nNote This is the most significant change in WPF. WPF is not a wrapper for GDI/GDI+. Instead, it??™s a
replacement??”a separate layer that works through DirectX.
Hardware Acceleration and WPF
You??™re probably aware that video cards differ in their support for specialized rendering features
and optimizations. When programming with DirectX, that??™s a significant headache. With
WPF, it??™s a much smaller concern, because WPF has the ability to perform everything it does
using software calculations rather than relying on built-in support from the video card.
CHAPTER 1 n INTRODUCING WPF 2
nNote There??™s one exception to WPF??™s software support. Due to poor driver support, WPF only performs
anti-aliasing for 3-D drawings if you??™re running your application on Windows Vista (and you have a native
Windows Vista driver for your video card). That means that if you draw three-dimensional shapes on a
Windows XP computer, you??™ll end up with slightly jagged edges rather than nicely smoothed lines. Antialiasing
is always provided for 2-D drawings, regardless of the operating system and driver support.
Having a high-powered video card is not an absolute guarantee that you??™ll get fast, hardwareaccelerated
performance in WPF. Software also plays a significant role. For example, WPF
can??™t provide hardware acceleration to video cards that are using out-of-date drivers.
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