Microsoft spelled out acceleration improvements in Windows 8, in a blog post Monday. Needless to say, Microsoft says the overall experience is a lot snappier.
The latest Building Windows 8 entry, penned by Rob Copeland, the group program manager at Microsoft's graphics team, is titled
Hardware accelerating everything: Windows 8 graphics.
Some context is first provided at the top in order to illustrate how Window 8 "builds on the well-established foundations of DirectX graphics" in
Windows 7.
In Windows 7, we expanded the capabilities of DirectX to provide a common hardware-accelerated graphics platform for a broader range of applications. Whereas previously, DirectX mainly provided 3-D graphics, we added functionality for what we call "mainstream" graphics. Mainstream uses center on the typical desktop applications most people find themselves using every day, including web browsers, email, calendars, and productivity applications...With these additions, DirectX became a hardware-accelerated graphics platform for all types of applications.
