Hard Light Productions Forums

General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: est1895 on October 19, 2011, 04:50:35 pm

Title: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: est1895 on October 19, 2011, 04:50:35 pm
Hi.  My hard drive is just about dead and I need to know if I should put Win7 or Win Xp Home agian on the new hard drive.  The sole reason for this decision is will FS2 SCP work fine with Win7?  If there have been issues, please list them.  :)
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: -Norbert- on October 19, 2011, 04:53:01 pm
I didn't have any problem what-so-ever with FS2 SCP on Win7 64bit.
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: LHN91 on October 19, 2011, 04:58:51 pm
Other than a couple of issues revolving around UAC, as far as I know everything runs fine. I'm running it without issue on 64 Bit 7 Professional.

Just install to somewhere sensible like C:\Games\Freespace2, and if you run into any issue with FSO not being able to write pilot files or the launcher not saving it's settings, set them to run as administrator. Or alternatively, disable UAC.
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: est1895 on October 19, 2011, 05:10:11 pm
What about if it's a 32bit system? Win7Pro maybe too expensive right now?

I do need to upgrade my system in the next six months.  The video card I currently have is a Asus 9800 GT 512mb.  What kind of AMD processor should I shoot for in my upcoming system?
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: jr2 on October 19, 2011, 05:14:16 pm
What about if it's a 32bit system?

32-bit usually has even less compatibility problems than 64-bit.
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: LHN91 on October 19, 2011, 05:32:35 pm
^Yeah. And Win7 Home Premium should also be fine. Now admittedly, if you're upgrading, and considering the steadily decreasing price of RAM, you'll probably end up running 64bit. And here in Ontario, the price of 64bit Home Premium is actually cheaper than 32bit.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't go with Bulldozer unless you're planning on doing a lot of media conversion or heavily threaded things. FSO relies heavily on single threaded perfomance, which bulldozer doesn't have. If your going AMD, go last gen. any phenom II quad or hex core is a pretty good value.

EDIT: And this is coming from someone who's a bit of an AMD fanboy. Bulldozer is great for what it's good at, but FSO and single threaded apps aren't one of the things it's good at. If you DO do a lot of multithreaded things, however, by all means get one.

EDIT 2 (I swear the last one): If you're looking at a 6 month delay here, wait and see. The entire processor landscape could change by then.
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: LordPomposity on October 19, 2011, 05:43:45 pm
My laptop runs 7 Home Premium, and my desktop runs 7 Business. No problems with either. Both are 64 bit, but as mentioned 32 bit almost always has fewer compatibility issues.
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: jr2 on October 19, 2011, 06:34:43 pm
32-bit can only use 3.5 GB RAM; (on average; my 7 32-bit install only uses 2.75GB out of 4GB available) so if you have more than that and you want to use it, get 64-bit, which can handle all the RAM you can throw at it (at this current time, anyways).
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: Herra Tohtori on October 19, 2011, 07:29:47 pm
32-bit can only use 3.5 GB RAM; (on average; my 7 32-bit install only uses 2.75GB out of 4GB available) so if you have more than that and you want to use it, get 64-bit, which can handle all the RAM you can throw at it (at this current time, anyways).

It's not that simple.

32-bit systems can use exactly 4096 MB of memory address space (without physical address extension, which allows for more than 4 GB of memory addresses in certain 32-bit Windows operating systems).

The hardware requires some of that address space to function. The biggest chunk of memory is taken by the graphics card for obvious reasons. If the GPU takes 256 MB of memory, then there is 3840 MB of memory addresses left to utilize. Rest of the hardware also takes some memory addresses, but not nearly as much as the VRAM does; therefore the amount of video memory is the biggest factor that reduces the amount of addressed RAM for the applications to use.

If VRAM is 512 MB, there'll be about 3.5 GB of address space left.

If VRAM is 1 GB... well, you can see why it would become problematic to use a 32bit system as a high end gaming rig.
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: jr2 on October 19, 2011, 08:16:16 pm
Just found this:

http://www.jensscheffler.de/using-gavotte-ramdisk-in-windows-7

Lets you use the rest of the RAM listed as unusable as a RAMDisk... working fine so far.  You have to force PAE on to use it (as seen in the instructions).
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: KyadCK on October 19, 2011, 10:20:30 pm
For any modern CPU it would just be easier to go with Win7 64-bit. There isn't a price difference that I've seen and it saves the ram headache.

As LHN91 said, avoid bulldozer for now. If you want AMD then a nice Phenom II x4/x6 will do fine. Again though, wait the 6 months and see what things are like then. 6 months is a long time in the tech world.

Also, FSO has zero problems for me on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (D:\Freespace2\)
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: TwentyPercentCooler on October 19, 2011, 10:23:36 pm
I've had zero problems with FSO on several different Win7 versions and rigs. Actually, I haven't really had any problems with Win7 at all, but that's another thread.

XP was great but it's time for it to die.
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: The E on October 20, 2011, 12:25:01 am
Just found this:

http://www.jensscheffler.de/using-gavotte-ramdisk-in-windows-7

Lets you use the rest of the RAM listed as unusable as a RAMDisk... working fine so far.  You have to force PAE on to use it (as seen in the instructions).

Which is a pointless workaround, because the x64 and x86 editions cost exactly the same.
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: karajorma on October 20, 2011, 12:32:01 am
Useful if you already have the x86 version installed and can't be bothered to reinstall/pay for the 64-bit version though.
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: Mikes on October 20, 2011, 12:33:36 pm
Same experience that others have here: Running FSO on Win7 (64bit) without any issues at all.
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: est1895 on October 21, 2011, 05:33:49 pm
Will I need a Full Tower if I go 64bit?  What is the difference between home premium and professional?

I'm thinking of going with the Asus Sabertooth 990FX.  By the time I upgrade, this motherboard should be affordable. 

What are the new FM1 processors?

Any help would be greatly appreciated  :nod:
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: Jeff Vader on October 22, 2011, 12:09:32 am
What is the difference between home premium and professional?
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/products/compare
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: Polpolion on October 22, 2011, 12:19:16 am
Will I need a Full Tower if I go 64bit?

depends solely on how much other hardware you have and how good you are at tetris.
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: KyadCK on October 22, 2011, 03:46:59 am
Will I need a Full Tower if I go 64bit?  What is the difference between home premium and professional?

I'm thinking of going with the Asus Sabertooth 990FX.  By the time I upgrade, this motherboard should be affordable. 

What are the new FM1 processors?

Any help would be greatly appreciated  :nod:

No, all modern hardware is 64-bit capable, the size of the tower is dependent on the hardware. In the case of the sabertooth (being full ATX), a mid-tower will be fine.

The main difference is professional can join a domain, but check Jeff Vader's link.

The FM1 socket is AMD's new APU. Basically its a cpu and vid card on the same chip, but I would classify it for average users only because neither the cpu or gpu half is strong enough for any real gaming. I use it to build sub-$500 computers, and thats about where it belongs.
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: rhettro on October 26, 2011, 11:05:44 am
I installed FS2 and FSO with no problems on my new Win7 64 bit laptop.  Runs like a dream.
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: T-LoW on October 26, 2011, 11:06:48 am
I installed FS2 and FSO with no problems on my new Win7 64 bit laptop.  Runs like a dream.

Try a build with shadows :p
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: LordPomposity on October 27, 2011, 01:08:14 am
My computer can sometimes manage multiple frames per second in bp2-massivebattle with a shadow build, so I count that a victory. :p
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: Mikes on November 25, 2011, 10:01:51 am
It's not that simple.

32-bit systems can use exactly 4096 MB of memory address space (without physical address extension, which allows for more than 4 GB of memory addresses in certain 32-bit Windows operating systems).

The hardware requires some of that address space to function. The biggest chunk of memory is taken by the graphics card for obvious reasons. If the GPU takes 256 MB of memory, then there is 3840 MB of memory addresses left to utilize. Rest of the hardware also takes some memory addresses, but not nearly as much as the VRAM does; therefore the amount of video memory is the biggest factor that reduces the amount of addressed RAM for the applications to use.

If VRAM is 512 MB, there'll be about 3.5 GB of address space left.

If VRAM is 1 GB... well, you can see why it would become problematic to use a 32bit system as a high end gaming rig.

I always wanted to try what  Win7 32  does when you install 2x 2gb cards in crossfire :)
Title: Re: FS2 SCP and Windows 7?
Post by: Insomniac34 on November 28, 2011, 01:24:35 pm
I have the SCP running flawlessly on W7 64-bit on my desktop and my bro's laptop. I have the 32-bit version on my old 2007ish laptop, same deal. I literally copy and paste my FS folder from computer to computer and it never misses a beat, wether its XP, Vista, W7 32/64. All I ever have to do is install openAL.