Vista SP1 Release May Be Near

Tokonamu sends a note about the release to a private testing group of a new build of Windows Vista SP1, possibly presaging the imminent release of the long-awaited service pack. Speculation about a Feb. 15 release date has been fueled by a report out of Taiwan, according to the article. Microsoft also issued a new build of Windows XP SP3 this week, but it's getting next to no publicity out of Redmond, what with XP being the main competition for Vista and all.

Comments

I heard a rumor...

[coolhaus]

I heard a rumor that Vista SP1, in a spectacularly clever and devious bid to fix all Vista issues, silently installs XP in the background.

Re:I heard a rumor...

[porl]

You'll see no end to the Windows Update notifications! every time i'm forced to use windows, i feel like that is already the case ;)

porl

Geez, try to be fair at least

[SmallFurryCreature]

There was a story about the new linux kernel, and that was a point upgrade.

You also get patches/upgrades from MS outside service packs.

So this is in a way like a Linux distro that announces a new point release, which ARE reported on slashdot.

Hate vista or love it. Use it or leave it, but it is a news worthy item when it receives an upgrade. For better or worse this is going to affect a lot of people who read this site.

Oh and OSX has had nothing but point upgrades since it release back in the dark ages, each one of those point releases has been discussed to death.

I don't use vista yet, but am a PC gamer so sooner or later I might have to take the plunge, news on Vista therefor intrests me, if this SP1 is really good, it might hasten the move to Vista and make game companies more inclined to make directx10 only games. Or not, but I want to know when I should start to look into pirating Vista (Pay for MS software? What an odd concept.)

Re:Geez, try to be fair at least

[Anonymous Coward]

>Hate vista or love it. Use it or leave it, but it is a
>news worthy item when it receives an upgrade. For better
>or worse this is going to affect a lot of people who read this site.

You know what the funny/strange part for me was?
When I read the headline here were the first things in order that
came to my mind:

1) It's the first service pack, now folks will be willing to buy it.
2) I wonder if they managed to screw something up/didn't fix it in
their service pack i.e. audio vs. network speed?
3) I wonder if they will force it down people's throats without asking
the vista users?

I don't know if you're a microsoft OS user or not, so you might be blind
to how disturbing the first thought is --- an OS is so crappy you have to
wait for them to clean up their OS before it's safe to go in the water.
There have been some clunkers with the Linux kernel (the last one that I remember
was something like version 2.2 aka the brown paper bag version), but its so rare
(that was 8 years ago folks) that I have no problem upgrading my kernel as soon
it's in Debian testing's repository.

The second point? Well, it *used* to be that a service pack really did fix bugs,
but based on the rc released a few months ago it looks like Vista's sp1 will be nothing
more than cosmetic changes, or rather that's my "impression" now of how
much quality comes out of Redmond.

The third point? In the past couple of years there have been incidents of Microsoft slipping things
to be installed without asking the user that have seemed more like "spyware" than "bugfixes".
The one in particular that I think I'm remembering correctly is windows media player.

I used to be one of those folks who hated, hated, hated Microsoft for being the evil empire.
At some point though I realized that Heinlein's razor applies to Microsoft:

They're not evil. They're just greedy stupid.

One day I realized that Microsoft is just obsolete and irrelevant to my world. I still read
the postings here in slashdot, but really for the +5 funny comments on the next blunder
Microsoft has committed. For entertaining humor, Microsoft is still useful.

--Johnny wishes you best of luck with Vista

Re:Geez, try to be fair at least

[TheNetAvenger]

don't use vista yet, but am a PC gamer so sooner or later I might have to take the plunge, news on Vista therefor intrests me, if this SP1 is really good, it might hasten the move to Vista and make game companies more inclined to make directx10 only games. Or not, but I want to know when I should start to look into pirating Vista (Pay for MS software? What an odd concept.)


If you have the chance now to start playing with Vista, now would be the time to do so. Even without SP1, with the latest drivers from ATI and NVidia June/Sept07 & Newer, Vista is clocking framerates above XP on 99% of the systems out there.

The margin of FPS increase with Vista also grows if you LEAVE AERO/GLASS on and are running games inside a Window, or you run more than one game at a time (i.e. two MMO accounts/games).

Remember the brutal reviews of gaming on Vista was in the Jan07/Feb07 timeline when ATI and NVidia admits their drivers still sucked being complete rewrites, and even then on average Vista was only clocking 10-20% behind XP, which was like 5-10FPS in high FPS games. (The poor quality of Video drivers from ATI and NVidia also is the area that POed MS the most, as NVidia and ATI had plenty of time and access to MS resources to ensure the drivers would be top notch, and instead NVidia and ATI went alone in the final development.)

The video subsystem in Vista (despite all the DX10 info) has the potential to run circles around XP and other OSes, as it can not only meet XP draw to screen and render performance, it can suck RAM from the system and virtualize it for GPU operations, and Vista also does pre-emptive scheduling of the GPU, so when multiple games/applications are asking for use of the GPU, the OS manages this without application level yeilding/cooperation. So not only can you run Games in the Aero 3D view (dual 3D apps), but you can also run multiple 3D applications at the same time with minimal frame loss in each application as Vista is multi-tasking them to the GPU smoothly and keeping them from being VRAM starved. Even in a single 3D application/game, the Vista model of multi-scheduling the GPU can improve performance if the game isn't well optimized and shoves the GPU too hard to render crap and starves other parts of the game. Vista tries to step in to ensure that all calls are being processed more equally if it will improve game performance.

As for DirectX10, you will NOT see any great Frame Rates in DX10 games until a game is truly DX10 only. As the DX10 games now that are on the market are DX9 games with DX10 textures and some shadow and lighting added to them, and also try to push up the density of graphics, destroying the FPS gains of DX10.

A solid DX10 dedicated engine with NO DX9 underpinnings has a significant margin of performance gain as well as onscreen quality and consistency between GPU models/vendors. Look at XBox 360 dedicated games that are using the XNA and jumping off from a solid DX10 level engine, they blow cross platform games away in terms of FPS and quality.

The same is true of DX10 in Vista, and having a hybrind DX9/DX10 engine/game makes for a great DX9 game, and can give you some DX10 tastes and visuals, but is nothing like a sole DX10 game. DX10 unlike DX9 doesn't build off the previous versions of DirectX, so where you see 8.1/9.0 DX games that run well in both contexts, this is counterintuitive to building a real DX10 game. Sadly the game companies are looking at the market and the FUD about Vista, and are scared that games will be afraid of a DX10 only game project that requires Vista.

(PS And DX10 does truly require Vista, as the games expect the OS to manage VRAM virtualization, pre-empting the GPU - especially when using the GPU for both physics and visuals, and with the DX10 libraries on XP, these things don't exist, and the game will starve itself expecting the OS/Vista to handle these DX10 aspects. (There are many other aspects like this, but the VRAM virtualization and the pre-emptive GPU scheduler in Vista are the

Re:Waiting for SP1 before implementation?

[gollito]

With XP still chugging along merrily (with better stability and lower HW expense/requirements) I really don't see the value for any but the smallest organization.
That is a huge misconception about Vista. The thing that requires the beefy HW is Aero with all it's fancy stuff. Turn it off, and the hardware resources are minimal. I had it running on my Latitude X300 and it ran just fine. The system always felt responsive and peppy. Features to love about Vista include: Firewall profiles, quick standby times (and more important coming out of standby EVERYTIME), great power management, quick search in the start menu (one button hot key to bring up search window (AKA the Windows button)), etc.
Sure it has its quirks but in my experience the good far out weighs the bad.

Re:I really wonder, whats with all the reboots?

[Motion Marvel]

Actually, you can remove the Quicktime and iTunes applications but you can't remove the Quicktime framework because Aqua depends on the quicktime framework