Gaming Microsoft discouraging hybrid graphics

DSGamer64

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http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2942

It seems that Microsoft is discouraging system manufacturers from shipping systems making use of hybrid graphics.

Hybrid graphics is where a system has one GPU built onto the motherboard and another on a dedicated graphics card. Microsoft’s Guidelines for Graphics in Windows 7 is strongly discouraging OEMs from shipping systems making use of this technology.

A hybrid graphics system typically has two GPUs: a low-power, fairly low-performance integrated GPU and a second high-power, higher performance discrete GPU.

The integrated GPU is typically used when long battery life is desired, and the discrete GPU is used when battery life is not important or when higher performance is required. Such systems require a reboot to switch between GPUs.

Windows 7 does not offer native support for hybrid graphics systems. We strongly discourage system manufacturers from shipping such systems, which can be unstable and provide a poor user experience.

I’m betting that ATI/AMD, NVIDIA and a number of system OEMs are going to be displeased by how Microsoft has labeled this technology.



I am not amused, only a couple of companies have hybrid graphic capable laptops, the Asus N10J and MacBook Pro are two laptops with hybrid graphics technology.
 

Maz7006

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seedvt said:
I bet MS will turn around and add it as part of W7 SP1 or something.

Ditto.

MS...
dry.gif
 

DSGamer64

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Hybrid graphics is the only true way to go for laptops. Yes, it is more expensive but I can be the first to say that I sure as shit would not complain if I was running a GMA4500 graphics chip while mobile and could have something like a GT130M as my main dedicated graphics card for when I am plugged in and want to play some games, far better then having one power sucking dedicated graphics card or one that is just absolutely shit in general.
 

FAST6191

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The conspiracy theorist within says this is a WGA hole of sorts as it potentially negates hardware checks at some level (I am sure some of you have fallen foul of it when you swap out a hard drive/graphics card/similar).

As for the usefulness of the system I am not entirely sure, it feels a bit like the time CPU makers (mainly server world) were integrating legacy chipsets on die rather than doing some emulation. I would even go so far as to say with current transistor tech, the generally useless nature of laptop graphics and a bit of creative designing you could probably do a low power mode that retains basic functionality (we are already seeing it on desktop graphics and other areas of computing hardware have been doing it for decades now). Failing that bring on the "external" stuff I was reading about ( http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/06/06/amd_launches_xgp/ ).
 

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