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More Evidence That XP is Vista's Main Competitor
Ian Lamont writes "Computerworld is reporting that Windows XP Service Pack 3 runs MS Office 10% faster than XP SP2 — and is 'considerably faster' than Vista SP1. XP SP3 isn't scheduled to be released until next year, but testers at Devil Mountain Software — the same company which found Vista SP 1 to be hardly any faster than the debut version of Vista — were able to run some benchmarking tests on a release candidate of XP SP3, says the report. While this may be great news for XP owners, it is a problem for Microsoft, which is having trouble convincing business users to migrate to Vista."
Someone else.
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"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Vista is the only operating system that supports DirectX10 at the moment
Kind of a meaningless statement really. To say Vista is the only OS that supports it is to imply that other OS's are somehow less able, but DirectX is a microsoft only tool, written just for windows, which is the only OS family that needs it in the first place. Linux and the others don't need it.
Anyway, the only reason XP doesn't support it is because Microsoft decided to prevent people still using XP when directX10 takes hold.
For the pedants, yes there is Wine/Cedega, but that's an emulator.
The Best Buy crowd will get pushed to Vista, it's true. But it hasn't been a week since I ordered a new desktop for myself from Dell, and I bought it with XP Pro installed. (And XP Home was an option.)
It's hardly impossible to buy a home PC with XP on it these days.
ROFL
Sorry, as an avid Ubuntu and WINE user, I couldn't help but laugh at that one.
WWN isn't updated because nobody does it, but the development progressed considerably since then and I would say DX9 is in very good shape now. DX10 headers and stubs was a google SoC project, which unfortunately didn't go very well, but alas, the effort is there. In some cases wine is faster than windows, especially now that you read how slow vista is I think wine has some advantages.
I was using vista on my laptop, an athlon 64 dual core with 2GB ram. All I used it for was playing WoW when I'd go to my gf's house, and after several rounds of BSOD's with no solution in sight, I did a little searching and found that I could in fact install XP on there by using a quadro driver for the onboard nvidia graphics. (the vendor did not list any XP compatible drivers, but apparently it has the same motherboard in it as another model). Now, I no longer have to run WoW at 1024x768 but can run at 1280x800 widescreen, with all the mods I want and it flows effortlessly where before it would chop and lag horribly. Vista is pretty, yeah, but I need my laptop to do more than sit there like a prom queen ;-) When I hear of them fixing the performance, I might consider switching it back.
For the pedants, there's also the fact that Wine Is Not An Emulator. Seriously though -- that's why WINE is more than a little scary to MS -- it's not an emulator, so it lacks the major performance penalties that are usually associated with them. Instead, it's a fairly fast re-implementation of the Win32 API layer -- and since it's portable, it could (in theory, if it every gets DX10 support) provide unofficial backwards compatibility to people that MS would rather use Vista.
emulators emulate hardware
/* directX code */
/* minor rejigging to make it work with equivalent OpenGL API call */
examples are vmware, virtualbox, et al
Wine is a compatibility layer
meaning it just redirects win32 API calls to the equivalent linux API calls
AFIAK (never really looked into the source of wine, or I'm guessing a bit here), but
void direct3D_DoSomething(args)
{
}
becomes
void direct3D_DoSomething(args)
{
openGL_DoSomething(args);
}
Vista 32-bit isn't going to support more than 3.5Gig either (just as WinXP and Win2k). So, unless you're running Vista 64 bit, this is no different. (It's a hardware limitation, Linux 32-bit can't use more than 3.5Gig either) Yes, there is stuff like PAE, but that really is just a hack. Essentially it's segmenting for 32-bit machines. Both WinXP and Win2k support up to 4Gig RAM, but most hardware simply don't. I have a AMD Athlon MP system that has 4Gig RAM. Only 3.5Gig is visible to WinXP, but the same is true for Linux and FreeBSD. For me there is no way out, because it is a 32-bit system.
You still can't pick an arbitrary DX9 app and have a reasonable expectation that it will work on Wine. Some games like Civ 4 have received a lot of attention and run quite well. Others, like AOE III (which has a gold rating) will install and run, but have graphical issues that will make it unplayable. Still others, like FarCry just seg fault.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
And this really doesn't increase security any if you shower users with 'are you sure' prompts because they become conditioned to just keep clicking 'yes'.
To the point that they click 'yes' when the rootkit comes around. Now if it had some sort of 'rootkit installation detection' and came up with the prompt 'It looks like what you're installing is a rootkit, are you sure you want to install this?', users might actually click no and give their computer person a headsup.
The main annoyance of this nature right now is access - every time I open up a database it has to warn me to be careful and that this database could contain harmful functions - Yet I built that database ON MY OWN MACHINE. It has no scripts that a default office install doesn't put in there. It's just a collection of a few tables and reports. Yet it warns me and makes me click another button - of course I'm going to keep opening stuff up! It asks every time!
I don't read AC A human right
Tungsten Graphics (the people who get paid to develop OSS drivers for Intel's GPUs)
are creating a new technology called Gallium3D.
Basically it's a middle layer that rests between Mesa3D (openGL API) and DRI/DRM (low level drivers) and whose job is to export basic building block available on most modern hardware (shaders, etc.) in a standart way.
The thing is Gallium3D isn't restrict to Mesa3D for the API. A lot of people are speculating about the possibility offered by a potential WineD3D running natively on Gallium. (Instead of being an D3D -> OpenGL translation layer).
TGI's powerpoint presentation in fact contained an illustration where Gallium3D was used between a thin DirectX layer and low level drivers on Windows.
(Maybe, Intel could pay TGI so they also make DirectX/Windows drivers for their GPUs)
In the end such kind of technology could bring :
- Working DirectX10 on Windows XP (similar to Alky/FallingLeaf but using a thin DX10 Layer on Gallium3D backend).
- Working DirectX on Linux and ReactOS (either expanding a potential Intel i9xx D3D driver, or building a better WineD3D for Gallium3.
- Easier OpenGL 3 (which differs a lot from OGL1 and 2 - Instead of needing Mesa to be able to understand 2 radically different APIs, OGL3 could be handled by just having another API Layer running on Gallium backend)
- A nicer and simplier framework to get a 3D stack through OSS for any small player (Non-mainstream hardware maker, open hardware project or opensource team creating drivers for unsupported hardware). Up until now there was only MESA that did offer OpenGL 1/2 API, and required a lot of duplicate work inside the various hardware-specific libraries.
So, to go back to the discussion, Opensource projects (including contribution from Wine) starting to play an important role in game deployment : this is something that may become a reality sooner that we may think.
(And it's not that game developers are deeply against OSS : OpenAL, OGG/Vorbis and similar have already poped up un commercial projects from Id, Epic, etc.)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
DirectX10 cannot run on XP. XP cannot multitask the GPU for example. Period. There is no possibility of creating a wrapper that uses opengl to make that happen.
At best, all you'll be able to do is write wrappers for fluff like shader model 4. And that's what it is FLUFF. The real features of directx10 are virtual video memory, gpu multitasking, and so on. This simply cannot be backported to XP using opengl wrappers.
Right now, most directx10 compatible games ARE directx9 games that are extended to use some of the directx10 rendering fluff, so its relatively easy to just stub around all the gpu multitasking, and just implement wrappers for the new sharder stuff. And then we see idiotic frenzies because 'omg! directx game X has been hacked to run on xp'
But the reality is that only the fluff part of directx10 can be wrapped like this, and it just so happens that the fluff part is the only part the new direct9/direct10 'hybrid' games are using.
But if they start releasing REAL directx10-only games that make use of gpu multitasking etc those stubs will have to do *something*, and XP just can't do it, the kernel doesn't support it. So either its going to run like a DOG as they write some kludge to thunk around the kernel limitation or its not going to run at all.
To use a car analagy, directx10 is like a 90's Porsche, and direct9 is one from the 80's. Sure with enough welding and grafting you could put the new body on the old chassis, and then you could release photos showing that the new xenon headlights work, along with the heated side mirrors, electric sunroof -- and you can even start it and drive it around... and it runs nearly as fast as the 80's 911 always did, which you'd expect given that's what the engine is, and the extra weight you've added.
But if you look closer you'll find out that the AWD and ABS is missing, the automatic ride height adjustment is gone, and the number 6 on your transmission knob doesn't actually do anything
I was under the impression that OpenGL wasn't platform dependent, so if 2.0/3.0 will be released it won't be able to use the same GPU features on WinXP and Vista?
OpenGL is not platform dependant, but that is NOT the issue.
In another post you wrote:
DX10 and OpenGL are nothing than just APIs to the GPU! You can emulate both ways, IIRC MS first tried to emulate OGL using DX in the early Vista days. OGL 2.0/3.0 will have DX10-like features. Maybe some even are possible to emulate in OGL 1.5.
OpenGL and DirectX10 Direct3D as 'scene description languages' work like that. You can even implement OpenGL3 entirely in software and emit the frames to a laser printer. And each frame will look perfect.
That's not the issue, and never has been. DirectX10 is a hell of a lot more than just the Direct3D scene description APIs.
The issue is that directX10, in ADDITION to its 'scene description language' is ALSO a PLATFORM. It specifies that the hardware actually be able to do certain things. Its true you can get away with emulating those features but you'll take a performance hit, and possibly a stability hit if there are timing constraints tied into those features. (Not to mention you lose the right to use the directx10 logos).
Another part of the directx 10 platform requires the operating system to support certain features that Vista supports, but XP does not. XP cannot do virtual video memory or gpu multitasking. Period.
Imagine if DirectX required pre-emptive multitasking support. (not hard to do, it actually DOES)
How would you backport that to Windows 3.1? Which only supports cooperative multitasking. There is no real way of doing that short of upgrading the 3.1 kernel to support pre-emptive multitasking, at which point you might as well just give them the NT3 kernel, and NT3 drivers...
And that's where we are now. To give XP virtual video memory and gpu multitasking, we'd pretty much have to upgrade the xp kernel to vista...and require vista drivers.
Don't confusing DirectX10 with OpenGL. There is a part of DirectX that is interchangable with OpenGL and its an important part. But there is a big part of DirectX that is NOT.