Microsoft operating system (Vista)

Ricochet J · 19 Jan 2006 at 18:16

I wanted to build a new performance computer in February. But instead i'm waiting till March next year so I see what comes out and how with all bugs and what not.

By then 4Gb RAM will probably be the norm.

dirtydog · 22 Jan 2006 at 07:46

Re Vista, I had hoped that the current look of explorer would be changed for the final release, but this page on Microsoft's website implies to me that the look and feel has been finalised? :eek:

If so I really am wondering what the hell they are thinking - the functionality of the new look of explorer is clearly lacking compared to previous versions of Windows.

eXSBass said:
By then 4Gb RAM will probably be the norm.

4GB the norm.. lol you jest of course. Even now 256-512MB is probably the norm for most people, with 1GB being next most popular with power users. 4GB won't be the norm for many years, if ever.

Burnsy2023 · 22 Jan 2006 at 10:47

dirtydog said:
4GB won't be the norm for many years, if ever.

I wouldn't quite go that far, but it'll be a while before it is the norm. Bear in mind that when software is written for the 64bit platform you'll need double the memory for similar 32 bit perfomance.

Burnsy

Ricochet J · 22 Jan 2006 at 11:12

dirtydog said:
Re Vista, I had hoped that the current look of explorer would be changed for the final release, but this page on Microsoft's website implies to me that the look and feel has been finalised? If so I really am wondering what the hell they are thinking - the functionality of the new look of explorer is clearly lacking compared to previous versions of Windows.

eXSBass said:

By then 4Gb RAM will probably be the norm.

Click to expand...

4GB the norm.. lol you jest of course. Even now 256-512MB is probably the norm for most people, with 1GB being next most popular with power users. 4GB won't be the norm for many years, if ever.

But the thing is people with 64bit computers tend to sway towards the 2Gb range nowadays.

NathanE · 22 Jan 2006 at 11:31

toy_soldier said:
I may be totally off track here but here goes anyway:

If just the OS (Vista) needs so much to run, wont this hinder the performance of games significantly?

I guess you are referring to that "Game Performance Optimiser" utility included with Vista that nobody knows anything about yet?

Even without that, Vista's new graphics subsystems are designed to support multiple high graphics requirement applications at a time.

The new LDDM (Longhorn Display Driver Model) does two key things:
1. Performs time slicing (aka scheduling) of the GPU
2. Adds graphics memory to the virtual address space so that textures can be "swapped out" of GDRAM into system RAM (if GDRAM starts to run low), and then possibly even all the way to the page file (if GDRAM and system RAM are running low.)

Traditionally (before Vista) the graphics memory was treated as a static resource that once run out, it's game over. However on Vista that's not the case, you could theoretically start up several games, start a few videos playing and run 3D Max Studio... all at the same time. Sure performance would suck on current hardware

but it would work. It's nice to know the scalability is there ready for the graphics card manufacturers to exploit. If you tried that on XP today you probably wouldn't even get the second or third game to start as it would complain of there not being enough GDRAM free.

Of course this all applies to Vista's desktop too. If you load up a game that needs say 512MB of texture memory and you only have a 512MB card. Then all the Vista textures for the desktop will get paged out and placed into system RAM or the page file (depending on how much free system RAM there is). If you then Alt-Tab out of the game back to the desktop, then the memory manager will choose which game textures haven't been used for ages and page them out to system RAM and then it will page in back to GDRAM the essential Vista desktop textures.

This will all be happening in a blink of an eye.

Burnsy2023 · 22 Jan 2006 at 11:32

eXSBass said:
But the thing is people with 64bit computers tend to sway towards the 2Gb range nowadays.

Exactly my point, that 4GB whilst not being the norm for a good few years, will be needed.

Burnsy

NathanE · 22 Jan 2006 at 11:35

Once 64-bit software becomes more commonplace then 4GB will be a minimum pretty much. The only reason you can get away with 2GB today is because almost all software is running in 32-bit WOW64 mode. In this mode the memory requirements of the program are the same as they were under 32-bit Windows.

dirtydog · 22 Jan 2006 at 11:44

4GB, for the average home or business user? Those people are currently using 256-512. In fact a lot of business computers are still soldiering on with 128MB.. please tell me why in future to run a web browser, wordprocessor or spreadsheet people will need 4GB of memory? What is the benefit? ie. to justify the great expense and increased power consumption? It sounds ridiculous to me.

NathanE · 22 Jan 2006 at 11:49

But under 64-bit the memory requirements greatly increase...

I'm saying in a couple years time (when everybody is running native 64-bit software) then 4GB will be like the equivilent of 2GB on a 32-bit system. Under 64-bit, 2GB is more like 1GB. And so on.

128MB is poverty spec, even for a 32-bit system.

This is pretty moot though because people using just office applications aren't going to be upgrading to Vista or 64-bit for yonks.

dirtydog · 22 Jan 2006 at 11:53

I think you use the word 'everybody' very liberally there.. I expect in two years a lot of people, especially in business will still be using 2000, 2003 and XP (32-bit).

What great benefit would the average home or business user who doesn't play the latest games at high resolutions and maximum detail settings etc, get from Vista and 4GB of RAM exactly, that they can't do just as well on XP right now?

NathanE · 22 Jan 2006 at 12:07

You and I know the answer to your question is... nothing. No benefit.

Where did anybody say otherwise? I said that in a couple years 4GB on x64 will feel more like having 2GB on a x32 system. Nothing more.

I think you are just dragging this out with semantics.

Oh and "everybody" was referring to the populous of this forum

dirtydog · 22 Jan 2006 at 12:12

NathanE said:
You and I know the answer to your question is... nothing. No benefit.

Actually we'll have a slightly different GUI, and little thumbnails when we press alt-tab.. I guess that's worth upgrading your operating system and hardware for

Oh and "everybody" was referring to the populous of this forum

Ah I see

TBH the whole Vista thing does nothing for me - I see not one real tangible benefit from upgrading, from what's been announced. In fact some of it seems worse than XP, like explorer navigation and the look of IE7.

NathanE · 22 Jan 2006 at 12:28

Well the non-tear desktop rendering is enough to tempt me to upgrade.

I guess I just like the elegancy of each window being stored as a texture and then composited into a full desktop texture-by-texture.

Actually, most of the reasons I'm upgrading are technical

LUA (least-user access), new HiFi HD audio stack (with per-application mixing controls), new IPv4 and IPv6 combined networking stack, user mode drivers, LDDM...

Just look around Winsupersite for a while. It shouldn't take long till you find something that genuinely interests you.

dirtydog · 22 Jan 2006 at 12:49

NathanE said:
Just look around Winsupersite for a while. It shouldn't take long till you find something that genuinely interests you.

Great site which I have spent a lot of time looking round before

I haven't found anything to get me very excited re Vista though. I had hoped the GUI shortcomings would be fixed but going by the MS website the look is finalised! Oh dear.

The glass look is nice enough but you can get 99% of that look with Windowblinds 5, which I have done - and with a DX8 card incidentally.

NathanE · 22 Jan 2006 at 13:04

Yeah I was ranting about Aero Glass being finalised a week or so ago. I couldn't believe it. It looks like XP Luna all over again

I guess it won't take long for people to come up with their own themes though

Apparently the next client release (Blackcom.. er... Vienna) is ditching Explorer as we know it entirely. E.g. the Taskbar will be killed off. That still ages away.

dirtydog · 22 Jan 2006 at 13:13

Hmm they did originally intend for Vista to ditch the taskbar didn't they? I think there is a reason why the look of Windows hasn't changed since 95 days.. it works! It's taken from then until Vista for them to 'fix' it (what wasn't broken) and it sounds like they're going to 'fix' the taskbar for the next major release :/

benjo plz. · 22 Jan 2006 at 13:16

burnsy2023 said:
I wouldn't quite go that far, but it'll be a while before it is the norm. Bear in mind that when software is written for the 64bit platform you'll need double the memory for similar 32 bit perfomance.

Burnsy

I'd say the norm is going to increase greatly over the next few years. Vista can support something like 128gb of ram, rather than the 4gb or so XP can support natively. With games getting more power hungry, and the additions of things such as physics processors, people are going to be wanting more ram.

NathanE · 22 Jan 2006 at 13:18

Yeah but remember what task switching was like in Windows 3.1? I'm sure Microsoft have thought of something superior to the taskbar by now.

That was just an example too. They are changing everything in Vienna. The whole way you interact with the desktop will be changed (in a similar vein that it was between 3.1 and 95).

3D windows may actually become a reality. They'll start unlocking some of the power of Avalon (WPF).

PS: As far as I can remember Vista was never meant to ditch the taskbar.

dirtydog · 22 Jan 2006 at 13:21

I just hope they don't forget that functionality must come before looks. OS X already has it backwards, I hope Windows doesn't go the same way.

NathanE · 22 Jan 2006 at 13:25

I doubt Microsoft will ever goto the levels that Apple go to ensure a "slick" GUI

Apple would remove the Login button if they ever thought it looked crap or didn't have enough karma