Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system will offer significantly improved graphics performance over its predecessors due to the new OS's ability to more efficiently delegate work to 3D graphics cards, according to an official from a major GPU vendor. Nvidia product manager Chris Daniel said Windows 7 is "the first Windows operating system to treat the graphics processing unit (GPU) as a real peer to the CPU." Daniel, writing in a blog post Friday, said that with the introduction of Windows 7, "Microsoft is really opening up the immense parallel computing horsepower of the GPU natively right in the operating system." That could be good news for a range of PC users with heavy graphics requirements, including gamers, engineers, artists, and others. One key to Windows 7's graphics performance is a new application programming interface known as DirectX Compute. The API enables computers to take full advantage of the parallel processing power built into today's high-end cards from Nvidia and other vendors.