Direct3D backwards compatibility has always been “you get what your graphics cards run”. For example, Crysis may be a Direct3D 10 game, but if you only have a Direct3D 9-level graphics card, it might only make your jaws open instead of hitting the floor. But that’s all going to change comes Windows 7.

Simply put, in Windows 7, you will experience the same graphics fidelity and detail whether you have a Direct3D 9-level graphics card or even no graphics card. The magic fairy dust which makes this possible is called Direct3D 10Level9 and Direct3D WARP10 respectively.

Direct3D 10Level9 is exactly what the name describes, it allows you to run Direct3D 10 applications on Direct3D 9 hardware with the same visual output but at the cost of performance penalties compared to running on native Direct3D 10 hardware. On the other hand, if your graphics functionality or partially or wholly non-existent either by design (I’m looking at you Intel) or due to anomalies (graphics driver), that’s where WARP10 comes into play.

http://www.istartedsomething.com/200...albeit-slowly/

excellent CPU benchmark this, even Core i7 struggles to get past 7fps at 800x600 Raytracing might be more interesting