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asdfqwerty (969)    Apr 29, 2007 - 08:20 am

...and they now have hardware acceleration too. It's gonna be funny if DX10 under XP ends up faster than DX10 under Vista. » Login to reply to this  goku2100 (154)   Apr 30, 2007 - 01:49 am Damn right.. Though I wonder how exactly they ported it out, either they used the efficiencies of DX10 and made it available for the other OSs or they just took API calls and redirected them, therefore not being able to see the benefits of DX10 in terms of performance. » Login to reply to this

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Kaleid (109)    Apr 28, 2007 - 04:34 pm

Amen. The only reason I will have to move on to Vista is for dx10 and the inevitable lack of support for XP in the future. Vista is just some extra useless code that we don't really need. » Login to reply to this

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Fr0stBite (1144)     Apr 27, 2007 - 08:16 pm

Why does YOUR Vista cost almost the price of a PS3? You can get Vista Ultimate for as "low" as $349.99. Yeah its expensive but its also the ultimate version. I know that wasn't the reasoning for your comment but don't stretch the price of an item to make a point. » Login to reply to this

LinkRS (15)   Apr 27, 2007 - 05:36 pm

» Misinformation Abounds... A very common "concern" amongst the beta testers of Vista was lack of free RAM. It seems that Vista consumed way more RAM than a comparable XP machine. In fact, Vista does use more RAM than XP (hence the higher requirements), but not as much as it first appears too. There is a feature in Vista called Superfetch. This feature monitors the programs you use most frequently, and caches them into RAM. Ideally, Superfetch will use all of your RAM, as it means your most common programs will launch nearly instantly. This is in contrast to XP, which let the RAM sit there unused unless a progam used it. The next point that comes from this, if Vista uses up all of your RAM as cache, what happens when a program needs it? Since we are dealing with RAM and cache data, it can be (and will) discarded almost instantly and given to a program. This means that instead of your RAM being idle most of the time, it is now being used. There is no "thrashing" caused by the Superfecth feature, and any thrashing you experience is a result of your program load, not Vista itself. Below are two links that talk about Superfetch. From my personal experieinces (I have been using Vista since August 06, and the RTM version exclusivly since launch day), Vista "feels" much more responsive than XP ever did. The biggest confusion factor I have been hearing about has to do with RAM limits. Vista 32-bit is still a 32-bit OS, and requires tricks and work-arounds to access RAM above the 3- 3.5 GB barrier (depends on installed devices and specific motherboard). A 32-bit OS loads all of the addresses for hardware and program into this upper area of memory (typically between 3 and 4 GBs), so it is actually unavailable in most situations. This was not a problem until consumers started to actually try to use the entire 32-bit address space for RAM (technically this is 4294967295 bytes or ~4194 MBs). There have been various tricks (like PAE and NUMA) to work around this, but the real answer is to increase the address space. This is where 64-bit Windows Vista comes into play. While Microsoft artificially limits the amount of RAM each version can use, the limits are actually 18446744073709551615 bytes (approximatly 18014398509482 MBs, or 16 exabytes!). http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/superfetch.mspx http://news.softpedia.com/news/Why-Does-Windows-Vista-Consume-All-My-RAM-49975.shtml » Login to reply to this  goku2100 (154)   Apr 27, 2007 - 09:22 pm | Edited on Apr 27, 2007 - 09:32 pm you know what’s really funny? The sight of seeing someone reply to an 'uninformed post' with another uninformed post.. Sure prefetch is nice for an office environment or simplified home environment but soon as you take into account applications that require lots of memory it becomes very messy as it's got to (or at least SUPPOSE TO) dump that at the drop of a hat when an application request it... What you don't understand is that vista by default takes up at least 5X as much memory as Windows XP, with no tangible benefit. File Transfers are slow, it kills quality audio and it's just another DRM platform for the media companies... When I say vista takes 5X as much memory, arguing that "it's because of prefetch!" is just plain ignorant. No, if you install vista on a system with 512MB of ram, prefetch doesn't work! Why? Because there isn't any ram to spare! That’s right, vista not only runs like shit on 512MB of ram, but it doesn't leave any extra ram available for any of your programs. Something that was once plenty is now not enough, and for what? I don't know, and Microsoft sure as hell won't tell us either... 128MB of ram IS a lot of ram to use for an OS, sure in comparison to having 2GB of ram, it's not that much but when you think about what an OS does, one should realize that it IS a lot and that it's inexcusable for something like this to happen. Bringing it up to 512MB of ram is significantly worse, now instead of having 1.92GB of ram available, it's just 1.5GB. So now every time I load up BF2, I have to wait longer, why? Because the OS now needs to shove its fat ass into the pagefile because BF2 needs to get as much ram as possible as it too is a ram whore, though its whoreness is much more justified than for XP or Vista… Windows 2000, while only slightly bloated in comparison to today’s operating systems is by far the best compromise between the compatibility and leanness of legacy operating systems such as Windows 3.1 and 9X/NT and it being modern like Windows XP and Vista. Sure I use XP as my main OS, but that’s because it came with my laptop, and so will vista in the event I do ever buy another laptop. At least with XP there were tangible features that while still make the additional 64MB of ram being used while completely idle unjustified, it made it “OK” since having image preview, remote desktop, msconfig, drop shadows, and native WiFi support and a few other features very nice. Just keep in mind though that none of those features need or even use the additional 64MB of ram while the system is completely IDLE/fresh booted. Now for vista, I just can’t comprehend what exactly is making it use all that extra ram, only to run slow as shit. There is NOTHING tangible that I can find, when comparing XP and Vista, in terms of 'Features' that can explain why I now need to give up an additional 384MB of ram in order to run vista at all. I'd like to keep as much ram available as possible so that I can worry less about running out of ram and more about my application. » Login to reply to this  asdfqwerty (969)    Apr 29, 2007 - 08:18 am You're miscomprehending things. XP already mad use of the RAM for caching, it just didn't show up under used memory but on the "system cache". In Vista they show it as used memory, that the #1 visual difference. However, Vista does use more memory for who knows what, which leaves *less* memory for caching, and thus gets the system to crawl if you don't have extra RAM over XP. As for superfetch, it's an official "idiot trap", it doesn't work for squat, just look at the benchmarks that compare a fresh XP install (with recent drivers) to a fresh Vista install (with recent drivers): Vista loses, and badly so. The only bench superfetch wins are against old XP installs, or against XP with drivers out of the CD (ie. crappy outdated generic MS drivers). » Login to reply to this  LinkRS (15)   Apr 28, 2007 - 07:36 pm » Misinformation Abounds... Redux Umm, have you even ran Vista? The data stored in Superfetch is not sent to the pagefile when the memory is needed, it is simply discarded. Since it is in RAM, it takes microseconds to discard. Saying that Vista need 5X the RAM is ridiculous, as that would imply that I need 10 GBs of RAM to approximate the performance I got with XP, which is blatantly untrue. If your hardware is up to snuff, 1 GB of RAM to Vista is approximatly the same as 512 is for XP. But this isn't even as cut and dry as it seems. With 2GBs of RAM Vista runs fine, and faster than XP (on the same hardware). Before you go ridiculing someone, why don't you do some research first. Spouting misinformation and opinons based on rumors does nobody any good. » Login to reply to this  breakspirit (426)   Apr 27, 2007 - 10:02 pm anyone trying to run vista with 512mb of ram is an idiot. I have 2 gigs, which is plenty cheap these days, and vista runs great for me. Get a real computer and actually use vista for awhile and then let us hear your rant » Login to reply to this

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bnoodle (6)    Apr 27, 2007 - 02:29 pm | Edited on Apr 27, 2007 - 02:37 pm

Read this blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007/02/14/why-dx10-wasnt-created-on-xp-and-why-it-isnt-in-xp.aspx » Login to reply to this

asdfqwerty (969)    Apr 27, 2007 - 08:19 am

It is possible to run DX10, the method isn't straightforward, but basicly you have to copy the appropriate DLLs, register them, and it works. What you don't get is DX10 hardware accelerated drivers, since those are specific to Vista. But DX10 itself works. Only greed prevented MS from offering DX10 in XP. » Login to reply to this  Afterburner (37)   Apr 27, 2007 - 04:04 pm DX10 is more than a bunch of dll files. What is the point of getting the dll files installed without the requisite drivers to use them? The reason is that XP does not support the driver model that DX10 is based on and requires to operate. » Login to reply to this  asdfqwerty (969)    Apr 27, 2007 - 11:59 pm DX10 doesn't require a specific driver model actually. As proof, look at the experimental builds running DX10 under Linux *with* hardware acceleration. The huy who did the manipulation under XP didn't went as far as doing the driver trick, but if it can be done under Linux, there is nothing preventing it from being done under XP. Never forget that beyond all the marketing, a "new driver model" is nothing more than a collection of functions/classes/interfaces with different names and different parameters. This is developper sugar coating, which thinner or thicker or stickier, nothing more. » Login to reply to this  Misanthrope (214)   Apr 27, 2007 - 03:48 pm | Edited on Apr 27, 2007 - 03:49 pm Regardless of what people claim, if its possible to "run" windows applications including DirectX under Linux then it is possible to get DX10 working on XP too. So is not a matter of "can it be done?" its a matter of just Microsoft continuing this tactic and forcing everybody into vista until everybody pretty much gives up. Those of us who insist on not playing ball will end up just moving on to Linux. » Login to reply to this  Fr0stBite (1144)    Apr 27, 2007 - 01:35 pm it is kinda smart if you think about it. Whats one way for you to sell a product people may not need or sometimes don't even want. put exclusives on that product that you cant get anywhere else, i.e. you have to upgrade. » Login to reply to this

Yoshi (2525)    Apr 27, 2007 - 07:16 am

I think that it would be pretty bad for Microsoft to cave in and release DX10 for XP. It would cost a ton of money and holds no advantage for them since they can pretty much tell computer owners "This is Vista you will be using it soon like it or not". » Login to reply to this

froggz (681)    Apr 27, 2007 - 05:37 am

I read somewhere MS spent a billion dollars on Vista, so if this is true, then I highly doubt they will port DX10 to XP. It holds zero benefit for them to do it. » Login to reply to this  Stories (325)   Apr 27, 2007 - 06:38 am For general use, Vista (at least that I've found) is far superior to XP in every way (maybe except memory footprint). It's more streamlined, smoother, and more visually appealing. Then again, my machine is a C2D w/ 2GB RAM. » Login to reply to this  Deux (57)    Apr 27, 2007 - 12:44 pm to say the first year of any OS is bad may be true for windows but not everything. OS X was fine even shortly after release. » Login to reply to this  larsig (780)   Apr 27, 2007 - 07:41 am Vista is far superior to xp, but most people don't see it unless they have a powerful computer. All the people complaining so far either have a crappy computer or don't quite realize that the first year of an os is almost always bad. Especially considering how much of an overhaul vista is. Oh yes, people often complain about vista's memory use. There's actually a very good reason for it, although in some cases it may cause an initial performance hit, ie first couple of minutes in a game with a computer with relatively low ram since the os has to swap out some pages. Vista caches the hard drive into main memory, kind of pre-loading your most used programs and stuff, and acting like the cache in your CPU. To those of you that don't know, hard drive access is huge bottleneck in a system. As an example, if 1 cycle of a 3ghz processor were 1 second, then reading 1 meg off a 5900 rpm hdd could take almost 600 days, while main memory is in the order of a few days or a few hours, don't remember the specific nor is it particularly significant to the point. I do have 1 problem with vista, reverse compatibility. Microsoft used to enforce that programs that ran on older versions of their os can run on their new ones through exhaustive test runs and compatibility patches (Note, this is something apple neglected between their os changes. See, not in all cases is apple "better" than microsoft apple fanboys). That's probably the reason the core of how windows works didn't change until Vista. Unfortunately Microsoft is deviating from that policy, although I can't complain about the new interface. Glad I never really learned how to use the old windows API, though it may have helped me to figure out the new one. » Login to reply to this

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