Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Maverick on November 01, 2007, 05:59:48 PM
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It's been a while now so I thought I'd ask those who have experience with it. Does it work or is it a problem still? I'm talking in general here, not specifically to AH.
I'm looking at getting a new system and vista is all that's in them but I could do a clone with XP for a while. I know it will be inevitable that I'll have to upgrade the OS too.
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I have three different machines with three different versions of Vista; Ultimate, Buiness and Home Premium, and they all work fine with AH and everything else. The poorest performing of the three running AH is the one with Home Premium and that's because it's a laptop. AH -WILL- run faster under XP on the -SAME HARDWARE-. If your hardware is pretty up to date though it doesn't matter unless you run with vsynch off and want to see the absolute highest fps number you can get. There's a lot of fud circulating still about Vista.
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Vista really does nothing better than XP does except eat up resources. What you could no nicely in 1GB of RAM with XP will take at least 2GB of RAM in Vista.
As XP Professional will be supported until 2014, why bother with Vista right now? Oh, and Microsoft still has over 400 applications listed which will not run under Vista, but work fine under XP.
I deal with poeple everydau who simply cannot get Aces High II to run under thier hardware combination and Vista. Yes, it is costing us customers. For every person that says they have no troubles with Vista, there is probably another one who cannot run the game at all. Whether it is driver related or Vista itself, is irrelevant. There are problems and inconsistencies with Vista.
Then there are those who will simply not do anything to hgelp improve the performance they lost when they went to Vista. They blame us for the performance loss. Aero is the biggest boondoggle of all time.
The other day my Vista box decided to drop itself and everyone else off my network neighborhood. Everyone can still me on the nework, but my box cannot see itself on the network, much less anyone else. That's some robust stuff right there, lemme tell ya whut.
The only marketing tool MS has forced upon everyone is DirectX10. If games are the main reason you have a PC and there are DX10 only games (there are a couple of titles) you simply must have, then you are stuck. Vista is your only recourse.
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I have a Vista machine at home and 30 student PCs in my lab at school. I also have an older XP machine that was converted to Vista that is designated for my (teacher) use. The converted one has had all kinds of issues. Overall, Vista is working better than I expected. I miss a few things about XP, but generally, Vista is easier to teach and learn. We are still having some issues, but it’s difficult to figure out because we are using newly donated servers, a new network, accounts, lab PCs, OS and some volunteer server admin. It’s just hard to nail down the cause of each issue.
The bottom line is; I don’t think that Vista is all that bad but I would NOT recommend jumping to it unless you have to or are new to PCs. If you work with Vista machine at work of school or wherever, then it probably would be a good idea to use the same OS at home (That’s the only reason why I did). I also would recommend Vista to folks who are pretty new to Windows computers. If you already know XP even moderately, however, you won’t really gain much by switching to Vista but you will have to adapt and you will be giving up some stability, power and quite possibly, according to Skuzzy, the ability to run AH.
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I totally agree that there is no reason to switch from XP to Vista solely for the reason of changing. But switching to Vista will likely be forced on people, some sooner than others for obvious reasons. I am aware that some people have problems. Some people still have problems with XP. Some people will always have problems with whatever os they're using. A question was asked and I answered with what has been my experience.
To the original question I should have mentioned I'm using Intel processors on my machines and Nvidia vid cards on the two desktops as well as Realtek audio.The only real software problem I can think of at the moment involves Windows Movie Maker on the two desktops. As soon as I import some video and start to edit it Movie Maker crashes. It works fine on the laptop. The desktops are not oem machines pre-configured with Vista. It's no big deal to me as I was only doing comparitive testing anyway. Otherwise I don't use WMM. If I did I'd probably be really po'ed. But then again Id have looked for a fix by now too. Lacking any real incentive I haven't.
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I'm with Skuzzy on this one.
I'm currently running a test system with vista ultimate on it. It's slower then my XP system in many areas. I've disabled UAC, Defender, and other so-called 'features', just to name a few, just to make vista run 'ok'.
I'm sure you've all seen the ads poking fun at vista's UAC, with the man-in-black guy. Well, in reality it ain't funny at all when you have to deal with it yourself.
It runs Aces ok, although I don't have a joystick/throttle hooked up and haven't really tested it that extensively. I have noticed that my XP system seems to run better (ie faster), with aces then the vista system.
I've had problems finding drivers for some of my hardware and there STILL is a large list of programs that won't run under vista.
I do a lot of video editing, and have noticed that it's a lot slower rendering video with vista, using Adobe Premiere and Encore then with XP. That's probably a feature of all the drm garbage in vista... Heaven forbid, I should be able to play the vids and music I've paid for...
I still play some older games, like Doom II (internet multiplayer -Skulltag), and although the game will run under Vista, the Server portion won't at present.
Yeah, for someone new to computers, it might be a bit easier to learn, but for those used to XP, it's a real pain-in-the-butt initially, because microsloth decided to move everything around, just to make it seem different, (ie; improved. Yeah right...). Things I used to do in one window are now in completely different areas.
Networking is noticeably slower then with XP. Network file copy under vista moves at an snail's pace as compared to XP. Microsloth has realeased some patches to fix this, but it's still a lot slower.
Once you take the time to tweak, (ie; disable/restrict), things in vista, like aero, UAC, etc, etc, it seems to run ok.
For all the hype microsloth put out, 'ok' isn't saying much, specially when you throw in the high cost of buying vista.
If you've got a game you really really like, (one of the very few out there), that needs DirectX 10, then switching to vista is probably the way you'll want to go. Or, like eskimo said, your job/office is running vista and you want to run the same Os. Personally, I would still run XP at home.
All this comes at a price significantly higher then XP. But then again, when you have a monopoly, you can jack up the pricing all you want, eh?
I haven't found ANY redeeming features of vista that would make me want to switch. I HAVE found a number of disappointing and annoying features that will keep me away from vista for as long as possible.
About the only thing I can say about vista is this:
It's pretty...
If you don't absolutely have to, then stay with XP. You can always buy vista later on and upgrade your OS then. Who knows, maybe microsloth will reduce the price someday... (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha).
Wabbit
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The DX10 marketing bubble was burst bigtime with Crysis DX10 effects being enabled on XP through tweaking of 5 lines in config.
Same happened to 2-3 other game titles that were 'DX10 only'. They were hacked to work in XP in a couple days with no loss in image quality.
All DX10 does is bring programming benefits to developers but cost so much in performance that no consumer display card can run the titles at playable speeds. DX10 marketing has been hugely misleading and borderline criminal.
Do _NOT_ get Vista based on DX10. You will not gain anything by it, you will only get trouble. The net is filled with Vista users fighting with the simpliest of things on new hardware. Imagine buying a state of the art computer only to find out it doesn't work because of the new and expensive OS.
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At this time I am looking at buying a "box" computer. I simply don't have the physical resources available to be building a system any more while we are on the road. By having to buy all the components at a place like Fry's or Best Buy, I simply cannot build one as cheaply as I can buy a set up system. Money is an issue after retirement.
I'm looking at an AMD 5600 cpu, 3 gigs of ram (4300), 400 gig HD with a good quiet case for $660. It has "on board video but since I am playing older games now it's not an issue. The onboard nvidia or GE Force video is at least as good as the old ATI card I am using now and likely better. Unfortunately it will come preloaded with Vista.
I suppose I can wipe the old system and load my copy of XP on the new system and register it. I am not looking forward to Vista. Hell, I had to be dragged into windows to begin with. It wasn't until I couldn't get things to run on DOS that I switched. XP has been more stable than anything I have ever used.
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Originally posted by Maverick
I suppose I can wipe the old system and load my copy of XP on the new system and register it. I am not looking forward to Vista. Hell, I had to be dragged into windows to begin with. It wasn't until I couldn't get things to run on DOS that I switched. XP has been more stable than anything I have ever used.
Be careful! Make sure you have all the drivers for XP and not Vista only.
On many new systems XP needs special HDD-controller drivers to install, and it requires a copy of this drivers on a floppy so you should supply them by pressing F6. So check if you have a floppy drive in a new system, or try to use an FDD from an old system to install XP on a new one. There is a way to integrate hard-disk controller drivers into an XP setup disk, but I never tried it (so I guess I can do it ;)).
So again: be careful! There is a chance to ruin a Vista setup without an opportunity to easily install XP.
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The only time you need an external IDE/SATA driver is if you have configured for RAID. And, depending on the the RAID chip, you would need an external driver for Vista as well.
Just because it might be built in for one chip does not mean it is built in for all.
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
The only time oyu need an external IDE/SATA driver is if you have configured for RAID. And, depending on the the RADI chip, you would need an external driver for Vista as well.
Just because it might be built in for one chip does not mean it is built in for all.
Well yes and no, pre-sp2 XP installation won't necessarily boot using serial-ata harddrives. I mean it boots but then hangs when trying to detect the available hd space. Errors out with no hd found.
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Is this a brand-name system? Call whoever built/sells it and ask if there are drivers available for the version of windows XP you're thinking of installing, ie; xp pro, etc, etc.
If they say yes, then you're looking at some time spent in installation but should be ok.
You could also ask if they can sell the system with XP installed instead of vista. A few, (very few) companies are starting to do that on selected systems.
Wabbit
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
The only time oyu need an external IDE/SATA driver is if you have configured for RAID.
Failed and had to install using F6 and a diskette on some ULI-based systems configured as non-RAID. Used XP SP2 Russian disc, absolutely legal.
BTW, does anyone know if there is such thing as an English MUI for XP Pro? When I install an English XP and then need Russian user interface - I just install the Russian MUI pack, but is there is a way to turn some other language XP version into English?
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I was going to say, the only other reason for the failure would be for a non-standard IDE/SATA interface or chip, or it is a laptop.
Yes, old copies of XP would have an issue with SATA drives. Pre-SP2 copies of XP would have a lot of problems with other things as well.
I cannot find a late model motherboard, with an Intel chipset, that will not install using the current OEM version of XP Professional.
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The only problem I have with Ah2 on my laptop with vista is the headset I use on my desktop, which has XP, will n ot work. I have tried the settings and it still dont work. Does anyone know of a vista compatible headset ?
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There's a lot of fud circulating still about Vista.
Agreed. Especially about DRM and UAC, but that's mostly from the crusading idiot in New Zealand that wrote a manifesto about Vista without ever having actually used the OS in the first place. And he's supposed to be an authority...whatever.
Networking is noticeably slower then with XP. Network file copy under vista moves at an snail's pace as compared to XP. Microsloth has realeased some patches to fix this, but it's still a lot slower.
You can fix that with a command in the Search window of Vista. (http://apcmag.com/7167/eliminate_vistas_network_bottlenecks) Just remember to reboot. I forgot and couldn't figure out why the transfer speed was still lagging. PBKAC. :)
They blame us for the performance loss. Aero is the biggest boondoggle of all time.
But Aero is suspended when calls are made to DirectX through a game, and the impact of the DWM in Vista is under 1% of CPU utilization. Now the Sidebar, depending on what you have running in there, can just hammer your CPU--sometimes more than 50% depending on the gadget(s) you happen to be running. I like the Sidebar, but I turn it off for gaming sessions. It's not hard to see how the difference between Aero and the Sidebar wouldn't matter to a regular user calling for support, however, since "it's all Aero" to them.
For someone in Skuzzy's shoes, the issue with OEM drivers must be a living nightmare, since it really matters more than ever that you have Vista drivers worth a damn, especially given the new WDDM. Ironically, the new driver model should improve security and performance in the future, but lots of IHVs are still playing catch up. And so someone like Skuzzy takes the blame, unfortunately.
Must say AH ran fine first time out on a pair of Vista rigs here, one four years old and the other brand new, though neither were Tier One OEM rigs. 2GB of RAM should be the standard with Vista, to make best use of SuperFetch, but I see plenty of Vista rigs being sold with just 1GB, which is criminal in a day when you can buy 2GB of RAM for $50.
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Aero does hurt performance due to the resources it uses. It is tied to DirectX. When you use Aero, a portion of resources dedicated to DirectX are used all the time. Just because it is not being drawn, does not mean it is not taking up resources. Aero should not be allowed to run on computers with only 1GB of RAM.
Most games all suspend drawing when they are minimized, but that does not stop the resources from being used.
Everything in a computer comes at a price. All the pretty wizbangs people like all cost something in terms of performance and/or resources.
I have Vista Ultimate on my box, but I have disabled many features and background processes, including SuperFetch. SuperFetch was making my life miserable. Took me about 2 hours to realize that had to go. In my environment it was killing my ability to get my job done. Constant freezes and long pauses all the time. UAC is also another fiendish plot to curtail productivity, but I digress.
Anyway, I did a comparison on the same hardware against a clean Windows XP Pro installation versus a clean Vista installation.
The Vista installation was 25 to 35% slower. Stutters were far more prevalent as well. Overall, there really is nothing in Vista that warrants moving from Windows XP Pro right now. Given the compatibility issues with Vista alone, makes it worth keeping XP Pro around.
I have never understood bloat for the sake of bloat. But that is what Vista feels and acts like. When we went from Windows 98 to Windows XP, there were some really nice technilogical reasons to do so. Performance was pretty close to the same in applications and games, so it was not too painful to make that switch.
Going to Vista is nothing but painful. I have so many problems I am finally going back to XP and we will just keep Vista around for test purposes. I cannot print to our network printer. Vista decided to drop me off the network neighborhood. Heck, it decided to not even show itself anymore. Makes it difficult to do my job. I will be very glad to see it go and feel sorry for anyone stuck with it.
As far as DRM goes, even Bill Gates said Vista was far too entrenched in DRM. Thank DRM for the lack of DirectSound. MS killed that API in favor of the standrd Windows Sound API (which sucks) because they could not figure out how to make DirectSound conform to DRM. There are things coming down the road which will make every Vista user cringe.
I get slammed a lot for my position about Vista. The engineer in me just goes nuts when I try to rationalize the existence of this operating system. There is just no real technical reason for this OS to exist. The only thing that appears to have happened is people lost more control over what thier computers are doing and are capable of doing.
My skin crawls when I see someone claiming 'Vista is fine'. I understand too much of what is happening in order to be okay with that. Yet, it is the future. Not a very bright one, but it is a future. I just keep hoping MS will wake up and back off of this monster it created so people in the know can get back to enjoying thier computing experience, rather than fighting with it.
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While I agree on everything Skuzzy said about Vista, I have to comment that a new Vista installation will need about a week of self optimization before it starts running properly. Then it's more responsive than XP on commonly used programs.
But if you're like me that you constantly install/remove stuff, it will never get to optimized state i.e. will be stuttering and lagging on you.
Vista was designed after a survey of 200 000 computer illiterate American families. Their typical enviroment consists of IE, AIM, AOL etc. For a poweruser it's like trying to race in a winabego motor home.
Stay with XP Pro, it's not going anywhere unless M$ pays component makers to stop distributing drivers for their hardware.
XP support ending in 2014 does not mean it will not work after that. You can continue to use it for a lifetime if you just have drivers for your hardware.
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Aero should not be allowed to run on computers with only 1GB of RAM.
Well, certainly Vista shouldn't--it's just wrong, at least as wrong as XP machines only running 256MB (or even 512MB). I remember more than a few Dell specials-of-the-month shipping that way. Penny-wise...
Everything in a computer comes at a price. All the pretty wizbangs people like all cost something in terms of performance and/or resources.
I wouldn't say that--that was proven not to be the case in Aero right after release, (http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/windows_vista_aero_glass_performance/page3.asp) and with the very early Vista display drivers, too. And Lost Coast is considerably more graphically demanding than AHII. I've tried seeing a performance difference on my main Vista gaming system between the old-school Classic interface and Aero, but it's just pegged at 60FPS (LCD sync) with an 8800GTX. I have a lower-end rig (1.6GHz C2D, 1GB RAM, Nvidia 7300) and was interested in trying to find a bottleneck there, using the new PerfMon data collector sets in Vista.
Not sure if you've tried it, Skuzzy, but the Performance Monitor data collection functions in Vista are pretty amazing in their breadth and depth and their recording options--I'll try to post up some of the graphs this weekend for AH.
As far as DRM goes, even Bill Gates said Vista was far too entrenched in DRM. Thank DRM for the lack of DirectSound. MS killed that API in favor of the standrd Windows Sound API (which sucks) because they could not figure out how to make DirectSound conform to DRM. There are things coming down the road which will make every Vista user cringe.
Eh, we all know why DirectSound went away--same reason the WDDM changed so completely; Vista cut off kernel mode access to the audio stack (like the rest of the hardware drivers) to address complaints about bad drivers of any kind crashing the system. I don't think that was a bad move in the least if it addressed longstanding stability issues with IHVs. The resulting DRM options were merely a side effect of that, courtesy licensing requirements from RIAA/MPAA/HDCP protocol.
UAC is also another fiendish plot to curtail productivity, but I digress.
I do wish there was more granularity in the UAC functionality so that dumb things like renaming desktop icons didn't initiate a UAC prompt, but other than that type of heavy-handed intrusiveness, I don't find the UAC concept any fundamentally different than su credentialing in OS X or Ubuntu. It's certainly better than giving admin rights by default a la XP.
SuperFetch was making my life miserable.
I don't get it; the prefetch in XP was the precursor to SuperFetch. Do you kill prefetching in XP too? Or does AH require a specific page file setting that I missed in the setup? I imagine you're recommending killing the indexing functionality also?
I get slammed a lot for my position about Vista.
I would be the last person to slam you; you're in a support role (been there before and still on occasion), and when you can't see what's on the other end of the phone--especially on a new Tier One system that's generally bogged down with third-party adware/bloatware right out of the box--it's damn frustrating. Thank God for PC Decrapifier! (http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/) Great, free software for purging new PCs.
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Actually, I do kill indexing services and anything to do with prefetch in XP as well. I really do not care how long it takes to load an application. I care about what the application runs like after it is loaded. Once loaded, as long as you do not swap, the application executable stays resident in the OS cache. You cannot stop that.
Idle apps are at the mercy of the OS simply continuing to load memory with what it thinks you might need someday down the road in the future. Then when your idle app needs a big chink of RAM, you have to wait for the OS to deallocate space it took away from you on an arbitrary whim. Bah!
Now to create a fairly normal installation of Vista at work, I had to relegate the computer to 1GB of RAM as that is what most OEM's are shipping with Vista. In its default configuration the performance was horrible. I managed to get Vista's footprint down to 360MB of RAM, or so. In the process I it became inherently more stable as there was simply less of it running.
On those WEB sites Aero tests, you realize the funny thing about those tests that claim Aero does not impede performance? They used graphically intensive applications to demostrate no performance loss. Whoopee. Applications like Aces High use more CPU than video card and that is where Aero hurts.
When I tested XP on my current hardware, I disabled vertical sync to see how fast the game loop could run. Did the same thing in Vista. XP was running 25 to 35% faster. Aero actually only made about a 10% difference. But Aero did cause more stutters in the game than without it. Understandable as Aero is still running its loop, even though it is not drawing anything. It still has to maintain its resources.
And because it is running through DirectX, another instance of the DirectX layer is present. In DX10, this means some video card resources will be allocated and dedicated to Aero, regardless of Aero's active state.
If Aero did not reserve resources, it would take forever for it to return to its active state once it went to sleep, as it were.
MS killed DS so sound drivers could not violate DRM as they have been doing for years. Do not think for one minute MS killed it because audio drivers were crashing the OS. Microsoft is one of the biggest violators of using undocumented features of the OS in thier applications to get directly to hardware. The marketing department did thier job.
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And in the end, what is the most common reason why Vista installs fail on users? Drivers. Bluescreens galore due to the new improved driver model.
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Originally posted by MrRiplEy[H]
Same happened to 2-3 other game titles that were 'DX10 only'. They were hacked to work in XP in a couple days with no loss in image quality.
S.
Link me the Gears of War and Unreal 3 DX10 in XP links please?
I looked up this thread trying to decided if its time to jump to Vista now that the DX10 games are hitting the shelves.