Windows 7's WARP Makes Graphics Cards Unnecessary

It really looks as if Microsoft might have actually learned something from the Vista Debacle (you'd have to be dead not to gather something from all the negative feedback) and is incorporating a lot of changes into the new Windows 7 operating system. One of the most interesting developments is a little unexpected, but no less appreciated. According to documents on the Microsoft Developer Network, the company is working on WARP (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform), a way for Windows 7 to run most of its graphics of the CPU instead of a dedicated graphics card. There will be two reactions to this news: The uneducated, the computer-illiterate and the few people who didn't hear about all the problems with Vista (all 8 of them) will say, "Huh?" Everybody else in the world will cheer loudly, then take a quick look around for fear that somebody saw them get excited about something Microsoft is doing. Don't worry, we won't tell. This really is a good thing. One of the big complaints about Vista was that the operating system was too much for the average graphics card. WARP should be able to handle most of the graphics crunching on the central processor, meaning that you don't even need a graphics card for most everyday tasks. Now, don't get too terribly excited about that last statement. If you do a lot of high-end gaming, graphics work or video editing, then you're still going to need a decent graphics card. The WARP system will only be able to handle relatively light loads. However, some rather interesting statistics have been reported that show the WARP system to be faster than the Intel DirectX 10 graphics accelerators that come in a lot of machines. They even tried WARP on Crysis. It was able to get 7 frames per second on the lowest quality settings. Doesn't sound very impressive at first, but consider this: it's a colossal miracle that it can play Crysis at all. You can check out our reviews of the best gaming computers and gaming laptops (amazing graphics cards included) or keep going with these other internet-accelerated blog posts: Joost Turns Itself into an iPhone App New Video Game System Review Now Available The Zune Phone Just Might Be Real After All, We're Still Not Excited Tivo on Your Cell Phone Makes Life ... Easier? T-Mobile G1 Can Now Sync with Microsoft Exchange