially-reported 128MB to 64MB. (Though with the number of people upgrading for D3, that probably won't be an issue anyways.)
I guess then, the trend, or even the possibility, of mixing and matching multiple graphics adaptors in a system for a multi-mon configuration will come to an end.
That is slightly disappointing to learn, since I have a couple of nice 20" Sony fixed-freq tubes, that are tied to a pair of Matrox Millenium 1 PCI cards.
There is more about Longhorn's graphics support requirement in that linked article too. It's a pretty good, if technical, read.
There are apparently three "levels" of UI presentation quality, and requisite performance. Think of it between the "low", "medium", and "high" quality settings of a video game.
"low" is mostly software-based rendering, likened to what W2K/XP do now. However, both medium and high require some decent video accelerator hardware.
"medium" is called "Aero Experience", and requires:
At least 32 MB graphics memory
Support at least 32 bits per pixel (bpp)
Support 3D hardware acceleration with capabilities equal to DirectX 9
Pixel Shader 2.0
high bandwidth AGP 4X or PCI Express 8 lane bus on discrete GPU solutions
"high" is called "Aero Glass Experience", and requires:
At least 64 MB graphics memory (Recommended: 128 MB or greater)
Support at least 32 bits per pixel (bpp)
Support advanced 3D hardware acceleration with capabilities equal to DirectX 9
Recommended: Vertex Shader 2.0; Full Screen Anti-aliasing (FSAA); hardware accelerated Texturing and Lighting (T&L)
There are also some other interesting requirements for video cards under Longhorn:
These are interesting, because in ordere to properly support "Palladium"/TCPA, MS and the hardware vendors especially, have to implement hardware-level memory-protection, just like on the CPU itself. The reason is, current PCI-bus hardware is able to access any and all addresses within the standard 32-bit 4GB address range. Thus, even if the CPU's memory-protection hardware features prevent a program from accessing arbitrary memory, if that program can command, or otherwise trick the OS, into instructing a piece of hardware (video card bitblit, IDE disk controller buffer read/write, network card buffer read/write) to access that restricted memory, then the benefits of the CPU's hardware memory-protection can be completely bypassed.
From what I understand, PCI Express-capable chipsets should have this ability to restrict address-space access by devices on the bus in hardware. I don't know how this is achievable with AGP 8x cards, as it seems to indicate in the above quoted specs that some AGP 8x cards will be usable under Longhorn.
It's also good news, that it looks like the required minimum VRAM for the card for Longhorn has dropped from an initially-reported 128MB to 64MB. (Though with the number of people upgrading for D3, that probably won't be an issue anyways.)
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