Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Agentbolt on February 11, 2007, 02:04:00 pm
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Not sure if anyone else using Vista is running into this, but my new rig with Vista doesn't seem to like running SCP very much. I was getting higher framerates with my old laptop that had a mobility X600 and a gig of RAM than my current desktop with an 8800GTS and 2 gigs of RAM.
I'm assuming this is due to Vista excruciatingly poor OpenGL support. Just an FYI to any upgraders, don't expect SCP to run very well until there's some better video card drivers out there. And be assured that I've installed and set up everything correctly.
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It has more to do with the 8800 Vista drivers than Vista itself. The current ones are known to have a ton of problems.
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Not sure if anyone else using Vista is running into this, but my new rig with Vista doesn't seem to like running SCP very much. I was getting higher framerates with my old laptop that had a mobility X600 and a gig of RAM than my current desktop with an 8800GTS and 2 gigs of RAM.
I'm assuming this is due to Vista excruciatingly poor OpenGL support. Just an FYI to any upgraders, don't expect SCP to run very well until there's some better video card drivers out there. And be assured that I've installed and set up everything correctly.
I surely hope you realise that the graphics card driver providers are to blame, not vista.
It's a brand new operating system with a new driver model and the drivers had to be rewritten.
You also have brand new hardware and it's known to have very immature drivers (they only just came out !) to support it. Give it time.
I use vista and an older graphics card and i'm not having any speed issues. I'm not a person overly conerned about frame-rates tho.
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Well first off, I'm certainly not complaining (I knew both Vista AND my Video card are brand-new and hardly polished).
I guess I was just assuming it was due to Vista's poor OpenGL implementation. It's at least as well known that OpenGl games are performing hideously across the board on Vista regardless of graphic card.
http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2917&p=19
If no one else is having issues though, I guess I'll just wait for better 8800 drivers to come out, no biggie. Also, I'm not really concerned about framerates or bragging rights either, the drop from 50 FPS during big battles to 25 is quite noticeable even without the counter, however.
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I guess I was just assuming it was due to Vista's poor OpenGL implementation.
Moving on to OpenGL and Quake 4, we'll be able to see how well NVIDIA and AMD have done in building their own OpenGL ICD
Again, you're automatically blaming Vista without understanding of how the technology works. For discrete graphics cards like yours and mine, OpenGL is provided as an ICD in the driver you download. How good that implementation is, is due to the graphics card vendor, not due to microsoft. There should be no difference in a perfect world between OpenGL performance on XP and in Vista. Additionally complicating the matter is the fact that the 8800 is a brand new design that differs in hardware significantly from the 6 and 7 series cards, which are similar to each other.
My Geforce 5600 FX ultra can only use the 97.xx series vista driver and doesn't even work anymore in the 100.xx series and up. the 8800 ONLY uses the 100.xx series and up, but I can tell you that FS SCP works for me the same in Vista as in XP.
For you however, the situation is more unclear. the 8800 only just got support for vista like a week or two ago. DirectX performance is similarly terrible across the board on this card, which is also due to the drivers. In fact, you may be already aware that there is a class action lawsuit pending against nvidia for this and that nvidia has revamped their release schedule to monthly as a response.
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I think you might be misunderstanding me, my friend. I'm blaming Microsoft for poor performance RIGHT NOW because writing an OpenGL ICD is currently much harder than writing a Direct3D one for Vista.
Moving on to OpenGL and Quake 4, we'll be able to see how well NVIDIA and AMD have done in building their own OpenGL ICD (installable client driver) for the API. This is more taxing on hardware vendors, because Microsoft's implementation of OpenGL is just a wrapper around DirectX. By default, unless an ICD is used, OpenGL applications cannot talk directly to the hardware.
GPU limited performance does seem to improve over CPU limited performance, indicating that driver overhead on the CPU is a major factor contributing to the reduced frame rates.
OpenGL games are running signifigantly worse on Vista than XP. It's partially an issue for me because there aren't any terribly good drivers for the 8800GTS on EITHER system, but for whatever reason Vista likes working with Direct3D a lot more than OpenGL (even more so in Vista than XP). Since Direct3D IS Microsoft, I hardly think it's a coincidence things got a lot worse in that regard with the new OS. If you're getting the same framerates in XP and Vista then that's great, however your video card is old enough that it is unfortunately kind of in the same camp as the X1300 and X1650 camp in this article, i.e. they are such poor performers regardless at this point that the loss of efficiency in Vista isn't really noticeable.
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I think you might be misunderstanding me, my friend. I'm blaming Microsoft for poor performance RIGHT NOW because writing an OpenGL ICD is currently much harder than writing a Direct3D one for Vista.
Moving on to OpenGL and Quake 4, we'll be able to see how well NVIDIA and AMD have done in building their own OpenGL ICD (installable client driver) for the API. This is more taxing on hardware vendors, because Microsoft's implementation of OpenGL is just a wrapper around DirectX. By default, unless an ICD is used, OpenGL applications cannot talk directly to the hardware.
GPU limited performance does seem to improve over CPU limited performance, indicating that driver overhead on the CPU is a major factor contributing to the reduced frame rates.
OpenGL games are running signifigantly worse on Vista than XP. It's partially an issue for me because there aren't any terribly good drivers for the 8800GTS on EITHER system, but for whatever reason Vista likes working with Direct3D a lot more than OpenGL (even more so in Vista than XP). Since Direct3D IS Microsoft, I hardly think it's a coincidence things got a lot worse in that regard with the new OS. If you're getting the same framerates in XP and Vista then that's great, however your video card is old enough that it is unfortunately kind of in the same camp as the X1300 and X1650 camp in this article, i.e. they are such poor performers regardless at this point that the loss of efficiency in Vista isn't really noticeable.
Again, 90 percent of your problem is your graphics card and it's poor drivers. I have no issues with OpenGL use on my vista, i use it for games (not current ones obviously) and i use it for output with glass still on with VLC. Works fine, i haven't lost frames on these games vs XP. Also, ICD's are also required on XP.
If I were you, i'd go pay a visit to http://www.nvidiaclassaction.org/ instead of blaming microsoft.
Also, read this : http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070206-8784.html
I'll quote :
I have Vista Ultimate 32-bit edition and an 8800GTX. I installed 4 games (UT2004, Dreamfall, Oblivion and NFS Most Wanted) and not a single one of them works. Even with Forceware 100.30, 100.54 and 100.59.
If I am lucky I can play for a couple of seconds, but then the game crashes to the desktop with the error message "Your display driver crashed and has been recovered" ...or something.
Those are not OpenGL games (well UT2004 is) and they still have troubles. It's just a crap driver all around. I'm not a big fan of nvidia, they also dropped support for a bunch of hardware that is only just 4 years old. I mean, it's older hardware, but you expect a bit more support, especially for major operating system upgrades, at least provide a base level supported driver even if you no longer make improvements. It's really quite pathetic, but there are droves of mindless upgrade zombies who will shell out for the latest and greatest every 6 months, so i guess we only have ourselves to blame.
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You aren't having issues with games performance on Vista because your video card is borderline obsolete and at this point a 20% reduction in efficiency (which appears to be the average amount shown on the more modern cards) isn't going to be noticeable. I understand you are having no performance issues in Vista whatsoever. That is great, really. Most people are, because most people have better video cards than you. It probably doesn't matter for you in specific regards to SCP because you're likely not running the advanced effects MVP.
Also, I'm very aware XP requires an ICD too, DirectX was around way before XP came out. The problem is that Vista doesn't even SEE OpenGL anymore, it just sees it as another layer to Direct3D. XP didn't behave like that, it was much easier to write an ICP for the hardware and game to talk directly. Vendors are gonna figure out the issue eventually and most likely fix the performance woes, but until they do there are some serious Vista OpenGL issues specifically BECAUSE of the new way Vista treats OpenGL.
Probably 70-80% of my problem is that in a tax rebate-fueled binge I bought a video card for my computer that frankly wasn't ready for release. I understand this. But Vista and OpenGL ain't working together properly, and I'm willing to bet there's some people out there whose Freespace is suffering as well because of that.
edit: also, thank you for the links. I am aware of the site, although I think it's a little ridiculous to be threatening lawsuits to anyone at this point. You buy something brand new like Vista, you should expect some things to not be perfect right out of the chute.
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yeah, well those people with 8800 cards anyway. lol
as for me not being able to see a 20 percent performance reduction, i call bull****. I'd definately notice this.
I'm willing to guarantee that 6 and 7 series owners won't have the difficulties you're experiencing. Have you even tried to run a 6800 and see if you have horrid performance ?
Also, I'm very aware XP requires an ICD too, DirectX was around way before XP came out. The problem is that Vista doesn't even SEE OpenGL anymore, it just sees it as another layer to Direct3D. XP didn't behave like that, it was much easier to write an ICP for the hardware and game to talk directly. Vendors are gonna figure out the issue eventually and most likely fix the performance woes, but until they do there are some serious Vista OpenGL issues specifically BECAUSE of the new way Vista treats OpenGL.
If you don't have an ICD on XP, you run in OpenGL Software rendered mode with no GPU hardware support, that just uses your CPU to do everything. That's hardly worhtwhile use, and it's something I doubt you've ever experienced.
And i'm sorry if this comes off wrong, but how do you know how "easy" writing an ICD is or isn't ? Are you a graphics developer ? If you are, i'm sure we can use you.... if not, then you probably heard it from Nvidia, who are trying to blame someone else for their problem in not planning correctly for a major (and late) SW upgrade. They knew they'd have to rewrite this stuff from at least 2003 onwards.
Again... if you have a problem, you really need to isolate why you have a problem. Vista is NOT the issue.
What do you want microsoft to do anyway ? Not give us a vastly improved interface ? Keep it the same as an obsolete Operating system from 1995 ? Seriously... they had to change it, and for whatever reason, Nvidia just didn't get it right for the 8800 series at launch.
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Again... if you have a problem, you really need to isolate why you have a problem. Vista is NOT the issue.
What do you want microsoft to do anyway ? Not give us a vastly improved interface ? Keep it the same as an obsolete Operating system from 1995 ? Seriously... they had to change it, and for whatever reason, Nvidia just didn't get it right for the 8800 series at launch.
Whoa, hoss.
Yeah, ultimately the blame lies on the GPU manufacturers for not ensuring high quality driver releases... BUUUUUUT....
So far I've seen precious little that demonstrates Vista is anything more than a pretty GUI with DX10 support. So far, we're seeing the same kinds of hardware compatibility issues that plagues XP's launch (which aren't unexpected mind you) and no real performance improvements. Various "experts" have commented that Vista is really nothing special.
Microsoft is pushing another OS release for the sake of another OS release, not because there's any significant improvement in the software. Vista, by all accounts, is an even bigger resource hog than XP. And this push for DX10 is really ignoring the advances of OpenGL. So yeah, while hardware manufacturers should be aware of the issues and work towards supporting their hardware in various modes, Microsoft is very much directing they way they want software to be written for their OS. DX10 applications push people to move to Vista for both software and hardware support (though rumour has it that XP is going to get some sort of overhaul that allows DX10 support on it soon here too).
I'm not excusing anyone responsible here, it's simply that a combintion of factors involving both hardware and software are at play in the performance issues surrounding Vista.
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Whoa, hoss.
So far I've seen precious little that demonstrates Vista is anything more than a pretty GUI with DX10 support. So far, we're seeing the same kinds of hardware compatibility issues that plagues XP's launch (which aren't unexpected mind you) and no real performance improvements. Various "experts" have commented that Vista is really nothing special.
Microsoft is pushing another OS release for the sake of another OS release, not because there's any significant improvement in the software.
Okay, you've lost all your credibility right there. This is patently false, Except for the fact that Vista is slower than XP, it is by around 6 percent. But the performance tradeoff is worth the multiple fundamental usability improvements.
Have you even used Vista ? I've used the final for 3 months. In that time i have gotten 0 spyware. None. I used to get several a month on XP.
Security, Audio, Networking, Graphics, Usability, just about everything has recieved a major upgrade in Vista over XP. To just say it's XP with a pretty gui slapped on it is the height of ignorance.
Anyway, I'm leaving this thread because it's starting to turn into a flamewar. I leave it up to the readers to decide for themselves which side is correct when it comes to vista.
Is it going to be great on all hardware combinations out there ? Hell no. But it should be great on the latest and greatest, which the 8800 is... and it is just pathetic that Nvidia has failed the userbase in this manner... but what do they care ? the uninformed user just hates on microsoft and blames vista.
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my 8800gts gives me pretty good performance on xp so i can tell you for sure its not the card.
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my 8800gts gives me pretty good performance on xp so i can tell you for sure its not the card.
it's the cards drivers. Unless you are unaware, the drivers are different between xp and vista... completely.
/me sighs...
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Hey neoterran, I'll hold 'em, You hit 'em.
Now, for the umpteenth time, drivers are SOFTWARE. Software != hardware. This is NOT a difficult concept. Don't make me get out my clue-by-four.
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I'm actually going to partially retract my rant. I was researching and found this:
http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/6039/
I hadn't heard that. I was under the impression that OpenGL had been layered, and it hasn't been. If it had been, that'd have been the obvious cause of any OpenGL/Vista issues. So I'm going to retract what I said earlier about it being monumentally tougher to code OpenGL for Windows because of how Vista is implemented, with an apology.
However, Neoterran, OpenGL isn't working properly across the board, NOT just with the 8800GTS. I think you need to re-read the Anandtech article.
As expected, OpenGL performance is much worse both in CPU limited and GPU limited cases. The reason the low end AMD cards look better off here is that their performance is simply bad across the board. NVIDIA seems to perform closer to XP in general here, and both companies are saying that performance will improve over time. GPU limited performance does seem to improve over CPU limited performance, indicating that driver overhead on the CPU is a major factor contributing to the reduced frame rates.
That's what they said about OpenGL
First up is Oblivion performance. DirectX performance should be as close as possible to Windows XP performance as this is Microsoft's baby. First, let's take a look at Vista x86 numbers divided by Windows XP scores for CPU limited and GPU limited cases. This will give us the speed up (numbers above one) or slow down (numbers less than one) as compared to Windows XP. Just remember that there is some normal fluctuation in performance on both sides, so we could see a wider margin of error here than in our standard comparisons.
For CPU bound tests, almost every card performs better under Windows Vista than under Windows XP; the lone exception is the X1900 XT 256MB. This indicates that Vista is better able to provide system resources to DirectX games, which is actually quite surprising considering the overhead that Vista adds to the system.
That's Direct3D. Direct3D is working, OpenGL is not. For GPU bound benchmarks in Direct3D games were slower, granted, but the lowest was 93% of XP, compared to OpenGL which is only 70% as fast.
This is BOTH ATI and NVidia, so you can't blame NVidia for this issue solely. And if both companies were just "being lazy" with their Vista support, why is Direct3D working so well and OpenGL so poorly? Your claims that NVidia is somehow completely at fault here, and that OpenGL games peform just as well under XP as they do in Vista, carries no water because every quantitative piece of evidence is indicating that is not the case.
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It's not about laziness. It's about a new driver API. It's not going to be perfect the first time out. It isn't even necessarily going to be good on first run drivers. ESPECIALLY on new hardware architecture like that in the geforce 8 series cards.
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Again, then, I'm gonna have to ask why Direct3D is working so well, and OpenGL is working so poorly. Common sense seems to dictate that OpenGL is tougher to code for than Direct3D under Vista. OpenGL is not so dead for games that either company would've just ignored optimizing for it when making their drivers.
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Alright Agentbolt,
I appreciate the retraction, sometimes it gets very annoying with just the knee jerk reaction to blame microsoft for anything, or to say vista is nothing more than some old paint slapped onto xp. Vista has many issues, and it'll certainly be better after a service pack or two, but it is a marked improvement from xp, which, IMHO, sucked right up until SP2. Gold XP was buggy as hell, and some of those bugs still exist in xp today. remove the go button from explorer.exe and then resize the window wide and drop down the drop down addressbar and you'll see what i mean. vista's explorer.exe, while slower, is much less buggy.
Anyway.... vista could definately have done with a longer dev cycle. Vista was devloped in only 3 years, as almost everything up to 2004 got scrapped after MS realised it wasn't going to work. Alot of the work is done under the hood in changing and compartmentalizing the codebase, removing cyclical dependencies, et al. I'm sure this work will continue with Windows 7, to be released in 2009.
As for the driver issues, well, look at those charts. The variance is not ranked by performance, indeed, a **** card, the x1300, performs the same under vista than under xp. It's varying wildly across chipsets and performance levels. That indicates to me, driver level issues.
So, i'll concede that Vista opengl drivers, depending on your card, might not be as good as on XP. But in my case (as in the x1300) I haven't noticed any slowdown. Since anandtech only bothered to test currently available cards, we don't have an idea of how drivers perform for older cards.
On the other hand, direct X cards are mostly better. slightly. But as you can see 8800 owners are still bitter with many games just not running. I think the graphics cards guys need to be fully responsible for this; it's part of charging 300 to 700 dollars for a piece of hardware manufactured for up to 130 dollars max in many cases. You owe the customer what you say on the box.
Keep in mind too, that the nvidia driver encompases almost 20 million lines of code. That is almost as much as NT 4.0 itself. It's not a trivial manner to deal with such a massive codebase for so many cards. This is why nvidia is starting to drop support. Their whole unified driver approach is beginning to come apart as well.
As for OpenGL vs DirectX, it's obvious to anyone that most games use DirectX. Becasue of that, it'll recieve more coding time and resources and be a bigger priority for the companies to get right.
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my 8800gts gives me pretty good performance on xp so i can tell you for sure its not the card.
it's the cards drivers. Unless you are unaware, the drivers are different between xp and vista... completely.
/me sighs...
you think i dont know that, i was just elimenating hardware as a source of the problem.
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I appreciate the retraction, sometimes it gets very annoying with just the knee jerk reaction to blame microsoft for anything, or to say vista is nothing more than some old paint slapped onto xp. Vista has many issues, and it'll certainly be better after a service pack or two, but it is a marked improvement from xp, which, IMHO, sucked right up until SP2.
This is precisely what I was getting at in my post.
Oh, and the bit earlier about Vista and spyware is not a very good argument for the superiority of Vista. First off, I've been on XP Pro since it's release. In that time, I've had 2 viral infections on the PC (both of which due to some circumstances which were my doing, not the OS's) and no spyware. None. A properly configured and managed XP system is no more vulnerable than MacOS (Linux is another story) - but it'll take more work, because there's more out there to compromise it. Saying Vista is superior because it doesn't get spyware is like saying Macs are immune to all malware. It just ain't so. The userbase was small enough that there wasn't the volume of exploits as for XP. That'll change.
I'm not hating on Microsoft - I'm pointing out that poor performance is partially their fault. Vista is a resource hog, and Microsoft is pushing DX10. This all translates into reduced support for OpenGL-based applications. Yes, nVidia and ATI could both push out support for DirectX and OpenGL, but why go to all the effort when all the hype concerns DX10? It's a financial call too.
Undoubtably, the bugs will get worked out of Vista, and hardware manufacturers will get the hang of writing drivers for Vista intentionally. But saying that the only reason OpenGL isn't having its full potential realized on Vista is because the hardware manufacturers are too lazy to code decent drivers is ignoring half the big picture.
Oh, and I haven't played with Vista on this machine yet - too lazy to download the beta when it was in testing, and I'm not forking out the cash to load a new OS on an ancient PC. I've seen it in action and heard various things good and bad from a variety of people who know a great deal more about hardware than I do. I'll get in bundled with a new PC when I've got the cash to spare.
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A number of items in your post are inaccurate, so i will kindly point them out for the discerning forum readers.
Oh, and the bit earlier about Vista and spyware is not a very good argument for the superiority of Vista.
I think it is, but there are many, many other reasons, but since you've already made your mind up, no point in going over them again.
A properly configured and managed XP system is no more vulnerable than MacOS (Linux is another story) - but it'll take more work, because there's more out there to compromise it.
This is absolutely false, and betrays just how little you know about computer security and the architecture of modern operating systems.
No matter how "secure" you get XP (and it's woefully insecure out of the box) the fact remains that its security model is completely broken. In order to do anything approaching normal use, you must run as an administrator. with this system, any application with a flaw becomes an attack vector, because compromising it gives you admin level system access. Even if it is a flaw in your pdf reader, you can do anything at that point, system wide if you compromise the code. XP is inherently insecure in this regard. This is NOT the case on either Mac OS X or Linux, which implement a proper system, much like Vista now has, of not allowing applications administrator or root access.
Saying Vista is superior because it doesn't get spyware is like saying Macs are immune to all malware. It just ain't so. The userbase was small enough that there wasn't the volume of exploits as for XP. That'll change.
Macs, Linux, and Vista all have a much more modern and secure Permissions structure, and this is why these systems will have less exploits. I will give you that since less people use the first two, they'll always have less.
I'm not hating on Microsoft - I'm pointing out that poor performance is partially their fault. Vista is a resource hog, and Microsoft is pushing DX10. This all translates into reduced support for OpenGL-based applications.
The poor performance is soley the result of poor planning and execution on the part of the graphics card vendors.
Yes, nVidia and ATI could both push out support for DirectX and OpenGL, but why go to all the effort when all the hype concerns DX10? It's a financial call too.
It has nothing to do with Direct X 10. In fact, Direct X 10 is barely supported by anything at all at the moment, only 2 cards from one vendor even support it as of this writing. What it does have to do with is that Direct X 9 and below have a majority of games, OpenGL is not used by as many games, and this gap is increasing in DirectX's favor.
Undoubtably, the bugs will get worked out of Vista,
All software of complexity such as a 50 million line operating system will always contain bugs of some sort.
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I think I'm going to quit arguing the point as we're more or less saying the same thing. *sigh*
EDIT: And what we are disagreeing about, there's no point in arguing, since it's mostly a matter of opinion.
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I think I'm going to quit arguing the point as we're more or less saying the same thing. *sigh*
EDIT: And what we are disagreeing about, there's no point in arguing, since it's mostly a matter of opinion.
This isn't true, you're saying some quite different things, and as far as opinion, I think anyone educated enough about the issue would agree the security models and permissions structure in XP is worse than Vista, and also worse than in Linux and Mac OS X. That is a fact.
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Neoterran's right. There's a lot of misconceptions about Vista out there, and people are way too quick to blame it, rather than the real source of the problems, which more often than not are drivers.
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Neoterran's right. There's a lot of misconceptions about Vista out there, and people are way too quick to blame it, rather than the real source of the problems, which more often than not are drivers.
...and the point I was getting at is that the drivers and the support that hardware companies choose is shaped by the platform they are creating it for and the demands of the overall architecture...
So I'm not disagreeing on the principle here :P
...oh forget it, this is rapidly becoming a silly argument.
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But its not the platform's fault! It's the manufacturers who are hastily releasing drivers *glares at ATi*
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Not that nVidia has been any less hasty. And it _can_ be the platforms fault.
Do you know how many of what types of changes there are from the final RC for Vista and the actual packaged product?
A Lot.
The vendors typically have to wait UNTIL the packaged product is released before they can actually build something USEFUL, and usually the process of debuging is harder because information has been changed but not documented and the OS or software vendor will insist that nothing has changed and that the RC release notes for how do something "properly" is still being adhered to.....when it isn't.
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Well, no matter, since the drivers ATi released to work on RC1 didnt work that well either.
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But its not the platform's fault! It's the manufacturers who are hastily releasing drivers *glares at ATi*
ATI's actually come out on top of things with their Vista drivers as they are in relatively good shape in comparison to what nVidia has been through.
Keep in mind that the OS hasn't even been out for a month yet. Yes the driver folks should have had their act together months ago with RC1 and the final code but they aren't and thats life. If you dove into Vista right at the start you should have expected a bumpy ride. I think ultimately it'll be a good thing for the Windows platform as it does some really good stuff...but support isn't there yet. In 3 years it'll probably be the OS of choice...about the time that MS says its successor will be coming out :D
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ATi's been a mixed bag. Without sounding like a broken record, they have sporadic hits with DX working in full screen, but usually not, and only just now gave us OGL, which locks up my system.
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its a simple matter of if you use a new video card with a new operatig system, ****s gonna happen. i remember this happening with my banshee card and 98. :D
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its a simple matter of if you use a new video card with a new operatig system, ****s gonna happen. i remember this happening with my banshee card and 98. :D
I had a Banshee...those were teh crap (tm)! At least for stability...on paper they were amazing.
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Speaking of driver issues, Dell and HP are not releasing any PC's with Vista to consumers until April, just to wait for all these driver issues to get sorted out.
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I just want Microsoft to roll every update post-SP2 to now into Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.
Yesterday I used the latest Autopatcher (http://www.autopatcher.com) to update a HP laptop with an Athlon XP 1600+ CPU running XP Home SP2 (which I had to apply first, HP did something funky with the i386 folder so SP2 wouldn't slipstream into it) and it took OVER THREE HOURS to apply just the stuff from Microsoft in Autopatcher, none of the extra tweaks and goodies that has. (Says many thankyews to the Autopatcher ppl! I'd hate to have to have done that on my dialup through Windowsupdate!)
Fortunately Autopatcher can stuff all that on without needing a reboot until it's finished.
And while MS is at it, crank out SP5 for Windows 2000! NT4 got SIX service packs plus at least one 'security rollup package'.
It's bloody rediculous to install XP slipstreamed to SP2 or 2000 slipstreamed to SP4 then still have almost 200 megabytes of more updates and patches to install! Having 2K SP5 and XP SP3 to slipstream would make life so much easier for when it comes time to 'nuke and pave'.
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MS have stopped supporting 2k IIRC. Apparently it was too good to be an MS operating system and they need to go back to their roots. :p
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Holy crap!!
Guess what? My PCI-E link width went from 16X down to 1X because of some of motherboard goofiness. Now that I've fixed it the frame rates seem comparable, at least. No wonder my performance was nosediving so badly, though.
Sorry for doubting you, Vista. :sigh: The drivers for you still suck, though.
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Actually, MS gave up on Win2k before there own licensing agreement says they're supposed to. It entered a limited support section of its lifecycle in summer 2005, but before that point they had already stopped making their new software compatible with it, such as IE6 SP2 and WMP10 (well, WMP10 isn't a biggie, but they did put WMP9 on it, so why not 10?). And I believe it should still be in its limited support phase, which I believe still means it should have had at least one more service pack. But that's just how MS gets people to upgrade, tell you they'll have some form of support for 10 years and then not even make half of that properly.
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Holy crap!!
Guess what? My PCI-E link width went from 16X down to 1X because of some of motherboard goofiness. Now that I've fixed it the frame rates seem comparable, at least. No wonder my performance was nosediving so badly, though.
Sorry for doubting you, Vista. :sigh: The drivers for you still suck, though.
Yeah, it's the usual, microsoft gets blamed for everything no matter what.
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When you never take the blame for the cock-ups you are responsible for you can't complain when people blame you for cock-ups you're not responsible for. After all how are they supposed to know? :D
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Yeah, it's the usual, microsoft gets blamed for everything no matter what.
Hey there we go, sport, that's the way to win graciously. I as much as admitted I was wrong to blame Vista (going so far as to apologize to a non-sentient OS), and then commented that the drivers still suck. Whether driver suckage is Windows or NVidia's fault (I'd have to go with NVidia considering they, well, make them). Kudos are in order for being so super mature and not at all a dick about it. You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
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Vista has it's good sides, but also bad sides.
MY experience with it is mixed (and I havn't even tried playing FS2 on it).
Some older programs and games jsut flat out refuse to work, som act incredibly buggy, my wireless doesn't wrok at all (still havn't figured out why) and I got COM Surrogate errors popping out everytime I want to play a music clip.
Vista has gone way overboard with media/music security...
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com surrogate errors are caused by the incompatible codec pack you installed. Remove it and Use VLC (with opengl output mode so it doesn't break glass) to fix that.
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Yeah, it's the usual, microsoft gets blamed for everything no matter what.
Hey there we go, sport, that's the way to win graciously. I as much as admitted I was wrong to blame Vista (going so far as to apologize to a non-sentient OS), and then commented that the drivers still suck. Whether driver suckage is Windows or NVidia's fault (I'd have to go with NVidia considering they, well, make them). Kudos are in order for being so super mature and not at all a dick about it. You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
Is this an attempt at sarcasm ? I don't think I was being rude about it.
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Vista has gone way overboard with media/music security...
Why does everyone say that? I've never seen even a hint of digital rights management meddling anywhere. I saw it more with XP and it's media rights system than I have with vista thus far (after about 5 months of use)
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Do you use Windows Media Player?
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DRM only affects DRM files. If you don't use DRM files, it's just the same as XP. Vista rocks; if you've got powerful enough hardware (meaning, at least 1 GB of ram, at least a 3 Ghz P4 equivalent level processor, and a DX 9 Video card) it's a much more pleasant and modern experience to windows xp, which is really showing its age.
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How is XP showing its age? Come on man. I can run everything on XP that I might want to run under Vista and I don't need ridiculous numbers of gigs of hard drive space or at least a gig of ram to do it. A gig would be nice, but half a gig does fine. Really, all you get with Vista is some eyecandy and plenty of headaches.
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How is XP showing its age? Come on man. I can run everything on XP that I might want to run under Vista and I don't need ridiculous numbers of gigs of hard drive space or at least a gig of ram to do it. A gig would be nice, but half a gig does fine. Really, all you get with Vista is some eyecandy and plenty of headaches.
bunch of simply ignorant statements here. Ridiculous number of gigs ? In this day and age I don't consdier the 15 GB requirement to be a big deal. You also have every version of vista on every install to enable windows anytime upgrade, something that is useful for the consumer. if you still only have a 30 GB hard-drive I suggest you buy a 250 gig one for 60 bucks at the store, because your hard drive is so old it will probably die soon.
As far as ram, last time i checked 512 MB of Ram stick came to about 40 bucks. I would say having 80 bucks worth of the most precious resource your computer has is not asking too much in 2007.
As far as all you get is eyecandy and headaches, I don't think so. Vista has alot more features than xp, is much more secure, and it actually performs better if you know how to set it up.
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A lot more features? Like what? Everything supposedly new that I've seen has been in Mac OS for years now. More secure? Yeah, if you don't mind having to approve or deny almost everything you do. 15 gigs for an OS is INSANE. I don't care what OS it is, or how much hard drive. Why does something that's better have to be bigger? Does nobody at Microsoft ever try to make something work with fewer lines of code? A base Linux install can fit in less than 1 gig of space. Something with a fair amount of capability can be run straight from a CD (Knoppix) without even being installed.
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What, did someone chain you to your armchair and force you to watch mac vs pc commercials all day while holding your eyes open clockwork orange style ?
Approving or denying things that affect my computer is something you get used to and you even start to enjoy it because it gives you a chance to cancel out of mistakes you make, and it's not on everything you do, once the initial computer setup is done, it rarely ever occurs. I usually turn off while i'm setting up and then turn it back on.
Both companies steal from each other so you can put that old chestnut to rest, sounds like jealousy to me.
A huge new feature is Media Center 2007. It's in Home Premium. It's awesome, and it's very nice feature. NOT in XP. Also many other things, such as the snipping tool, Windows Calendar, the DVD Maker is handy for newbies, Direct X 10 (will be a must have eventually) Windows Media Player 11, Integrated Windows Search (and it's much better than the bolt on WDS 3.0, trust me) the vastly improved error reporting and messages, the vastly improved explorer, the improved removal of programs, "previous versions"... i could go on and on.
How about this, people that complain about there's not enough features. What features do you want ? What are you missing that is in OS X that is not in Vista ? You never say, you just complain.
Btw, your beloved Mac OS X and Linux have increased in code size for years running. So please don't hold windows to some impossible ideal that makes no sense.
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Approving and denying things is something I have no interest in. I'm smart enough to not need my computer to second guess me on every damn thing. I don't want to get used to an even more stupid version of Windows Data Execution Prevention, not to mention a firewall that's even more stupid about older games than XP's, which I would just have to shut off anyway, same as I have to do with XP's. Windows Media Center...whoop de doo. An application in which I have precisely zero interest. If I want a Media Center, there's free software that does the same stuff and takes tons less space.
As for what new features, how about making the damn thing more modular. Why does Internet Explorer have to be integrated into the OS? I loathe IE. Were it not for a number of sites that refuse to comply with W3C standards because they were coded specifically for IE, if I had the ability to truly uninstall it, I would do so without a second thought. ActiveX? I can get an ActiveX plug-in for Firefox. Windows Media Player? Please. Mplayer can handle every video format that WMP plays. All it needs is the right codec. Any sounds I want to play I can play via some other audio player such as Winamp or my sound editor of choice. I want to go back to having the freedome to have only the components I want to have installed in my Windows install. I want the chance to select during the installation process, too. I'm tired of having to go back after the install is done and uninstall about half a dozen usless apps and utilities that come in a default Windows XP install, and I'm damn sure Vista's no better on this.
In short, I want M$ to give me back control of what non-critical parts of their damn OS I install and don't. Furthermore, there is no reason for a webbrowser or a media player to be critically integrated parts of an operating system. They are APPLICATIONS.
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Okay, stay on XP then, lol.
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neo, XP doesn't even do that. The last Windows I can remember that let me pick which optional components I wanted and didn't want before it installed anything was Windows 98. I don't recall with Windows Mistake Edition, I got rid of that soon after I got a computer that came with it. Windows XP just installs, then I have to go into the Windows Components in add/remove programs and uninstall crap like MSN Explorer and a few other useless things. Windows 98 and ME didn't have Media player as an integrated part of the OS, but even then, IE and Windows Explorer were effectively inseperable. I have no desire to go back to Win98, however. Windows' implementation of FAT32 is severely lacking and will only format partions of a size of about 30 gigs max, when the standard itself supports partitions of up to 4 terabytes. Furthermore, there is a 4 gigbyte file size limit that I ran into on FAT32 when I was converting the big FS2 Intro vid from MVE to uncompressed AVI so I could put it through virtualdub and run it through an Xvid codec. NTFS is much better about file and partition sizes. Still EXT3 is much better and if I could do everything in Linux that I can do in Windows(play all my favorite games, mostly), I'd probably not be running Windows at all.
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FAT32 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAT32#FAT32) file size limit is 2gig on Me/98/98SE/95b and 4gig on 2000/2003 server/XP. With NTFS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS) on NT4/2000/2003 server/XP/Vista the file size limit is 16 exabytes. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exabyte)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAT32#Final_FAT16]FAT16[/url] can use partitions up to 4gig but maximum file size is 2gig.
FAT32 can use partitions up to one terabyte but Windows 2000 and later are artificially limited to creating FAT32 partitions no larger than 32gig, but if the FAT32 partition is created with 95b through Me, Windows 2000 and later can use the full size of the larger than 32gig partition.
also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems
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Still EXT3 is much better and if I could do everything in Linux that I can do in Windows(play all my favorite games, mostly), I'd probably not be running Windows at all.
There is a EXT2 driver for Windows (http://www.fs-driver.org/). It might not be best solution, but still...
EDIT: And yeah, if you got the patience of Job, there's always Wine (http://www.winehq.com/).
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There is a EXT2 driver for Windows (http://www.fs-driver.org/). It might not be best solution, but still...
That's the driver I use on my dual-boot laptop. :yes:
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Can someone give me a quick synopsis of this whole thread?
Ive got vista on my new comp and am wanting to out FSO on it, but if it doesnt work, **** it and Lets face it im too lazy to read through 3 pages.
So yay or nay?
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Can someone give me a quick synopsis of this whole thread?
Ive got vista on my new comp and am wanting to out FSO on it, but if it doesnt work, **** it and Lets face it im too lazy to read through 3 pages.
So yay or nay?
What's your graphics card?
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ati x1300 pro
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ati x1300 pro
hmm... It's worth a try. You can install it from the link in my sig.
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scratch that it works :pimp:
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i dunno about you but with my nvidia drivers when openGL is enabled it doesn't disable aero glass. This is bad because aero glass takes up a lot of GFX resources. So make sure you drop down into Aero Basic mode when running fs2_open.exe