Windows 8 Brings More GPU Acceleration

Last week I told you about a really fast video card in the Asus GeForce GTX 670. News soon followed that Windows 8 will be coming on October 26. It is fairly common that new versions of Windows will make an effort to take advantage of the latest features of software to provide the best performance possible.

An article from Ars Technia entitled Windows 8 GPU acceleration: good news for Metro outlines how some of the technology in Windows 8 will take advantage of GPU acceleration. GPU stands for Graphics Processing Unit and this simply means that some of the computing tasks will be offloaded to the processor on higher-end graphics cards. While software you use regularly may not directly benefit from a card like the Asus GeForce GTX 670, it could indirectly benefit from the power of its GPU increasing the performance of Windows.

The downside is that very few mainstream programs will benefit from this. While the software could be updated to take advantage of the new technology, the problem is that it would require Windows 8 and would only benefit those with high-end hardware. Because software manufacturers tend to keep backwards compatibility with at least the last 2-3 versions of Windows, you probably won't see the benefits in mainstream software for several years.

Three months ago I documented how old technology in Windows XP led to slow text speed in CorelDRAW X6. The good news is Corel found a way to provide better performance to those using newer operating systems and even a workaround for Windows XP users who also had Microsoft Office installed.

As we get closer to the release of Windows 8, I'll keep researching to see how improvements like this will speed up your workflow. And if you learn anything interesting, please post a comment and let us all know about it.