another reason not to get vista

[QUOTE="JP_Russell"]That allocation does take time, though, it's not just an instant "yank it out of this app, slap it into that app."jollyriot2k1

Yes but it only happens once when you fire up the game; then it's done until you close the game. Are you liable to switch OS because one system takes 5 seconds longer to boot a game?

I'm willing to bet it's a bit more than 5 seconds, but no, I'm not. I am liable to not want Vista until it's needed (that is, games start being regularly exclusive to it) if it yields around 10 FPS worse on average as I've seen it do in person.

You dont need a DX10 card for Vista either.

I've seen a lot of complaints about the 7950 series in regards to driver support.

New 7950gt's run about $190 so the gtx version would be very close in price to the 8800gt. If you can find one new that is. They have been out of production for a long time now.

Your paying too much attention to the fact that the 8800 is a dx10 card. Considering price performance ratio and the fact that new games are starting to run poorly on the 7 series, the 8800gt is the best bang for the buck with dx9 gaming.

Cranler

Technically Vista always uses 100% of ram. Or let me rephrase that, Vista always loads 100% of ram with something. It "tries" to be smart (without much success) at figuring out what apps you will use when it first boots up. Which means if you load a game that is not already in memory, then the system has to take time to clear out the garbage that Vista loaded before the game will run. I suspect this type of memory management is partly why Vista does not perform as well with games as XP does. Qixote

As others have said......Microsoft is bound to drop it's support for XP and again, I'm going to bet it's 'sooner' rather than 'later'. Add in the lack of support for DX10 titles, of which more and more will start to be released....and yeah, that's a pretty damn good reason for me for me to use Vista Ultimate for my custom build (the fact I can get it for $17.99 through my University doesn't hurt either ;) )

SP3 is just a bundled collection of the_______number of fixes/updates released for/since SP2. That's it.

From Microsoft:

Windows® XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system. This update also includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers' experience with the operating system.

This pre-release software is provided for testing purposes only. Microsoft does not recommend installing this software on primary or mission critical systems. Microsoft recommends that you have a backup of your data prior to installing any pre-release software.

I'd wait and see for some reviews or tests to come out first before I'd jump on the bandwagon and start spouting off about the 'real performance upgrade' or whatever BS.....:roll:

[QUOTE="Cranler"]You dont need a DX10 card for Vista either.

I've seen a lot of complaints about the 7950 series in regards to driver support.

New 7950gt's run about $190 so the gtx version would be very close in price to the 8800gt. If you can find one new that is. They have been out of production for a long time now.

Your paying too much attention to the fact that the 8800 is a dx10 card. Considering price performance ratio and the fact that new games are starting to run poorly on the 7 series, the 8800gt is the best bang for the buck with dx9 gaming.

foxhound_fox

Stalker would only run 30fps on that card at a very low res. I saw a bench where faster cards with high end core 2 duos couldnt average 30fps at 1280x1024. Look at Gamespot COD4 benches. The x1650xt which is faster than the pro version does an average 30fps which means it will drop into the 20's often. 7900 gtx only averaged 34fps. Thats with an x6800 cpu.

Do you understand that the 7900 series is no longer being made? Even if you could find a 7950gtx new it would be insane not to spend another $50 to double your performance.

The 8800's also have better iq than the 7 series.

[QUOTE="Cranler"]

I've seen a lot of complaints about the 7950 series in regards to driver support.

Ebougile

Zero problems here running my 7950GT in the 14 months that I've owned it thus far.

I meant the 7950gx2 series which is a 2 in 1 card where the 2nd gpu is barely utilized in most games due to lack of driver support. Plus you have to screw around with different sli configs to get even a little boost out of the 2nd chip.

[QUOTE="Zemus"]Despite a SP3 for XP its really not going to matter by 2009. Odds are the "Games for Windows" Format will be in heavy swing and Vista will be REQUIRED to play half the games that release anyway.foxhound_fox

MS already has a monopoly on pc software.

All OSs load all of your RAM etc at startup in your bios.nizzleton

False. Google "superfetch", you'll know what I'm talking about then.

[QUOTE="Cranler"]You dont need a DX10 card for Vista either.

I've seen a lot of complaints about the 7950 series in regards to driver support.

New 7950gt's run about $190 so the gtx version would be very close in price to the 8800gt. If you can find one new that is. They have been out of production for a long time now.

Your paying too much attention to the fact that the 8800 is a dx10 card. Considering price performance ratio and the fact that new games are starting to run poorly on the 7 series, the 8800gt is the best bang for the buck with dx9 gaming.

foxhound_fox

OMG.

But if you have the hardware, get both XP and Vista. Vista for office tasks, DX10 and wasting your life on the Internet in an eye-candy environment, and XP for gaming and serious tasks, like 3D moddeling etc.

Baranga

wrong. xp and ubuntu. ubuntu for an eye candy environment and xp for gaming and other serious stuff

[QUOTE="Baranga"]

OMG.

But if you have the hardware, get both XP and Vista. Vista for office tasks, DX10 and wasting your life on the Internet in an eye-candy environment, and XP for gaming and serious tasks, like 3D moddeling etc.

inyourface_12

wrong. xp and ubuntu. ubuntu for an eye candy environment and xp for gaming and other serious stuff

[QUOTE="inyourface_12"][QUOTE="Baranga"]

OMG.

But if you have the hardware, get both XP and Vista. Vista for office tasks, DX10 and wasting your life on the Internet in an eye-candy environment, and XP for gaming and serious tasks, like 3D moddeling etc.

Indestructible2

wrong. xp and ubuntu. ubuntu for an eye candy environment and xp for gaming and other serious stuff

yes but ubuntu > windows all versions

[QUOTE="Indestructible2"][QUOTE="inyourface_12"][QUOTE="Baranga"]

OMG.

But if you have the hardware, get both XP and Vista. Vista for office tasks, DX10 and wasting your life on the Internet in an eye-candy environment, and XP for gaming and serious tasks, like 3D moddeling etc.

inyourface_12

wrong. xp and ubuntu. ubuntu for an eye candy environment and xp for gaming and other serious stuff

yes but ubuntu > windows all versions

Despite the Bad Press MS has the Money to buy out Publishers. Say MS gives EA 200 Million Dollars to make EVERY PC game REQUIRE Vista.

I honostly see it happening. just so MS can brag about its new OS being the Gaming Platform.

Zemus

Then I'll buy a Mac as my next Computer and deal with the limited gaming library.

[QUOTE="inyourface_12"][QUOTE="Indestructible2"][QUOTE="inyourface_12"][QUOTE="Baranga"]

OMG.

But if you have the hardware, get both XP and Vista. Vista for office tasks, DX10 and wasting your life on the Internet in an eye-candy environment, and XP for gaming and serious tasks, like 3D moddeling etc.

Indestructible2

wrong. xp and ubuntu. ubuntu for an eye candy environment and xp for gaming and other serious stuff

yes but ubuntu > windows all versions

two out of 3 correct. i play orange box all the time n my linux rig. and ut3 is getting a linux patch

[QUOTE="Indestructible2"][QUOTE="inyourface_12"][QUOTE="Indestructible2"][QUOTE="inyourface_12"][QUOTE="Baranga"]

OMG.

But if you have the hardware, get both XP and Vista. Vista for office tasks, DX10 and wasting your life on the Internet in an eye-candy environment, and XP for gaming and serious tasks, like 3D moddeling etc.

inyourface_12

wrong. xp and ubuntu. ubuntu for an eye candy environment and xp for gaming and other serious stuff

yes but ubuntu > windows all versions

two out of 3 correct. i play orange box all the time n my linux rig. and ut3 is getting a linux patch

How many of them are on Linux? Hmm?

MS already has a monopoly on pc software. Cranler

[QUOTE="DJGOON"][QUOTE="PerfectGamer17"][QUOTE="nizzleton"][QUOTE="nizzleton"][QUOTE="Baranga"]

Vista is hungry for RAM and CPU. It consumes about 800 Mb of RAM, while XP only about 250. Those 550 really matter in games today!

Vista's only benefit is DX10.

nizzleton

Are you lying or just plain ignorant? Vista barely used 512mb (sometimes dropped to 350mb) on my 1gb of ram. If you have the money to get Vista you have the money to get a decent amount of ram and processing power - thus I doubt it's just 'vista is hungrier than xp' otherwise we'd all be on 98, yes?

because they don't know what there doing.

As I have said before, Vista is nothing but a case of "build it and they will come". Its packagd up bloatware offering promises of better gaming for gamers and better security for businesses yet falls short in delivering them. Windows XP is perfectly fine for what we need but Microsoft needs to keep the Windows cycle going around to keep their profits up. Once they get enough market penetration with Vista they can then scrap Windows XP support, forcing the remaining of us left to upgrade. Then in mabye 4-5 years time this whole needless cycle will repeat.

yeah 4-5 years new OS is coming but you do know M$ don't need to keep their profits up, right? M$ are far from 'in debt', they have plenty of money, so they don't NEED to replenish it by bringing out some random OS. It's fallen short in nothing imo, and it's only fault is slowed gaming when you have idiots with half a gig of ram and a crap 3 year old gfx card expecting awesome framerates.

dude business is not about just keeping out of debit, its about pleasing shareholders with profits. They dont just go "hey we got a whole lot of money lets stop work and go on holidays until we need more" lol .The whole reason Microsoft is so powerful today is because of its OS penetration so they are not going to just sit on there hands. With a new OS means new updated versions of other software which makes the money (and world) go round.

Order! Order!

How long do you think it will be before games run exclusively on Dx10? I think that is the question to be answered. The only reason why people will get Vista is because of Dx10. I myself would like to know given that I am stuck deciding between XP professional and Vista. Apparently XP Pro. can run games like Crysis 50% faster but with Vista-like graphics...is there any real point then? HELP!

Order! Order!

How long do you think it will be before games run exclusively on Dx10? I think that is the question to be answered. The only reason why people will get Vista is because of Dx10. I myself would like to know given that I am stuck deciding between XP professional and Vista. Apparently XP Pro. can run games like Crysis 50% faster but with Vista-like graphics...is there any real point then? HELP!

biggest_loser

Sounds like you need Caduca to interpret the prophecies.

What's Caduca?biggest_loser

From Thief games -

Interpreter Caduca: An old woman in the Keeper organization in charge of reading and interpreting the Glyph Prophecies. Prophecies are central to the Keepers' work, so Caduca plays a very important role in the organization, and even the Keeper leader listens to her advice. In reality, Caduca is actually relatively young. Prolonged exposure to the Glyphs causes accelerated aging, an effect which limits the amount of knowledge and power any single Keeper can obtain from studying the Glyphs.

I have played all 3 Thief games. Must have just forgotten about the ol' girl, lol, but i do remember her now.

Whats YOUR verdict on this Vista/XP crisis...forgive the pun..

Just go buy another gig of ram and your all set.

You guys are making such a big deal out of this, going on your whole "corporate microsoft" rants.

I have played all 3 Thief games. Must have just forgotten about the ol' girl, lol, but i do remember her now.

Whats YOUR verdict on this Vista/XP crisis...forgive the pun..

biggest_loser

I like XP and I don't plan on getting Vista until I really have to or it offers me something. However if your the type of person who does not upgrade often then maybe you would be better off future proofing yourself, then you need not worry anymore.

Just go buy another gig of ram and your all set.

You guys are making such a big deal out of this, going on your whole "corporate microsoft" rants.

i_hate_pants

vista + gig of ram is about $150. There is a lot of other things I would rather purchase in the mean time.

EDIT: Seriously this is giving me good ideas, it seems people are willing to fork out good money for things they already have, knowing this I should set up shop for myself there is a killing to be made.

If you run Dx9 with Vista is there a performance hit still?biggest_loser

Yeah its not quite as good (from memory) but its gonna be like 5% hit. So since your upgrading and you don't have XP and I know your concerned about this for peace of mind just get Vista. And if you really wanted you could get a dual boot so you have both.

How can it be better than XP if it gives you worse performance? The only thing about Vista I hear people talking about is......it looks nice.hamidious

Honestly I get better perfomance out of Vista than I do XP right now. If you don't have the hardware to run Vista well (ie. 3GB of RAM or more, a DX 10 video card, etc.) then stick with XP. If you have the hardware to run it then Vista is a great way to go, it offers a lot of new functionality that XP doesn't. Don't get me wrong some of the features in Vista aren't necessary but those can be turned off.

The anti-Vista stuff is old guys. If you can not run Vista your hardware likely sucks or you don't know what you are doing. I have Vista on two PC (one being a crappy HP laptop) and have had zero problems in about 8 months with it installed. It is a very good OS and I would take it over XP anyday.

Btw, that is with 2GB's of ram, you don't need 3 yet as stated in the post above. With 3 you lose dual channel capability anyway so you would need 4. If you are buying or building new go ahead and put 4 in, even though 32bit won't recognize it all.

Well if you had three you'd have two sticks in Dual-Channel and one in single-channel, so the performance hit wouldn't be too bad.

And I've got Vista, but I'm not going to discount the fact that you will get better performance under XP. But look, there's been a 5-6 year gap between XP and Vista, so of course Vista would run worse. Taking advantage of new hardware by using it more will always have a performance decrease.

I own a pretty high-end rig and have no desire to switch to vista. I'm not impressed with DX10 which is about the only reason for a gamer to switch...

For people who defend vista by stating it's new; you're right but in my opinion it is completely inexcusable that game requirements are higher on this newer software... Can anyone give me a real reason for a gamer to switch to vista? even one?

Btw, that is with 2GB's of ram, you don't need 3 yet as stated in the post above. With 3 you lose dual channel capability anyway so you would need 4. If you are buying or building new go ahead and put 4 in, even though 32bit won't recognize it all.

vfibsux

This is not true. I run 2x1gb + 2x512mb in 128mb dual channel. That's 3gb in dual channel. So u don't need 4gb, yet.

Although it's true that the extra gig is not used much at the mo', I expect future titles to start doing so. It was cheap too which in the future may not be so.

I run xp for dx9 games & vista for dx10 games (only WiC so far). It works fine for me like this. In fact, just lately XP has been crashing on me so I'm thinking reformat right now... again...

i'm feeling we have to get vista as i'm thinking of alan wake and other games which will be exclusive for vista.onuruca

Like Halo 2? There's a patch to make it run on XP, and DX10 is being ported to XP by independent developers as well. There's no technical reason for binding a game to Vista, its just about business - using games to promote the sales of a new OS.

Well, me for one do not like to be dictated which OS to use. I felt bad enough being forced to buy a Vista license when buying a new laptop, its not my choice. If Microsoft did not force Vista on people through the purchase of new copmputers, their Vista sales would look incredibly bad...

[QUOTE="onuruca"]i'm feeling we have to get vista as i'm thinking of alan wake and other games which will be exclusive for vista.Blue_Tomato

Like Halo 2? There's a patch to make it run on XP, and DX10 is being ported to XP by independent developers as well. There's no technical reason for binding a game to Vista, its just about business - using games to promote the sales of a new OS.

Well, me for one do not like to be dictated which OS to use. I felt bad enough being forced to buy a Vista license when buying a new laptop, its not my choice. If Microsoft did not force Vista on people through the purchase of new copmputers, their Vista sales would look incredibly bad...

Do you have any evidence of this? Particularly DX10 being ported to XP? I believe you but it says almost too good to be true!!

Looks like Vista isnt going to get much faster if we contiune to have SPs like this. I think its just going to become a gradual change from XP to Vista as hardware becomes faster.

So wait... XP is getting another Service Pack!? Well its settled... I'm getting a 7950GTX and XP with my new rig.foxhound_fox

The 8800 series still blows the 7950 out of the water.

I had no problems upgrading for vista, it's the price of progress. You'd hardly expect NASA to fly to Mars with the same technology it used to fly to the moon. couly

Yes things like upgrading hardware is inevitable, but what does Vista offer over XP? Its like NASA just repainting a space shuttle and hanging a fluffy dice from the cockpit hehe.

If you run Dx9 with Vista is there a performance hit still?biggest_loser

I've experienced anywhere from 5 to 15 less average FPS on Vista DX9 than XP, so yes, you bet your ass there is.

http://www.megagames.com/news/html/software/xpsp3boostsperformancevistasp1doesnt.shtmlwanted_police

Lol, wow.

Nice find btw.