Author Topic: Windows Vista (Read 922 times)

CrazyOWl · « **on:** December 08, 2006, 02:17:12 PM »

Ok if anyone can HElp!

I got a technical Q. Anyone know if Windows Vista is going to affect the game from running cause of the new systeme operative. just a tought.

CrazyOWl

TinmanX · « **Reply #1 on:** December 08, 2006, 02:40:06 PM »

I know it'll suck up your RAM and then chew on it before spitting it back out at you.

Roscoroo · « **Reply #2 on:** December 08, 2006, 03:16:26 PM »

the 64bit verson with the aero pack running is a monster on games and still doesnt have decent driver support . IMO its a pos as of right now .

the 32bit verson works alot better but its down perfomance wise when it comes to gaming .. but at least it plays alot of games .

the only advise i can truly give you about switching to vista is to go get a second hard drive and install it solo (by itself) .. keep it totally seperate from your other OS .

also the basic home verson doesnt come with the eye candy aero pack so its really nothing more then modified xp with a new label .

wasq · « **Reply #3 on:** December 08, 2006, 03:25:53 PM »

I tried the Betas and RC2, and my advice: Stay away. I had Amd64 3400+ with 1 GB of RAM and man, it's slow. After boot-up, it has already over half of the mem reserved, and then the fun starts. For each window, you get nice penalty... For example, try to open 30 windows (of whatever, Explorer or anything), and it sucks up the rest of your mem.

I won't install Vista until I have no other choice. At the moment I'm heavily leaning on getting a Mac for my next computer and Boot-Camping XP on it for AH...

wabbit · « **Reply #4 on:** January 05, 2007, 02:18:56 PM »

I tried installing the lastest version of Aces High on a brand new Vista Ultimate installation just this morning.

Aces High installed just fine, However...,

It would not run. A couple of seconds after clicking the program icon, Vista popped up a message saying that Aces High had stopped, and gave a list of error codes.

This is probably due to the horrific driver bug/problems that Vista currently has, since many companies haven't even written drivers for Vista yet.

Hopefully, this will change after the official release, and companies begin releasing drivers.

Wabb

Reschke · « **Reply #5 on:** January 05, 2007, 03:02:44 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by wasq
I tried the Betas and RC2, and my advice: Stay away. I had Amd64 3400+ with 1 GB of RAM and man, it's slow. After boot-up, it has already over half of the mem reserved, and then the fun starts. For each window, you get nice penalty... For example, try to open 30 windows (of whatever, Explorer or anything), and it sucks up the rest of your mem.

I won't install Vista until I have no other choice. At the moment I'm heavily leaning on getting a Mac for my next computer and Boot-Camping XP on it for AH...

I have read that with the new Intel Macs you don't have to do any dual installations of OS or use any boot management software. You can install XP and it will run nicely and allow you to play normal games but I have no idea since I haven't used a Mac since 1994 in college.

moneyguy · « **Reply #6 on:** January 05, 2007, 03:15:31 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by TinmanX
I know it'll suck up your RAM and then chew on it before spitting it back out at you.

this means that safety glasses would be a good addition to your computer desk.

Rolex · « **Reply #7 on:** January 05, 2007, 08:11:09 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Reschke
I have read that with the new Intel Macs you don't have to do any dual installations of OS or use any boot management software. You can install XP and it will run nicely and allow you to play normal games but I have no idea since I haven't used a Mac since 1994 in college.

That isn't quite correct. The next OSX release (Leopard) will have Boot Camp as part of the OS. Until then, it is in beta and has to be downloaded from Apple and used to intall XP. Drivers are still being tweaked depending on the Mac model.

There is an application called "Parallels" that allows Mac users to run XP in virtual mode, but there is no DirectX support so PC games based on it won't run. Gaming is a large reason for Boot Camp.

On topic, I read also that Basic and Premium versions of Vista do not support multiple-core processors.

Vista seems to be all about DRM and nothing about an improved operating system. Armies of IT people and hardware manufacturers who make their living from the vagaries, flaws and patchwork of unreasoned complexities have to be rubbing theirs hands with glee when it becomes mandatory for their companies and clients to make the change to Vista. Their jobs are secure.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #8 on:** January 05, 2007, 09:14:48 PM »

Quite right Rolex.

On a side note, Bill Gates recently made an appearance at a computer show and was bemoaning how entrenched DRM had gotten into the OS. He said it is a mistake.

Yet, MS is the largest proponent of DRM with Mr. Bill getting it all started.

I wonder how many people will toss Vista when they find out they cannot make backups of thier content due to some DRM restriction.

llama · « **Reply #9 on:** January 05, 2007, 11:21:37 PM »

Funny you should ask this now.

I am at this very moment doing tests for an article sidebar I'm writing next week for CPU Magazine on this very subject: that is, how games behave under Vista versus XP.

My main gaming rig (and the best box I have at home) is nothing special: P4@3ghz, 1GB of ram, and a 9800XT AGP video card. Vista went on a second drive earlier this week (so as not to corrupt my main Win98/XP drive) and now the testing is commencing. (Skuzzy, you remember that mini box I brought to the con? Same one.)

I'll give you guys a sneak preview when I get results.

(As an aside, AH is gonna be a trick: I can't get my old gameport-based Thrustmaster gear to work at all - Vista has no gameport support - and the TrackIR support is spotty. I may just temporarily buy a USB stick to do this testing.)

I must say that Vista speed is odd. I have a pretty OK lab here at my home, and I have a very nice lab at work, and I'm responsible for around 15 test machines there. I have XP (Home and Pro) and Vista 32 and 64 bit versions (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate) on most of them. Here are my very general observations:

- 800Mhz and 512 MH of ram is plenty of horsepower to surf the web and do email with XP. Vista crawls under that condition.

- The AMD machines seem slower under vista than the Intel machines under 64-bit. They are almost the same under 32-bit, with the Intel boxes still seeming faster.

- XP is always faster on any given box than Vista, but when vista is lightly loaded with only a few open programs, on an intel machine, the difference is very small.

I'm going to have some 3dmark benchmark results from both XP and Vista on my main machine in a couple hours...

-Llama

llama · « **Reply #10 on:** January 06, 2007, 12:44:39 PM »

So, here are some very preliminary results:

The system:

Pentium 4 @ 3GHZ, Radeon 9800XT, 1GB DDR RAM, Windows Vista Business or Windows XP Pro SP2

The Benchmark: 3dMark 2003. (Why this old one? Because 3dMark 2006 doesn't like my video card, regardless of drivers, and I have a pro license for the 2003 version.)

The repeatable results:

XP: 6036
Vista: 5899

Difference for the Math Impared: 2.3%

With the variance being between 10 and 15 points for each run.

Notes: The Vista installation is squeaky clean - no apps and no 3rd party drivers except for the Audigy LS and the Video card itself. The XP installation is the same one I've had running for two + years now, but I generally keep it squeaky clean. 3dMark scores had no significant changes after running EndItAll to kill extra processes in XP.

Note 2: I can overclock this video card to get a score of 7010 under XP, but I'm leaving the speeds at stock levels for these tests.

My Thoughts: With all the DRM stuff always running the background, not to mention all the pointless eye candy (I have all Aero widgets turned on), I thought for sure there would be a greater difference in the scores.

I'm going to duplicate these tests on a new Core2 Duo Dell e520 on Monday, to see if there's any difference.

-Llama

Silat · « **Reply #11 on:** January 07, 2007, 06:19:28 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Reschke
I have read that with the new Intel Macs you don't have to do any dual installations of OS or use any boot management software. You can install XP and it will run nicely and allow you to play normal games but I have no idea since I haven't used a Mac since 1994 in college.

Now that Mac is intel isnt the only reason to pay the unCodly price because you want their OS?

Schutt · « **Reply #12 on:** January 07, 2007, 06:30:48 AM »

Llama,

vista has some kind of advanced caching build in. That is supposed to load programs from the hard drive in advance when it finds out they are used often. That would be if at 5 of 7 evenings you fire up AH2 at 19:00 it would preload it from hard disk already before that and have it available.... also it would know which files ah seems to load regulary.

That could considerably speed up the loading of applications you use often at a specific time... but this wont show in a normal benchmark. Do you have any idea/plan to figure out if this works as advertised or doesnt?

Also it has like xp the constant indexing of files.. which is a hog in xp, is it the same hog in vista as in it tries to index game temporary files and takes up a lot of ram?

Does Vista 32 actually use 4GB of ram? Probably having bad support for the trackir and other stuff in the 64bit version will make this an intresting question... morethough if vista uses the ram intelligently for caching as advertised.

llama · « **Reply #13 on:** January 07, 2007, 11:35:03 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Schutt
Llama,

vista has some kind of advanced caching build in. That is supposed to load programs from the hard drive in advance when it finds out they are used often. That would be if at 5 of 7 evenings you fire up AH2 at 19:00 it would preload it from hard disk already before that and have it available.... also it would know which files ah seems to load regulary.

That could considerably speed up the loading of applications you use often at a specific time... but this wont show in a normal benchmark. Do you have any idea/plan to figure out if this works as advertised or doesnt?

Also it has like xp the constant indexing of files.. which is a hog in xp, is it the same hog in vista as in it tries to index game temporary files and takes up a lot of ram?

Does Vista 32 actually use 4GB of ram? Probably having bad support for the trackir and other stuff in the 64bit version will make this an intresting question... morethough if vista uses the ram intelligently for caching as advertised.

Good questions.

Re: Preloading. I haven't observed any of the preloading that you mention, but I can't say that I've run any app more than 10 times or so without re-Ghosting the drive. I can say generally, however, that preloading is a pretty stupid idea, if you ask me. I only have so much ram, and tons of hard drive space, so I would I want to waste the precious ram by filling it with code for apps that I might not launch?

And on top of that , reducing the load time of a game, be it Aces High or something else, is not exactly what contributes to a good gaming experience, IMHO. What you need for that is smooth framerates, high framerates,good (surround) sounds, and good controller support.

Anyway, the hard drive cache also makes measuring repeated load times troublesome, so for this reason, as well as the others I mentioned, I won't personally be measuring load times for my article.

Subjectively, loading Aces High seems to take about the same length of time in Vista as it does in XP.

RE: ram usage past 4gb and TrackIR support in 64-bit. I have no idea. ;-)

-Llama

llama · « **Reply #14 on:** January 07, 2007, 01:41:52 PM »

Well, I have some Aces High measurements.

Now as you know, there's no built-in, repeatable framerate benchmark in AH. As such, measurements are very subjective, and exact conditions cannot be duplicated.

So last night I went into the Late War Blue arena, changed to Rook (the country with the least citizens on) and went to a base under heavy attack, and joined the Cap.

The amount of activity, including GVs, Ack, lots of bombers, and lots of friendlies and enemy planes , made for a very busy environment.

My framerates in XP tended to be between 45 and 65 when there was "a lot of stuff" on the screen. Empty or lightly filled sky generally gets me 80+ fps.

My framerates in Vista tended to be between 20 and 50 when there was a similar amount of "a lot of stuff" on screen. Empty or lightly filled sky generally gets me 75+ FPS.

Video drivers were set to have the same AA and other features, and the Detail Level and Range sliders were *probably* identical. (Textures were 512 for both.) I say this becasue there really isn't a good way (that I know of) to transfer what must be identical visual detail settings from one AH installation to another, so I had to eyeball it. If anything, I think the Vista sliders were probably set to slightly more detail and range.

(Skuzzy: if you know how I can do this, please let me know, and I'll repeat this.)

Framerates notwithstanding, the overal smoothness was GOOD for both OSes. Though I was only up for 1/2 an hour, and i was using a cheap twisty stick instead of the full thrustmaster setup, I found the Vista gaming experience totally enjoyable. VOX and surround sound support was great. There weren't any stutters or jerkyness. Honestly, it seemed perfectly normal, except for the reduced framerate, and again, this may be related to tweaking AH some more.

As such, I am willing to state that, if you have a pretty fast system with a great video card (and any new computer that sells for $1200 should qualify as of January 2007), then AH should run perfectly fine in Vista.

In fact, I am surprised to report that most of the games I'm testing are working just fine in Vista. A little slower, but fine...

-Llama