This ultimately led to the decision to begin WDDM support with the Intel 945 Express chipset products, as Intel addressed these hardware limitations with the desktop and mobile Intel 945 Express chipset families. With these identified limitations, the 915/GMA900-based graphics system would not have met the performance requirements for Aero desktop composition support under Vista. Additionally, the lack of native hardware support in the 915 Express chipset family for Vista�s dynamic memory management would result in slower graphics performance and a sub-optimal user experience with Windows Vista Aero. This, along with hardware restrictions on surface placement and graphics memory alignment, results in graphics memory usage that is not optimized for Aero performance. The hardware limitations of 915/GMA900 graphics center around not having a large enough memory table to support Vista Aero, a key feature that is part of WDDM driver support. Given this, there are hardware limitations in the 915 Express chipset architecture that would limit graphics performance and memory capabilities when attempting to run WDDM on Vista.

Q5: Why doesn�t the Intel 915 Express chipset family support Windows Vista Aero?Ī5: The overall graphics architecture and design of the 915 Express chipset family (with Intel� Graphics Media Accelerator 900 graphics engine) was finalized prior to Microsoft releasing details and specifications around the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) driver.

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