DX11 to be announced in 2~ weeks, nvidia to talk about it too...

[Camalot]

I think for the general user, Windows XP does everything you need. For ME, i can see no reason what so ever to upgrade my computers to Vista.

I think its the "If its not broke, dont fix it" thing with me.

Never tried vista, so wont comment on it, but im happy with XP so don't want it

 

[Big.Wayne]

I've played a few, and these are my thoughts...

Thanks for sharing, I'm not expecting improvements but more concerned with games running slower, from what you describe it doesn't sound too bad . . . . . I wonder will gaming on Vista x64 improve through drivers or further O/S tweaks or is it just fundamentally flawed somewhere?

I hated it at first, but then I grew to like it and even bought a legit copy.

Yeah I just purchased a OEM copy too, still not feeling confident I made the right decision, also a bit bummed out that it appears I can't upgrade my system once its installed due to the OEM copy of Vista being tied in to my mobo? Gonna go ahead and then try to call microsoft when I upgrade?

Now I read about something called Windows 7? Wonder when that will be out and safe to use?

 

[Darkwave]

Thanks for sharing, I'm not expecting improvements but more concerned with games running slower, from what you describe it doesn't sound too bad . . . . . I wonder will gaming on Vista x64 improve through drivers or further O/S tweaks or is it just fundamentally flawed somewhere?

I personally think that, in the end, it'll come down to developers. DirectX 10 just doesn't have enough developer support yet and IMO has not been implemented properly, save for in Lord Of The Rings where it actually makes a noticeable difference.

Yeah I just purchased a OEM copy too, still not feeling confident I made the right decision, also a bit bummed out that it appears I can't upgrade my system once its installed due to the OEM copy of Vista being tied in to my mobo? Gonna go ahead and then try to call microsoft when I upgrade?

I've never had this problem yet, but I've had the same motherboard all the time I've had Windows Vista. I've been assured it only takes a quick call to Microsoft to have them re-activate your copy.

Now I read about something called Windows 7? Wonder when that will be out and safe to use?

I think, and this is my general rule of thumb now, that I'm only going to buy a new OS a year or more after it's been out. I remember when XP was met with hesitation but it improved, Vista certainly was met with resistance but it was improved, and I think the same will be said of Windows 7.

 

[Big.Wayne]

DirectX 10 just doesn't have enough developer support yet and IMO has not been implemented properly, save for in Lord Of The Rings where it actually makes a noticeable difference

Well I would imagine that comes down to O/S demographics as a lot of people (myself included) have clung to WinXP Pro as it gets the job done. It seems Microsoft were expecting us lot to go "Ohhhh new O/S lets have some!" but it didn't pan out that way so now they are cutting WindowsXP out and ending its life early (they didn't do that same with Windows 2000).

It's a brute force approach, kinda "If they won't eat our Vista-Cake then we will simply stop selling Xp-Bread!"

Once we get a ton of people using Vista x64 I'm sure the developer support will increase greatly.

As I earn a part-time income from I.T support I now have no choice but to get some hands-on Vista experience as it seems in the near future there won't be a choice.

As I type this I have about £7000 worth of kit in a DELL shopping basket I'm ordering for a small company, thankfully there is still an option to buy new business machines with XP-Installed as a vast amount of business related software does not run on Vista yet.

Anyway Business users aside and back to us Geeks I kinda get the feeling the time is right to upgrade O/S, I know a few people who are reading this have probably been using Vista x64 for ages but clearly they fall into the early adopter category . . . thanks to them a lot of problems appear to have been ironed out and since SP/1 there has probably been a much greater number of people jumping O/S too!

 

[queamin]

I had vista 64 oem for a while and still waiting to get a new mb so will install it then

 

[Misiowiec]

I dont really think it needs to be elaborated, but I can give you a hint:

" file transfer "

Too true, the sluggishness of Vista really gets to me though I like the OS otherwise.

That is fixed in SP1 to be fair.

Not entirely, I still find simple file operations slower than on my XP laptop which has much lower specs than my desktop. From this perspective Vista was a disaster, I mean it took then a year to release a patch, though I like it overall.

 

[mrk]

Too true, the sluggishness of Vista really gets to me though I like the OS otherwise.



Not entirely, I still find simple file operations slower than on my XP laptop which has much lower specs than my desktop. From this perspective Vista was a disaster, I mean it took then a year to release a patch, though I like it overall.

XP was problematic for more than 1.5yrs before it got better (I downloaded from the beta days) . Vista in this regard is superior...

 

[pugheaven]

Good lord, another DirectX version. Microsoft can shove it up their arse.

 

[snowdog]

while we also heard that Multithreaded Rendering

If that's true then good, but afaik anything else is unneeded, upgrade performance for once instead of adding features almost not seeable by the human eye.

 

[Misiowiec]

XP was problematic for more than 1.5yrs before it got better (I downloaded from the beta days) . Vista in this regard is superior...

Fair enough, so I guess Windows 7 will be usable after 6 months. And who says we're not making progress

 

[mrk]

It took until SP2 for XP to be good and how many years later did SP2 come?

/thread !

 

[mrk]

I just realised something...

Since MS have now abandoned support and updates for XP future gaming IS going to be done on Vista or later - it's just the way progression moves.

So if MS stop supporting an OS then hardware vendors stop making drivers updated for it because in their view If MS are not updating such an OS then problems people have with hardware X may be because of a lack of OS update so won't bother wasting time and money updating drivers or even creating new hardware with native support for older OSes no longer supported by the OS maker.

You're forced to update OS whether you like it or not, it just takes a tiny bit longer for the forcage to take affect in this case.

Given this info I predict we will see more DX11 games than DX10 games during the first year of DX11 launch especially considering ATI's stance on high performance low price cards which has forced nvidia to lower their prices and even lose share value a bit!

 

[Corasik]

XP was problematic for more than 1.5yrs before it got better (I downloaded from the beta days) . Vista in this regard is superior...

I had XP Beta, and XP, XP SP1, SP2 ETC ETC. And found from day one is was superior to Windows 95, 98, ME, and 2000.

XP was far more "compatible" with 95/98 than 2000 ever was. Security well not great, but they used microsoft update for frequent patches. I would be lying if I said I never saw XP rebooting due to the likes of Sasser and Blaster, but even with a humble NAT router it wasnt too bad.

Sure XP is when Microsoft really embraced the internet, and there were many potential security issues, to be fair, they addressed the issues quite quickly.

I've yet to find any compelling reason to switch from XP to Vista.

 

[mrk]

There is no reason for those who have found no reason to switch and fair game.

I thought I had no valid reason to switch other than wanting to be on top of the game and know what people were talking about since I worked in IT and got a lot of calls from people on Vista as well as being a PC gamer I had that urge to have the latest piece of software so bought it and from day 1 had no issues I even upgraded mobo without a reinstall going from AMD to Intel and it's still great, this was from release day to today the same install!

Since then though I have "discovered" new things in Vista that I could never go back to XP for and until I had actually used Vista for x months I would have never wondered otherwise.

not major things but little things that make it easier to manage files and folders as well as access games/applications quickly and efficiently.

I don't use UAC or Defender and am using vista exactly as I did XP but now have more control over the OS and more control over my data and apps and how I use them more productively than I used to on XP!

 

[Gerard]

I just realised something...

Since MS have now abandoned support and updates for XP future gaming IS going to be done on Vista or later - it's just the way progression moves.

So if MS stop supporting an OS then hardware vendors stop making drivers updated for it because in their view If MS are not updating such an OS then problems people have with hardware X may be because of a lack of OS update so won't bother wasting time and money updating drivers or even creating new hardware with native support for older OSes no longer supported by the OS maker.

You're forced to update OS whether you like it or not, it just takes a tiny bit longer for the forcage to take affect in this case.

Given this info I predict we will see more DX11 games than DX10 games during the first year of DX11 launch especially considering ATI's stance on high performance low price cards which has forced nvidia to lower their prices and even lose share value a bit!

Theyre supporting xp untill 2012 or 2014 last i read on hardocp about a week back. Just obviously it will always be a dx9 platform. Also xp was a pretty good os from it was released, never had any problems with it so i dunno what this "it was no good till sp2" is all about.

 

[RizlaKing]

When XP came out there was a bunch of naysayer's completely slagging it off anyone remember the old "fisher price os" line that did the rounds. Now Vista is out and XP is suddenyl a god amongst os's even though people constantly moaned about how bad it's security was. When windows 7 comes out we will have the same nostalgic crap about Vista so it's all much of a muchness personally those who have listened to the naysayer's and believe Vista is crap are missing out on a good os and an improvement over XP in most ways from my experience.

 

[Gerard]

When XP came out there was a bunch of naysayer's completely slagging it off anyone remember the old "fisher price os" line that did the rounds. Now Vista is out and XP is suddenyl a god amongst os's even though people constantly moaned about how bad it's security was. When windows 7 comes out we will have the same nostalgic crap about Vista so it's all much of a muchness personally those who have listened to the naysayer's and believe Vista is crap are missing out on a good os and an improvement over XP in most ways from my experience.

Yup, most of the complaints are about new os's using more resources..with quads and stuff out there and people with multiple gigs of ram theres obviously more resources to make use of as well. New features and enhancements obviously have to make more use of cpu and ram, some people still seem to think that a pentium 500mhz and 64mb of ram should be plenty for anything.

I really don't get it when people complain about an os using 800mb of thier 4 gigs of ram..so its better to have it sitting there never used?

 

[Darkwave]

Gerard: People just don't understand the most basic function of Superfetch, and they're not willing to educate themselves about it because they'd probably be shunned out of their "cool to hate" club.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Superfetch?

Heard of the name but have no idea what it means?

I wonder if Ulfhedjinn can be bothered to explain?

 

[Darkwave]

Superfetch?

Heard of the name but have no idea what it means?

Basically it's a system where Windows Vista will load your most commonly used apps and background maintenance into the RAM, this means when you're not doing much Vista will appear to be hogging your RAM. It can even keep track of what day or time you're likely to use said apps by learning your behaviour, and preload them into the RAM to make them load faster.

If you then launch a program that's very memory intensive like Photoshop or a game it will clear the RAM for you, to make sure that it's not needlessly bogging down your performance.

It's a completely misunderstood technology. Windows XP had a similar, but less complex system called Prefetcher, which Superfetch is based on, and as far as I know other operating systems like OSX and Linux have a similar system (though I'm not totally sure as I don't use them).