Vista- PC gamings saving grace or the beginning of the end?

AtreuS said:
Someone mentioned having a dual boot system. Im sure i read somewhere that MS are going to make it VERY hard to get vista to dual boot with another OS for "security" reasons. Anyone else hear about this?
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Only if BitLocker drive encryption is enabled which it isn't by default. Also it won't take long for boot loaders to provide Vista/BitLocker support anyway...

Ex-RoNiN said:
Please your highness, descend from your royal clouds and enlighten us :rolleyes:
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What is there to say? You was speaking complete and utter bull**** which I pointed out was false so that no casual passerby would believe it.

Just to clarify... on Vista you can still download pirate MP3s, you can still use Torrents, you can still use USENET, you can still use FTPs, you can still play copied DVDs, you can still play DivX, you can still use cracked software/games, you can still do all the legally questionable things that you could do on XP. The only additional protection of this form in Vista is with HD-DVD/Blu-ray. If you don't have a HDCP graphics card and monitor then you aren't going to get full fidelity video. But that's not Microsoft's fault... every other OS (OSX Leopard for instance) that supports HD will be the same. Also consumer electronics (HD DVD players) have the same limitation...

Nieldo said:
DX10 will not be backwards compatable
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It is. Microsoft has added a compatibility layer to supports all the way back to DX7. There's a small ~5-10% performance hit but that will be optimised out in no time by Nvidia and ATI's driver development teams. Certainly with DX9 there will be almost no hit at all - indeed optimisations in other areas of Vista will negate the hit entirely.

TLJester1 said:
This worries me.
Will it add more time to development?
Or will developers just make the game DX10 and just canabalise it to fit in DX9? (and be rubbishly coded due to this)
How well will DX10 cards work in XP/DX9 machines?
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Backward compatibility is still there.

DX10 is actually easier to develop with than DX9.

The first few DX10 games will not be much more than DX9 games but using the DX10 API. Crysis for instance. Well maybe that is stretching the truth a bit, but essentially Crysis will not even be scratching the surface. It will take years for game developers to begin taking advantage of the real power behind DX10.

Luckily a lot of the performance gains from DX10 are free - i.e. no cost to development time. DX10 has very tight integration with the Vista kernel (in XP, DirectX is very much 'tacked on' as it were). This was mostly done because of the performance needed for the Windows desktop (which, at the lowest level, is now rendered entirely by DX) but also traverses down to user mode applications such as games.

DX10 cards will support DX9/XP flawlessly.
 
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Eliot said:
me: oh vistas gonna be awesome man
other dude: do u know it wont play dx8 or lower and dx 9 will have a performance hit?
me:what? no Raven sheild?
other dude: nope.
me:**** U MICROSOFT
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Is this true? :mad: , if so theres no way im upgrading, i love playing Raven Shild online.

Mark
 
Look at it this way: Most people are fairly happy, in general, with WindowsXP. It's probably the most popular version of windows to date and it's been the latest and greatest for 5 years now (ignoring more business related products like 2003 sever and 64bit versions), a longer lifespan than any of 3.1/95/98/98/2000/ME.

So, M$ need some kind of gimmick to encourage people to ditch XP and move onto Vista. Something like DirectX10 is a good way of doing this.
 
People are right Windows XP done quite well, its been around for 5 years and still going strong reminds oddly enough I still have to deal with and fix Windows ME based pcs and im like this things ancient u gotta throw it in a bin!

I think Vista will be great and if it helps game developers release something to one standard and quicker and less buggier then im all for it.
 
HighlandeR said:
oddly enough I still have to deal with and fix Windows ME based pcs and im like this things ancient u gotta throw it in a bin!
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Lucky you, the 5 workstations I regularly use at work are all running older versions of windows (2*NT4, 2*2kpro, 1*98se) :) In fact one of the NT4 boxes was originally running win95 until it received a huge upgrade to a p2-233 running NT4
 
Well Im hoping that I get a copy of Vista from my university before I leave (about 2 years so I have time) for it to come on msdnaa.

Besides a lot of the stuff Vista will bring to the party are likely to be benificial to casual and power users. We all know that they keep chipping away at what they are going to give us, but to be perfectly honest they havent got rid of anything we cant do without or there are programs to cover the gap already.

The DX10 thing seems to get people ****** off, but its been exactly the same since the beginning of DX from its sickly youth to the gangly teenager we know today, you have to upgrade some hardware to use all of the features, just the way it has always been really. Besides look at the long run, its going to be years before anything trully uses the DX10 feature set.
 
Hardware manufacturers and their greedy prices will kill the PC games industry. They do a good job of keeping prices covered up. I reckon an X1900XT costs way under £100 to produce in all honesty.
 
Mark A said:
Is this true? :mad: , if so theres no way im upgrading, i love playing Raven Shild online.

Mark
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nope according to nathan e it appears not , which has put me straight back on *** bandwagon of vista cos raven sheild=the best
 
HangTime said:
Lucky you, the 5 workstations I regularly use at work are all running older versions of windows (2*NT4, 2*2kpro, 1*98se) :) In fact one of the NT4 boxes was originally running win95 until it received a huge upgrade to a p2-233 running NT4
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tbh, 2K Pro = win
 
Tommy B said:
Hardware manufacturers and their greedy prices will kill the PC games industry. They do a good job of keeping prices covered up. I reckon an X1900XT costs way under £100 to produce in all honesty.
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Graphics cards manufacturers spent a lot on R&D though; while the marginal cost of producing each additional unit is probably relatively low, they need to recoup their initial outlay in terms of the millions spent prior to launch.
 
HangTime said:
Lucky you, the 5 workstations I regularly use at work are all running older versions of windows (2*NT4, 2*2kpro, 1*98se) :) In fact one of the NT4 boxes was originally running win95 until it received a huge upgrade to a p2-233 running NT4
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Terrible... Terrible id just come out straight and tell them u know I see PCs lying on the street more powerful then these all put together, some people are just so tight ! Worser then myself even !
 
Tommy B said:
Hardware manufacturers and their greedy prices will kill the PC games industry. They do a good job of keeping prices covered up. I reckon an X1900XT costs way under £100 to produce in all honesty.
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well, if your willing to go to hong kong and buy 2000 units you can get them for around £140 a pop :)
 
Echo said:
Agreed, nice clean os that does everything xp does (without the tat).

Will upgrade to Vista given its 'proper' kernel changes though, had 6 trouble-free years on 2k :cool:
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only issue with 2K is MSN 8 beta will NOT work on it the same as it does on XP
XP Pro isn't bad, but I don't like the whole arseing around
 
Thing is, you all say you're going to stick to XP, but when the majority of games start trickling out with Vista DX10 required badges on them, people will eventually upgrade. MS know that tons of peeps out there will buy the OS for the eye candy alone and thats fairly obvious, regardless or not to weather XP is a well established platform.

When Vista arrives, I'll be rebuilding my rig but it'll have a medium or low end DX9 or 10 card on it for general non gaming use only. I refuse to waste my time gaming on the pc now.
 
Tommy B said:
Hardware manufacturers and their greedy prices will kill the PC games industry. They do a good job of keeping prices covered up. I reckon an X1900XT costs way under £100 to produce in all honesty.
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Maybe they could afford to sell them a bit cheaper, but if you think about it, PCs are much cheaper now than they were 10 years ago. A pretty high end PC now will set you back roughly £1000-£1200 (unless you go crazy and buy only the most expensive stuff) but back then the same would only get you a mid range PC.
 
they could build them cheaper based upon the bill of materials, but then how would they be able to afford to reasearch and develop the next evolution, and then the next after that.

they ahve to charge more than simple cost of the product to keep the cycle moving to push for faster and faster hardware.

i dont think there needs to be a saving grace for pc gaming. i think its still alive and kicking, waiting for the next step to once ahead move it forward in its evolutionary manner, which in turn tends to push the further development of consoles in order to keep up with their pc brethren.

without an evolving pc market, how would the console hardware continue to develop and newer more powerful consoles to be released when the r+d just isnt being donw hardware side to create the leaps in technology we have now
 
im a heavy gamer and if that means i got to have vista and dx10 card then i dont mind forking out for it.
It seems im the only one really excited about vista but i bet all you scrooges will be getting it :)
 
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