[colejohnson66]

> As soon as you introduce any amount of animation (even something as trivial as drag-and-drop, never mind touch-swipe or touch-zoom gestures), hardware acceleration can be quite useful.

Didn’t Windows XP (and prior) not render the window as it was dragged, but just a dashed box? And when you release the window, it’d be redrawn in the new spot.

[deathanatos]

I believe Windows 95 had only that behavior… but everything after it could render in real time.

In Windows 98, it's under the Control Panel → Display → Effects → Show window contents while dragging

https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98

(The VM here is slower than a machine of the era.)

(I also want to say Transport Tycoon Deluxe's windows were draggable without needing a frame / in real time, and that was in DOS?)

[caslon]

XP rendered the window unless you had a few settings switched (or the classic theme on).

[unilynx]

In fact, dragging a window in XP was the quickest way to see if hardware acceleration was properly enabled.

If you saw the window tearing while being dragged, chances were installing an extra driver would make the user a lot happier.