Holy crap! BladeStar, you just got raped.

Hey guess what, every single version of Windows that supports DirectX already has this ability. It's just that it's completely useless. Go and download the DirectX SDK - when that's installed, you can use what's called a "reference device", which is DirectX running completely in software. It's useful for testing out features your Graphics card doesn't have, you can even run DX10 apps on XP if you like. There's just one teeny, tiny catch - it's painfully slow.

Although what Microsoft is harping on about here is a little different to what I'm referring to, it's not all that different and performance will be abysmal. This is taken directly from the article itself:

"Running Crysis at 800 x 600 with the lowest quality settings, an eight-core Core i7 system managed an average frame rate of 7.36fps"

That's right, an 8-core system using Intel's latest CPU can't even hit double-digit figures in Crysis with all the settings at their lowest - this is not and never will be a substitute for a Dedicated graphics card. Even the lowest-end cards from NVidia and ATI can outperform this, the only reason it exists is to allow Windows 7 to run on more hardware. It's basically Microsoft's answer to Intel releasing crappy internal graphics setups that can't handle even the most basic effects. Microsoft is currently in a huge legal spat because of the "Vista Capable" stuff, which Intel is directly responsible for (They basically asked Microsoft to lower the "Vista capable" limits enough so that their internal graphics would be deemed "capable" when they couldn't even do Aero, let alone games) so by having this, they're protecting their own arses.

Bladestar said;

"currently graphic API would not even try using the CPU to graphic related functions... that means that if CPU manufacturers create their CPUs with graphics in mind or if the CPU become so powerful that it can do graphics than since the OS do not support it... than all that power is never used and goes to waste. "

Which is 100% accurate and correct, and exactly what the article is telling you.

Which, if you read:
"Of course, software rendering on a single desktop CPU isn’t going to be able to compete with decent dedicated 3D graphics cards when it comes to high-end games, but Microsoft has released some interesting benchmarks that show the system to be quicker than Intel’s current integrated DirectX 10 graphics. Running Crysis at 800 x 600 with the lowest quality settings, an eight-core Core i7 system managed an average frame rate of 7.36fps, compared with 5.17fps from Intel’s DirectX 10 integrated graphics"

confirms.

The point is being able to run DirectX 10 graphics on machines without a GPU. Sure, you wont run it as *well* as you can with a GPU, but you'll be able to run DX10 for Aero (and other simple purposes (for graphics in the WMF UI for instance)).

MS knows that very low-end boxes may not have a GPU, like the slim boxes in kiosks and on inexpensive white-collar office machines, but they *will* have a CPU capable of running DX10 (via this WARP abstraction).

So, why dont you READ THE FRACKING articles before you run off at the mouth like an idiot.