Vista only for Halo 2!

lowrider007 said:
I,ve just tried this out on mine (although I did it quite franticly), and my cpu usage went from 1% to 69% in a flash, I really like the idea of vista making more use of the 3d hadware that so many people have laying doorment in thier machines these days.
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Okay I just tried again. The cpu usage shoots up briefly when you open task manager. After that, I opened My Computer again and quickly dragged it in circles all over the screen. The highest the cpu usage went was 14%, and it settled down to 3-4%. Here is a capture of TM:-

untitled4px1.png


That's on a P4 2.6C with a Ti 4200 card.
 
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dirtydog said:
Not on my machine it doesn't. I had Task Manager opened (which of course stays 'on top') and I opened My Computer. I dragged this window around as fast as I could and the cpu usage barely hit double figures. Explain that then.
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Just did it on mine, dragging round an IE window with this page open. Hit 100%. Not entirely sure why yours doesn't - try larger windows? Try moving it faster?
drag.JPG
 
I used an Opera window with three tabs open and some graphics displayed for these tests

For me, it seems to peak at about 40% for my primary monitor (X800Pro):

Primary_X800Pro.jpg


It peaks at about 50% for my secondary monitor (9250SE):

Secondary_9250SE.jpg


When I move the window rapidly across the two monitors it peaks at 100%:

Both_X800ProAnd9250SE.jpg
 
Perhaps it's because I'm using Windowblinds which uses 'hyperpaint', a form of hardware acceleration for painting windows. I did it as fast as I could - it was a blur.

edit - or it could be because I have a P4 and hyperthreading?
 
ajgoodfellow said:
If windowblinds does have a degree of hardware acceleration then that would explain it and help towards my case for having a hardware rendered GUI :)
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It would appear so:
"WindowBlinds 5 makes use hardware acceleration to a much greater degree to speed up repainting, resizing, and moving of windows. It should be noticeably faster, particularly on slower machines, than Windows by default."

So this is what people like me, who don't use windowblinds, will notice in Vista.
 
Aha. But isn't it a moot point though? It doesn't feel or look any faster or smoother, because it is very fast and smooth the way Windows does it by default. The only difference is that the CPU is working less hard, but it would have otherwise been idle anyway. In other words, the only way you'll "notice" it in Vista is to open the task manager :)
 
I think people have taken this "drag a window and watch the CPU spike" thing that I pointed out in Windows forum a few weeks back a little out of proportion. I was merely using that as an _example_ of a fundamental flaw in the current GDI graphics rendering system in Windows. Vista's rendering is texture based. Each window is stored as a texture on your graphics card. Programs can update their texture whenever they like. Then Vista's "Desktop Compositor" takes all those textures and their positions and compiles them together to make a single desktop picture. It can do all this in a split second on the GPU.

This is opposed to the current GDI system where there is a constant battle of the Z-order to keep windows refreshed and current. Whenever a window covers a window underneath and then reveals it again, the window underneath is forced to repaint by Windows. That is wasting CPU time.

dirtydog said:
It doesn't feel or look any faster or smoother
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Oh yes it does. Any increase in efficiency is a good one, especially on the Windows desktop. It's hard to see the creaks in the GDI system on a modern HT system such as yours, but they are there. If I drag a window around on my system there is a massive white block of the shape of the foreground window left imprinted on any background windows. Sure it's only visible for a split second but it does impact the user experience. With Vista, dragging a window will be like Hollywood-style - smooth as a whistle, zero artifacts! :p
 
Because when 2000/XP (NT v5) was being developed the largest graphics card was 32MB and work on Avalon (the replacement to GDI in Vista) only started in 2001.

Windowblinds performs a type of double buffering. Vista's method is really quite different (and more complex/even more efficient) to how Windowblinds works. Vista's desktop is also V-sync'd so there will be no tearing, ever. It's easy to see tearing on XP.
 
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No offence, but I cant believe you guys spent most of saturday discussing the merits of draging windows round a screen. What we need out of vista is security, reliability and ease of use.
I havent read up on it, but the important things are drivers and program interfaces. On forums like this all of the people are very pc literate, most in the outside world havent got a clue. If MS wish to really take over the world, vista has to have a seemless interface with everything, hardware and software, I think it will happen in the end, it just sounds like vista is some sort of fudge to grab some sales and add some hype. At the end of the day I'm sure xp could be patched to work like vista but if you're a corporation you have to sell more stuff.

By the way for what its worth 99% of the people on these forums seem really nice -- aah - so I thought I'd join in. I have been on the showshifter board but got completed slagged off by a Unpleasant person, rather like those who post here and don't read the forum rules on language yank and ozzie who thought they new it all, put me of forums.
 
Sorry to go back to an earlier part of the thread (to the guy switching to Apple) but I just stumbled across this. I may be childish (ahem) but it actually made me laugh out loud and just seemed strangely appropriate

Click here

Your normal serious discussion will be resumed shortly... :D
 
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AS long as Vista does what it needs to do as an OS ie Work then I am not too fussed.

At least the new OS's only come around every few years unlike the GFX cards every couple of months lol.

Hmmm about halo2 Not a chance I will buy it! The first one was...well..... crap! so the second will be worse lol.
 
tmileson said:
Sorry to go back to an earlier part of the thread (to the guy switching to Apple) but I just stumbled across this. I may be childish but is actually made me laugh out loud and just seemed so appropriate

Click here

Your normal serious discussion will be resumed shortly... :D
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Seen it, it's years old but very good though :) As for why Macs suck (or rather OS X) that deserves a whole thread of its own :p
 
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