Microsoft WARP in Windows 7 Runs Accelerated Graphics with the CPU

Posted on December 1, 2008 at 10:53 pm (PST)

Windows 7 will feature a technology called WARP, which will allow your CPU to become a graphics accelerator. WARP will require a minimum of a 800 MHz processor for DX10 compliance. WARP will allow low end gaming without a graphics card, but hardcore gamers will still want a fast dedicated graphics card to achieve the best experience. WARP is intended to eliminate some of the "Vista Capable" problems Microsoft ran into.

A recent update in the Microsoft developer network (MSDN) mentions WARP10, a new feature that stands for Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform. WARP is a software implementation of DirectX 10 and 10.1 that is supposedly fast enough to replace basic (Intel integrated) graphics processors. Most computers come with some form of graphics-acceleration, but this means that even non-accelerated platforms will be able to run Vista’s Aero interface and entry-level graphics applications

In the past, Microsoft software implementation of DirectX was only used as a very slow "reference" for developers, meaning: "if your hardware produces something that’s different from the reference, you have a bug". Warp was built to be actually be useable in by consumers. WARP is not built to replace GPUs, but to fill the gap for older or weaker hardware in relatively low-performance situations.