News Bits: Netbooks In The News, Vista SP2, and Windows 7 Goes Easy On Graphics

Top five vendors to ship 125+ million notebooks next year

According to a DigiTimes report, the top five notebook vendors including HP, Acer, Dell, Toshiba, and ASUS will ship more than 125 million notebooks next year. ASUS outpaced Lenovo and took the number five spot in the third quarter of this year.

Full Story (DigiTimes.com)

Eee PC 1002HA preorder available

The ASUS Eee PC 1002HA is now available for preorder from several sites. It weighs 2.6 pounds and has a 10-inch screen. ASUS claims the notebook has "up to 4 hours" of battery life from the included two-cell battery (yes, only two cells). The 1002HA replaces the 1000H in the Eee PC lineup. Current pricing is a shade under $500.

Product Link (ZipZoomFly.com) (Buy.com)
Via (Laptoping.com)
Full Story (LaptopMag.com)

Windows Vista SP2 beta now available

Microsoft this week is opening up the beta for Windows Vista/Server 2008 Service Pack 2 to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. And starting on Thursday, December 4, it will be available to everyone through the Customer Preview Program (CPP), launched via TechNet.

Windows Vista SP2 will include all of the updates released since SP1 and other improvements. It also adds support for new hardware standards.

Full Story (WindowsTeamBlog.com)
Via (TheRegister.co.uk)

GPU not necessary for DirectX acceleration in Windows 7

Windows 7 may feature a software component called WARP10 (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform 10), which will allow DirectX acceleration to be done on the CPU. This means users without a dedicated graphics card, especially notebook owners, will be able to take advantage of DirectX technology. However, the benefits are limited. Gamers will obviously not want to look towards this solution - a Core i7 running Crysis through WARP10 was only able to muster 7 frames per second on low settings. This is better than Intel's integrated graphics, but still far from ideal.

WARP10 will make system requirements for Windows 7 simpler, since a system will not need a GPU to be "Windows 7 Capable". Other than that, WARP10 is more of an experiment than anything.

Full Story (HEXUS.net)

 

Thanks Chaz.
I always like reading your news threads

 

win 7 is win vista sp3 LOL

 

Hmm, actually that will slow down most of the applications in Windows 7 lol.
Even the X3100 handles Compiz, Aero, and Aqua just fine.
They should make GPU acceleration decent, it could be, but it isn't.

 

It wouldn't really slow anything down... If you do have an integrated GPU, it will use it instead of WARP10, right?

 

If your GPU supports Direct X 10, yeah. This probably isn't very useful for most of us, but it's still a nice feature for them to add.

 

Thanks, Chaz

That's alot of notebooks being shipped!

And, that Asus EEE is pretty sweet!

It was all a great read, per usual!


Cin

 

It'll be helpful for all those netbooks being sold with the GMA 950, which isn't even technically DirectX 7 compatible (no hardware T&L or vertex shaders).
EDIT: And all the people still running on GeForce 6/7 or Radeon X*00 hardware - unless Win7 supports DirectX 9 still.

 

"However, the benefits are limited. Gamers will obviously not want to look towards this solution - a Core i7 running Crysis through WARP10 was only able to muster 7 frames per second on low settings. This is better than Intel's integrated graphics, but still far from ideal."

Kind of a low blow don't you think?

 

Well, it depends on what kind of processor they were using to test it, I would say.

Aren't the Core i7 out now weaker than C2Q's?

 

Uhh... no. The Core i7's are ridiculous. You should look up some specs.

Anyway, thanks for the new bits!!

 

it's kind of hilarious how using a Core i7 with this technology bests intel's own integrated graphics solutions.

 

On a 3DMark Vantage benchmark, the 2.66 GHz Core i7 920 (cheapest i7) scored 16,294. An earlier generation Core processor, the very expensive 3.20 GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770, scores 13,182. (stolen from wikipedia)

 

MAybe the Vista SP2 will help us plat GTA4 on pc better

 

Thx for news Chaz!

I like that eee,but I don't belive their battery claims,cos my eee 1000h is advertised to have 7 hours of battery,I don't get more then 4.5

 

Another point I would like to raise up is that wouldn't C2Q's perform better with WARP10 than i7's? I assume the current i7 is, at best, a dual-core. If WARP10 is multithread, I can see C2Q running it a little better...

 

why do you assume? just read up. the i7 are quadcores with hyperthreading to 8 virtual cores, etc.. it's the successor of the actual core2 => it's better about everywhere, as it should be.

what i hope the most is, when ever aero gets disabled due some error, it could be possible that WARP takes over, so we don't have the gui loss like we have now. just a little warning message, but all the bells and whissles still (but slower).

 

125 million notebooks next year?? Makes me feel good then knowing mine will be one of em

 

Noooooo....

Yeah. I didn't notice that, but that is HILARIOUS. "But, it said it was Extreme!"

 

Core i7... Windows 7... Hmmm...

Anyway, MS really is trying to recover from their destroyed image due to the Vista-capable fiasco. That's good to know and hopefully Windows 7 will throw latest-Windows-OS-phobia out of the window.

 

I thought this country does not allow monopolies yet microsoft still has 90 percent market share!!! Am I missing something here?

 

I forget how that works exactly. Microsoft actually was found to be an illegal monopoly, but after Bush gained power, he dropped everything against them. They're off scott free now, and can probably never be prosecuted again, given that they now lobby much more heavily than they used to.

In the scheme of things though, Microsoft looks like a saint to me now, after the horrors we've been exposed to over the last 8 years...

 

Microsoft isn't a monopoly, monopoly is a boardgame.

 

Uh...yeah, but they were found to be an illegal monopoly...they just didn't have any real sanctions put against them. (I'm assuming you know that, but...)

 

To bad it still looks like a bad slide show.
And if you need a Core i7 just to do it, meh it's really worthless.
They should focus on lightweight and usable GPU acceleration and keep the load OFF of the CPU.

 

WARP10?

I appreciate the Star Trek reference, and the irony; just like getting acceptable performance out of CPU-driven graphics, Warp 10 is impossible to achieve.

 

Exactly
The GPU, if even integrated needs to do something, why make the CPU do everything?

 

This just looks like a step to making x86 architecture more graphics friendly/optimised , So when intel comes out with larrabee then it will be smoother for them. Instead of having all beta software issues put this to use and give it a try run on a current x86 cpu.

 

Kinda a dumb question... would Warp10 enable the Areo GUI on older PCs with DirectX9 or lower GUIs?

If it does, that would allow a lot of P4 laptops to upgrade from XP to W7. I was really annoyed when my then 2 year old laptop wasn't new enough to run Vista.

 

Strictly speaking you don't have to run Aero to run Vista, although personally I think it's one of the OS's neatest new features in terms of changes you can actually see.

And not a dumb question at all! I'd guess it would, but Aero actually just uses Direct X 9, shader model 2.0, I think (two versions behind DX10), and then plus the CPU would have to be fast enough. Not sure what types of performance implications there would be, but potentially it would make the whole system feel a lot slower.

 

I wonder if they did this to enable the areo interface on Atom equiped netbooks.

 

Umm, would slow atom to it's knees.

 

Of course Windows 7 will support DX9 - that's too big a piece of the market to ignore. Not only in terms of software, but in terms of low-cost machines. If you don't support DX9, then you can't run Windows 7 on netbooks with the GMA 950 or Chrome 7 graphics chipsets. Which pretty much leaves you with Windows XP or Linux - the current situation. I'm sure Microsoft doesn't want that situation!

Even this CPU DX10 doesn't solve that - since those notebooks usually have a low-power Atom or C7 CPU. So you'll definitely see DX9 with Win7.

 

Hmm this just popped into my head.
When windows xp was out for about 1 or 2 years were people already talking about the next windows?
I think it's a little soon for win7.

 

Yes they were actually.
Microsoft is back on their normal release schedule.

 

No it wouldn't. I have ran Vista Home Premium on my EEE and it runs better than XP (seemed to run even better than on my Inspiron 9100 too). The only reasons I put XP back on are because it takes up less space and the battery life was longer.

 

I hope they don't go back to that horrible fast release schedule. I LOVED how long we had XP, and I hope Vista is around just as long. XP works. Vista works. There's no pressing need for a new OS, and that just forces us to go through the painful transition more often

You're not understanding what he said-he's saying emulating a GPU on an Atom would bring the thing to its knees. Not the OS itself.

 

Of course, but if all the GPU power was put on the CPU how do you think it would work out?

Yes but XP is ancient. Honestly a lot of things to be improved.

 

Well, kind of, I mean a refresh was nice. But my point is it basically works, it didn't need a huge overhall, which in my view Vista isn't. I LIKE that there was a huge length of time between XP and Vista, and I hope there's a long time between Vista and the next NT.

 

It needed a complete rewrite actually.....
Like, why do they still have support for 16 bit apps? And a lot of things need fixing, a lot of bloat. Basically it needs to be a more modern OS on the inside.

 

Why would it need a more modern OS? What's more modern than the newest version of NT? Why is supporting 16-bit apps bad? I don't agree with any of that...

 

Because frankly, many Operating Systems are much more advanced then Windows. Windows hasn't had a rewrite in a long time, it has a lot of code in it that's ancient. Old code = bad.

Alright we switched from 16 bit to 32 bit 13 years ago, why do you need 16 bit app support? or even worse, DOS compatibility?

 

Okay, first, what operating systems are more advanced than Windows? In what way?

Second, what makes you think NT is older than other OSes? And what makes you think old code is bad? I'd much rather have something with the bugs worked out...

Not everyone does, but it's fantastic Microsoft has always done a decent job of backwards compatibility. And there are all kinds of older programs and games still in use. I run 16-bit code daily. It doesn't hurt anything, and I'm really disappointed Microsoft removed the 16-bit WOW from 64-bit Vista.