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Is your Windows 8 Fast Boot working with your add-in card?

nathanc

nathanc

nathanc

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Location
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I've been running Windows 8 for a while and was quite impressed with my 28 second cold boot time until I saw the 2/3 seconds that I should be seeing.

A fiddle with the UEFI BIOS settings highlighted that its my graphics card that doesn't support UEFI GOP booting (or something similar to that).

Now to be fair, my 5870 is getting a bit long in the tooth and whilst I can still play my current games at native res with fairly high settings I know that a 7950 or 670 will be twice as fast...

I might upgrade to this generation if Fast Boot will work... otherwise I've just found another reason to wait for the next gen!

So back to the question, has anybody with a full UEFI board and Windows 8 managed to get fast boot working with one of the current generation of add in graphics cards?

Ideally, I'm looking for fellow Asus GPU/MB owners but I'm interested to hear in the experiences of other brand users!
 
AFAIK fast boot in windows 8 is nothing more than a hibernation state shutdown, a full shut down(there is a shutdown specific .exe or do a restart) does a full system turn off and restart and is slower or, you know the same as any other OS properly starting/stopping.

Windows 7 takes 10-15 seconds to start fully with an SSD, afaik Win 8 is no faster, windows 7 in hibernation state will turn back on extremely fast, 3-4 seconds, and win 8 is the same. The only difference is Windows 7 called shutdown a shutdown and hibernation what it was, Windows 8 pretends hibernation is a shutdown to pretend its hugely faster... its not.

Want fast shut down/starts, use hibernation and never shut down the system fully on win 7, any gpu supports it, as almost always with Microsoft, its a marketing con.
 
I have read that hibernation states between Win7 and Win8 differ greatly in terms of which data is actually saved. Win7 keeps all currently active processes and application open, but Win8 shuts down many of the background processes and all non startup applications. The result is that Win8 writes less to disk, and on same the system should startup faster. Win8 cuts out much of the background clutter which hogs resources and slows Win7 down after successive hibernates.

Win7 hibernate and Win8 shutdown do similar things, but Win8 does have many advantages. It may not be an entirely new idea for Win8 but it works well in practice.
 
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I almost never cold boot my machine and havent done for years.

Just hit space bar to wake it up and it auto sleeps after 15 minutes of inactivity, dont know why everyone doesnt do this.

My 'boot' time is around 2 seconds and has been since windows vista :-)
 
straxusii said:
I almost never cold boot my machine and havent done for years.

Just hit space bar to wake it up and it auto sleeps after 15 minutes of inactivity, dont know why everyone doesnt do this.

My 'boot' time is around 2 seconds and has been since windows vista :-)
Click to expand...

Pretty much the same, all my machines (w7) go to sleep after a set amount of time. Only ever reboot when needed for updates and such or I need to go into the bios.
 
Any idea of a rough yearly cost for those who don't fully shutdown and unplug their desktops? Are we talking pence, pounds or tens of pounds for hibernation costs? :)
 
I couldn't live with myself if I left my PC sleeping all the time. As it is I turn everything off at the wall that isn't essential... although that doesn't include the server and router that's running a website that I can't be bothered to update :p

To be honest I'm quite happy with the power cycling time - I guess I was sold on the hype. I will try normal hibernation and see if that's any faster, I doubt the electricity cost is any higher than with the PC off but on standby.
 
People that use sleep mode how do you go about downloading large files?

I have always ended up turning sleep mode off as if im downloading it sleeps and then my download stops! Am i missing something?
 
I turn my PC off every night I'm not using it. Although I leave the server on doesnt cost much to keep it running.

I've got a hybrid hdd my boot times are 31 seconds... But the more you install the slower it goes even configuring msconfig
 
danyulland said:
People that use sleep mode how do you go about downloading large files?

I have always ended up turning sleep mode off as if im downloading it sleeps and then my download stops! Am i missing something?
Click to expand...

My download manager stops sleep mode. Also with 40mb connection nothing takes too long to download.
 
With all the devices off in sleep mode power cost will be ~nothing.

Google told me 3w usage comletely off, 5w usage in sleep mode with just an led winking.

Given electricity cost of say 15p/kwh that means it will cost you a grand total of £4 per year assuming slept 24/7
 
I love the fast shutdown on windows 8, my motherboard posts VERY quickly and windows loads in a few seconds, all over from switching the power on to windows loaded in 8 seconds.
 
Subliminal Aura said:
Yep even with the scrooge in me I also leave my PC @ sleep 24/7 - What bugs me most is that my gigabit switch consumes 12W :o
Click to expand...

Always do a full shutdown on my main PC, as I have it connect to a Echo Plug. Only thing I keep on is my file server downstairs which records my CCTV and stores my TV programs which are automatically transferred from my mediacetre after recording.
 
I have windows 8 and a 7970.

I can boot from cold within about 5 seconds.

2-3 seconds to load Bios and get to my password screen and then it's pretty instant one I add the password.
 
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