Vista 64 and AlacrityPC

[Chalenge]

One is my new favorite OS and the other the only thing that keeps AH working (for now). I know Ill take heat for it but Vista 64 is pretty awesome once you get it setup right. Maybe Im heading into a lot of trouble but I like what I see so far. I am a little low on the WEI (windows experience index) but Im taking care of that too. Okay so to begin with I want to list my computer parameters:

Asus P5N-E SLI
Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0 Ghz @ 1333 Mhz FSB (low WEI of 5.7)
CORSAIR XMS2 DHX 4GB 800Mhz (x2 8Gigs) @ 667 Mhz
Maxtor SATA2 500GB x 4 (8Meg cache so they are relatively slow and return low WEI of 5.4)
GeForce 7950 GT 512MB x2 SLI (WEI 5.9)
ASUS SATA2 DVD

Now looking at that I would think that AHII would really be good but then we know its on Vista 64 right? AHII plays terrible unless I do a few things. First I have to follow Skuzzys fine post of Vista tips and shut down Aero and use the Windows Basic appearance settings. Then I also use the performance settings of windows to tune for best performance (check Skuzzys post). Now I reboot after using msconfig for selective startup without any of the startup items.

Now I use AlacrityPC (written by the same guy that authored FSAutostart) to shutdown all processes that are safe to do so. This makes it easy to preload programs like CH Control Manager and TrackIR as preloaded programs before starting AHII and then AHII is monitored until the game is closed and then Vista process are either restarted or a shutdown or reboot can be chosen. This program is SWEET! As a Vista user I find it essential and not just for AHII!

But even then...  When I first start AH it takes forever for things to settle down and stop freezing. Freezing is the wrong term because it is more like minor stutters but irritating anyway. Im still downloading skins in the background and I know thats could be a problem so I shut that down. Still having sound hesitations like the ones I had with XP only now with Vista there is no Sound Acceleration to change. Creative suggests Alchemy to fix it but it blewup and failed when I tried to restore DirectSound acceleration settings to AHII. Its wasted baggage so I removed it. That failed so I turned the texture size down to 512 and now everything is smoother a little. So whenever I fly I turn off the allow player skins from the hangar and things seem to be okay but something is still not right because this thing should be begging for mercy. Well I still dont think this is a Vista problem I think it is an Nvidia problem made worse by Sound Blaster being stuck in the older ways.

My plan is to upgrade the drives (32Meg cache types) and then the audio card (Asus Xonar 7.1) and finally the video by using GeForce 9800 GX2. I have Vista pretty much tuned the way Microsoft intended it to work I think but I came up with a few questions for Skuzzy.

1) Is there anyway to preload all of AHII? I noticed the preload options in the video settings are not available to me.
2) Is there something you think I may have overlooked that might just make everything smooth out?
3) Can you take a look at AlacrityPC and see if the settings he uses for default go far enough to really unbulk processes?

Okay thats the best I can make this post look sorry if it doesnt meet standards or is so big but you can imagine how frustrating this tuning can be Im sure.

[The Fugitive]

What do you like about Vista? It sounds like you spend more time working your way out of trouble than playing!

I don't know what AlacrityPC default settings are, but Black Viper is a great place for getting info on tweaking OS's

My son is a "geek", and while he is still running XP he can't wait untill his next upgrade and Vista. I ojn the other hand dread my next upgrade. I don't look forward to all the "tweaking. I hope I can hold out long enough for the new windows.

[Chalenge]

Tuning Vista isnt the issue really but trying to squeeze enough out of Vista to play AHII is. Its not AHIIs fault but because Vista has so many issues with Nvidia drivers and because of Creative drivers also and the older tricks from XP just dont apply anymore I had to ask for a more informed opinion. As for Vista I love it! I do a lot of roadway design and documentation work in Civil 3D and Vista is the only operating system I have come across that can handle the memory requirements of that program when processing extremely large drawings. I had to throw new settings on the page file (1.5 times ram size for minimum and 3 times for maximum) but even the largest drawings (2.5 GB) are now smooth when loading panning or refreshing. Well as smooth as it can be with the overhead Civil 3D has.

I forgot to mention in my original post that I also have AHII set for Win 98 compatibility. I would like to finally get out of compatibility mode if possible.

I also use Vista as a Media Center that automatically records TV series for me. Thats all shut down when I am playing AHII of course.

No trouble with this system actually but you would not have known that to begin with. Vista 64 acted like a spoiled child when I started to install it. Even having worked out the best BIOS settings didnt help with the install because of Nvidia drivers I had to just wait out the BSODs and there were many of them until I was finally able to get to installing SP1 (which I conveniently had on CD). Once that was done the system became very stable.

I have a total of four systems running Vista now and Microsoft Home Server backing everything up except I havent added the AHII machine to the mix until its all sorted out and really it is Im just stubborn when it comes to AHII. FSX and Falcon 4 AF love this machine and so does Crysis. Maybe the faster HDs and video card will make enough difference that I wont worry about it anymore but I just thought someone might see something obvious that I overlooked.

Thanks for reminding me about Black Viper!

[Chalenge]

Forgot to mention also that the sound card is a Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio and I dont think it gets along with Vista 64 very well.

[Chalenge]

Fixed. Pulled SB and used onboard Realtek HD Audio. Should have thought of that to begin with. 

[The Fugitive]

So the sound blaster drivers and vista didn't play nice? Just trying to keep up to date as I approuch my fall into vista hell   

[Chalenge]

As I understand things the version of the X-Fi that I have still loads a ton onto the cpu. While I was reading a review of the Xonar I noticed they used the same version of Realtek (for comparison) that is built into my motherboard and it compared well with the Xonar which is much easier on the cpu. I will still have to get the Xonar in order to support my speakers or find some way to use the SPDIF_OUT function which would probably save me $150 plus.

From my experience with it if you can find Vista with SP1 rolled into the install it will save you a lot of headache. My first Motherboard was an Asus A8N-32 SLI Deluxe and Vista went onto that system like it was made for it and without a single BSOD. I still had to run AHII in '98 compat mode because I had an early release of XP and the AMD patch just would not install right. So I bought an Intel setup and selected a board with enough experience to have a large group of satisfied customers yet the cpu I bought was not originally known to exist and required a BIOS update and even then the AUTO functions of the board didnt quite work right and on and on...

I thought I did my homework too. Not that the board I bought is not a good one its just frustrating and I can see now why there are so many questions and unhappy customers on the boards of every manufacturer. Theres a lot to know and the burden is upon the customer to know it or sort it out.

[Chalenge]

Its still a problem. When I get near puffy ack there is a huge and temporary freeze and sometimes the sound of bombs dropping or a plane spawning on the runway causes a small freeze. Maybe Skuzzy knows a way to slow acceleration for sound hardware or something else. For now I have removed one of the 7950s but the only difference I can see is sparkling terrain off in the distance for the gain of one card running at x16.

[Skuzzy]

I assume you are running stock sounds.  If nmot, then you are going to have to live with those pauses in Vista due to Vista replacing DirectSound with the standard Windows sound API and the added overhead of that API.

There is no hardware acceleration slider in Vista as there is no DirectSound support in Vista.

Sound is a real problem in Vista.  Even Microsoft could not figure out a way for high speed streaming content to be played and allow the network connection to run without reducing the bandwidth available by 35%.  Used to be 50% reduction, but they changed it to 35% in SP1.

And yes, it is not a good idea to be changing video or sound card drvers in Vista.  Vista64 is worse in this regard.  Of course, Vista64 has its own set of problems up and beyond the 32 bit version of Vista.

[Chalenge]

Yes Im using stock sounds. So changing to Realtek made things worse?

[Skuzzy]

It could.  It will be hit and miss with the 64 bit version of Vista.

[Chalenge]

Is there any chance that AHII will ever support OpenAL? If this trend continues into future Windows versions and hardware maintains the current trends it looks to be the only answer for now.

[Skuzzy]

Let me know when Microsoft ships and supports OpenAL in Windows XP and Vista and there are drivers from all the sound card companies available for all the sound hardware.

[Chalenge]

Ha! I got a good laugh out of that one Skuzzy. I was just asking to further check on a review site. i.e.:

I used the same review spot where I found information about the Xonar and my realtek onboard sound for suggestions about tuning Vista. When I read that this site recommended shutting off the page file when using 8 Gigs of memory I knew I couldnt trust his opinion on the Xonar so I dug deeper and sure enough both my realtek and the Xonar use heaps of cpu. So now I'm looking at the bluegears b-Enspirer which is reported to use the least amount of cpu of any soundcard. It has a very large satisfaction rate with owners and the fewest reported problems with Vista or XP too.

I wont name names but this site (often quoted by people on several boards I frequent) has lied to me three times in one month and I wont trust anything there again.

[Chalenge]

It turned out AlacrityPC has a bug that was causing this problem the whole time. If I dont use it everything works just fine and there is no hesitation and I dont have to spend anymore money or anything.