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Gaming On Windows 7
Jason Wilson writes "Windows 7 comes out Oct. 22, and many gamers are wondering whether it will be a boon for gaming, as Microsoft promised Vista would, or a disappointment (like Vista was at its launch). Former ExtremeTech editor Jason Cross, who's covered games and tech for 13 years, discusses the pluses and minuses of Windows 7 for gamers — how it differs from Vista, if it'll run older games, and the benefits of 64-bit computing. 'Windows 7 basically takes the Vista codebase and rewrites, refines, optimizes, and overhauls most of the internal stuff without making dramatic changes to the driver stacks that Vista did over WinXP. The changes to the fundamental driver models are small and mostly serve to improve performance. Plus, the hardware makers — especially the graphics guys — are on top of the changes this time around. Nvidia and ATI have been shipping quite good Win7 graphics drivers for months now.'"
I have Windows 7 RC installed, and I was very surprised to see every game I had installed, still worked flawlessly.
Even Starcraft, which is very aged game, worked just fine.
At the same time, I have only found 1 application that didn't work, and I couldn't get to work even with XP compat, admin rights or any other tweak.
So that's quite good imo.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
First, it is August 6th/7th for some of us. Only people without MSDN etc. wait till October ;)
Second, "it just works". Pretty well acutally ;) I like it a lot more than Vista. Using RC1 right now in the important systems already ;)
I installed the Windows 7 RC pretty much straight off, I didn't jump on the Vista bandwagon, I stuck with XP for a few reasons.
1) Cost
2) Gaming Performance
3) I had no need for DX10
Anyways, What I found in 7 was that gaming performance in about 70-80% of my games had improved, even on very early drivers.
Crysis was up by on average 30fps
Source games had an improvement of about 15fps
Unreal Engine games had little improvement, about 2-3fps
So far I'm very impressed with 7.
Diablo3 and Starcraft2 will probably be the last two major PC game titles. Everyone else has already moved on to consoles, so it really doesn't matter if Windows 7 has better gaming performance unless it can directly play xbox games.
Microsoft worked very hard to kill off the PC as a gaming platform. It was clearly a strategic decision; they wanted people to use the xbox instead of the PC. By now we've lost an entire hardware generation of PC games because DX10 was Vista-only, and the studios knew that very few people would use Vista for gaming, so nearly all switched to console games or went under. I doubt many studios are going to risk releasing a new game for Windows 7, even if it's the bee's knees.
Consoles cost less than PCs. Consoles don't have varying technical specs like PCs. Consoles have DRM and make it easier to sell downloadable content. Etc. Etc.
In Windows 7, games play you.
Until you have the hardware to run DX10 in full details (i7 CPU) what is the point in having a DX10 OS?
I still have problems with my overclocked dual core at 3.3Ghz to run all the DX9 games at full details at 60FPS.
And XP is usually faster for DX9 games then Vista or Win7 is.
So, until I can get an overclocked i7 at 4.0Ghz I'll stick to DX9 and WinXP. Since why overclock to gain FPS and lose them with Vista / Win7?
This is for games, so please M$ lovers don't bash me. And no I don't play games below 50FPS, this is why GTA 4 is waiting for a new system.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
---
3D Shooter GamesFeed @ Feed Distiller
"Or at least, Windows 7 should be roughly comparable upon launch this fall to where Vista is today, not where Vista was during its first year. We won't know for sure until we can test a whole bunch of old games on the actual final code release of Win7."
How can you discuss the plusses and minus based on pure speculation and still expect to produce an informative article? Nothing to see here IMO, I'll do my own speculations.
And if the overal conclusion is that Windows7 is as fast as Vista I'll stick to XP to play games. Or my PS3 which I personally consider a better platform for gaming.
As an IT prof now for many years I felt it was my obligation to be one of the first on Vista. To stay on top of the current trends.
Well needless to say. Vista was an absolutely miserable failure on every front. It was advertised as being able to run on machines it point blank couldn't. I couldn't run it on top end XP machines because the drivers simply didn't exist. The user experience was an absolute nightmare, I still have nightmares with UAC pop-ups in them. The x64 version was worse than the 32 bit, it should have been better than... Last but not least the Ultimate Edition was the ultimate rip off.
I'm not going through that again. I see lots of hype around Win 7. I saw it with Vista as well. I see a truck load of promises. Saw them back then too. I just can't believe all the hype. What's the phrase. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." or something to that effect.
For me to use win 7 with in a year of launch will be extremely unlikely. I just can't see a compelling reason why I need too. Even gaming. There will not be a decent game out that will not be compatible with prior OS for well over a year. For me to need to use win 7 in the office is even more unlikely. The odds of me recommending Windows anything for the Enterprise is ZERO.
The burn that VISTA left with me is tragic. I'm sorry MS but there are a lot of people in my shoes that feel the same way.
Only a handful of (horrible) anti-virus packages cause any measurable slowdown these days. Not to mention that if you have a somewhat functional brain, you don't really need one.
I can't remember any time my anti-virus has detected something I didn't already know was there and had no intention of doing anything with but delete already. Since AV is free though, I don't see a reason not to run one.
The piece still left me somewhat queasy. Especially the bit that said "if you have hardware older than 4 years, just spend $800 and you're good again" is real slick, of course. Yes, that way windows 7 will have no performance problems, no sweat.
So one cannot play BF 2 or 2142 for more than a few seconds before being booted. Hopefully with the RTM out they'll update it now.
I've been using Win 7 RC1 for about 2 months and I have a wide variety of games installed. All of them perform better than when I was using them on Vista. I can confirm that all the major MMO's and FPS games from the past 6 yrs work fine without any issues and most if not all of them have performance gains :D
Translation: as opposed to last time, when our beloved DRM overlords were firmly in control.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
I'm an avid gamer... and my tastes are all over the place. The only issue I've had in ANY game in the following list was with World of Warcraft, and only during the loading of your character after the character selection screen. If in windowed mode, you go do something else then come back... it will crash wow. Otherwise, once it loads completely it's fine. (10-15second window).
World of Warcraft
Starcraft
Left 4 Dead
Half Life 2 (And all the mods: Zombie Panic, Team Fortress 2, Action Halflife 2... etc)
Quake 3
Doom 3
OpenArena
NeverWinter Nights (all expansions)
NeverWinter Nights 2
UT2003
UT3
Crysis
Battlefield 2
etc etc etc
Not a single error. Not a single problem with Windows 7. The only thing I can wonder about is the resources needed. I run a beef machine... GTX 275, quad core proc, 4gb ram... while not an elite gaming rig... it's pretty nice. I experience no lag, no latency... in any game, at least not due to what I would deem as a Windows 7 issue. The effects are not noticeable.
XP, while great, loads in less time, but seemed to crash more frequently with newer games. Most of the NVIDIA drivers I've used have been great.
The only complain I have about Windows 7 is how it buggers out my network when I do a fresh boot or a restart. I have to disable the network card and reenable it (5 second process) and everything is fine. Repeated motherboard driver updates and network card updates have had no change. Oddly enough... on a fresh install of Windows 7 Beta... it doesn't do this. Only after about a month. Could be hardware on my side but /shrug.
Games that I have played on Win7 RC:
Team Fortress 2
Left 4 Dead
(Other Valve Games)
Age of Conan
Empire: Total War
Medieval 2: Total War
Oblivion
Aion
Oblivion had some problems after one patch and I had to end up blowing the settings information out of the user profile to get it running again. Aside from that, it's been good to me.
Also worth noting, the hibernation seems to not like my old Nostromo n52, it makes my computer hard reboot. I haven't gone through much troubleshooting on it though.
Being infected with a virus has very little to do with security. Currently, on any platform it is impossible to know in advance conclusively whether a bunch of executable bits are going to cause harm.
When moving from 98 to XP/2K, the perfect time to nudge people to a non-admin by default setup, as was the case on NT, MS made some really retarded decisions (probably motivated by marketing than engineering) and thereby explicitly legitimized software that expected users to run as Admins even though it didn't really need any admin specific rights. Eventually with vista they had to swallow the bitter pill (along with changes to the driver model and other fun stuff which drove users mad).
Lastly, I wish MS didn't constantly patch their OS to be compatible with buggy s/w, something the Linux dev. community has rightly chosen not to do. (Although would be nice to have a standardized driver interface :P)
If "It works as well as XP" is a selling point, why not continue to use XP?
Because Microsoft can tell you when you must stop using XP. Something not given to them via copyright.
As long as they did away with the hand-holding that was pervasive in Vista, im sure Win7 will be much better.
The problem with Vista was all of the BLOAT and EYE CANDY. Having to click through a bunch of selection menus in Vista just to do what took 1-2 clicks in XP was, and still is, ridiculous.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I upgraded to the Win7 RC after some faulty RAM trashed my registry and rendered my Vista install deceased.
I moved from 32-bit Vista to a downloaded copy of 64-Bit "7" and expected torture.
Instead, it's really rather nice. Many of my favourite apps have native 64-bit versions, the 64-bit drivers all seem to work without hitches, much of my hardware just has bundled drivers or drivers from Windows Update. My wife likes the pretty UK-themed wallpapers. It feels snappier and lighter than Vista.
Even so ; you can tell what you use an OS for by how much is installed on it. My "7" partition just has games. It doesn't even have my favourite text editor.
All the work (mostly Java these days) is now on my Ubuntu install. The "7" RC will expire some time next year, and when it does, I will be highly tempted to just cast away childish things (or move entirely to consoles), and just trash the Windows partition. I get enough Windows at work :-)
You're not stuck with that 2GB-maximum 32-bit [...]
Yeah, this guy is clearly in a position to advise about the benefits of Windows 7 to gaming.. He must be a hardcore gamer/IT genius to know that 2GB is the 32-bit upper limit on memory
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
I thought the RAM limit for 32-bit was 4GB, not including shared video memory. The guy being interview keeps claiming the 32-bit limit is 2GB. Which is right?
On a side note, I haven't had many experiences where 4GB wasn't enough, or even 3 or sometimes 2. It seems that VRAM is the most important factor for a thing like Crysis, which is all that I can think would use that much RAM (besides CAD apps).
And that matters for games... why?
First of all, if file access is really that important for whatever game you're playing, just get a WD VelociRaptor HDD. It will do you more good than any OS optimization. It won't even cost more than buying a new version of Windows.
But really from what I notice, it only helped my system with the load times of levels. It doesn't seem to do anything at all for the FPS or latency, you know, the things that actually matter for whether you get headshot before you headshot the other guy.
Memory management, I suppose it could matter, except again I'm not sure how much it helps in games.
Processor scheduling, well, I guess games could become sensitive to that in some future, but right now they're still mostly a single-threaded affair. Well, ok, so some spawn 1 to 3 more threads for other stuff lately, but it's still not quite the thing where clever scheduling matters that much. It's not like any game has to juggle thousands of threads and shaving a nanosecond on context switches matters.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If you are worried about gaming then you should buy a Mac....oh wait, nevermind.
i only used the dual monitor support since ubuntu since 8.10
ive used it on a laptop that docks when im in the office. if the computer is turned on using the power switch in the dock then it remembers to only use the external monitor, but i still might have to resort the icons on the desktop because the external monitor is higher resolution that the laptop.
but if its already booted and is say suspended and then i dock it then it generally easier to relogin, or open ubuntu's display config and reselect my desired configuration. but its far from a PITA, and supports all the configurations ive heard of, together with 3d, including things like rotating one screen. and i think the required ubuntu config panel is easy to find under System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution. it is well designed and shows a representation of each detected monitor which can be dragged to changed the logical relative position of each monitor from each other, and all the required options including detecting changes (which is typically automatic and unnecessary) without being cluttered.
i cant compare it with vista but its better than xp in my experience.
I've been gaming on Windows 7 for months. No problems at all.
So far, I've really had nothing to complain about, the new UI aside. I was pretty pissed that there was no classic theme.
I'm still pissed about Vista not having the XP style. That one was much nicer.
I miss the Windows 2000 style!!! I always turned XP to Win2K style, and got a nice performance boost because of it. I also HATE, absolutely HATE not being able to see all my programs / start menu by default. I do NOT want Windows to organize it, I want to organize it myself.
File searching still sucks, XP/2K did this way better, and faster, ironically, than the indexed searches in Vista/Win7.
The only thing I do like is the ability to search for a start menu item (which, sadly I need to do now... ) and find it quickly. But the 'smart menu' system makes me 'forget' about programs since they get hidden. Aggravating!
I sent in several bugfix/feature requests about this during the beta... everyone I know at work (IT Dept) hates the vista file browser and searching, we are always VM'ing or RDP'ing to XP boxes just to execute searches. How sad is that? I can honestly say I don't mind that stupid search dog anymore... lol. well.. ok, I just hate him less than vista/win7 file browser and searching.
"Windows XP is old enough that running it is sort of a security risk" -- so have MS suddenly stopped releasing hotfixes for XP in favour of Vista? I don't think so.
I'm going to get Win 7, but it's pretty outrageous to imply that XP SP3 will be less secure than Windows 7, especially when the causes of most exploits are running as admin and outdated/unpatched software.
I've been running Win7 exclusively (64-bit on Desktop and Laptop) and have had only two problems with any game I have tried to play:
One was Neverwinter Nights 2, where there is a known work-around [There's a problem with DirectX not properly detecting video cards - fixed by a dll replacement]
Two was with Tom Clancy's HAWX, wherein I'll launch the game, select my character, and the game will crash. I am working with Ubisoft currently to find a resolution [we are currently both stumped]
Win7 even properly runs my old favorites such as Wing Commander 3, Wing Commander 4, Warcraft 2, Starcraft, gods I don't think I've had any game (besides the previously mentioned 2) NOT work. And I have a lot of games.
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
As opposed to every Iphone Slashvertisement we get every few days?
Does someone really need windows 7? If yes, for what is it good for? Btw. for gaming, windows xp is enough! For working you could try linux.
This bit gave me the worst gut reaction from the article:
Bitmob: At this point, can you recommend Windows 7 as a gaming platform?
JC: I'd almost insist on it. Windows XP is old enough that running it is sort of a security risk
... a security risk? That really sounds to me like the "Fear" in FUD. Or is there something about security I'm overlooking due to anti-MS bias, of which I am sometimes guilty?
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
yeah right, they were for vista and then the sound guys got stuffedd with major api changes from the final Vista RC to the RTM versions.
I've believe it when i see it..
Mod Parent Down, -1 Overuse of Emoticons
...for those who know far more than I do about kernels, virtual devices, etc.:
I saw this comment about running "old" (ie DOS, Win95, etc) games in Win7
"...If you just have to play one, I suggest making a small dual-boot partition or keeping an old computer around..."
Seriously?
Considering the exponential increase in processor and memory speed/size over the last 10 years, it's astonishing to me that Win7 couldn't just spawn a child window that would, as far as that program is concerned, be a complete 286/386 machine along with a "massive"4 megs of RAM (which could simulate extended/expanded memory as needed)? I know DOS programs had the occasionally bad habit of either running off system clock ticks (which makes them scream crazily along with a modern processor) or writing directly to devices (something Win doesn't like at all), but it still seems like it would possible to cordon off a program's operations so that - as far as the program is concerned - clock speeds are whatever you want them to be, and it THINKS its writing directly to devices when in fact they're being passed out to Win DLLs?
I mean, it even seems like it could be as simple for the user as to be GUI'd - run the "spawn virtual machine" app, select the processor speed, the former version of Win/DOS that would be running, the amount of RAM it can use, and "go". Anything that goes on in that window is entirely segregated from the rest of the system. Heck, I can see a lot of reasons that might be a handy thing to have.
Or is this just exposing my ignorance?
-Styopa
Keyboards and specialized mice.
I can access WAY more controls via my keyboard/nostromo and my multi-button gaming mouse. This allows me to be more effective at the games I am playing. Anyone who has played a FPS on a console vs PC will know exactly what I mean. It is not even close.
There will always be a place for PC gaming because of this fact.
Using RC1 right now in the important systems already ;)
Hope they're not too important. Any new operating system is hardly stable/secure in its infancy. The fun thing about using some other ones I could mention right off the bat is that you might actually be able to fix some of the problems yourself for the community...
Long live the BSD license
I've been running the RC as my primary OS since it came out. No problems with my games. In fact, some of them run even BETTER. And of course, now my dual DX10.1 videocards can now show off what they can do, unlike when I was running XP x64.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Mod Parent Down, -1 Overuse of Emoticons
Maybe he just has a facial tic?
Windows 7 is fine. Games work fine. I've been using it since the beta and now the RC.
Enough with the pessimism. We have plenty with the reporters on the economy. It doesn't matter if things are going well, someone always has to be negative.
If you want to complain about win7 gaming, get a console and throw away your computer. At least like that I won't have to worry about you wasting my bandwidth downloading episodes of south park.
Pfft
Somehow they added bloat and removed features. I don't know how you can pull that off!
Particularly, MS removed gameport (MIDI) support in Vista. I can understand them assuming that newer joysticks are USB, but it's a completely ridiculous decision if you consider the requirements of musicians, since MIDI is the industry standard and it's not going away.
I learned this to my dismay when I agreed to help someone set up their very nice (music) keyboard with a new computer that had Vista preloaded. I kind-of-sort-of got it working, but this involved using some very sketchy drivers that started causing bluescreens. In the end I gave up, moved a different computer that had had XP Pro preloaded on it into its place, and set up the keyboard with that.
Why not Linux? Because outside of music this is a rather nontechnical user. And all of his music software ran on Windows. I was not about to tell him to switch from the tools he liked to Rosegarden, etc.
I will be surprised if these features have been restored in Win7.
I vaguely remember trying to set up some networking stuff on Vista that it turned out you couldn't do in the 'Home Premium' version that you could do in XP Pro. So on the whole Vista is a serious "value-subtract" for me. The new stuff it can do -- look like a Fischer-Price toy -- I don't care about, and the amount of stuff it can't do has been increased.
"quite good"! You've got be kidding. Shouldn't the drivers be rock solid golden? Isn't this how the whole Vista mess started with "quite good" drivers. I don't hate Microsoft, but it's painful watching them shoot themselves in the foot time and time again.
My UID is prime!
"So far I'm very impressed with 7." - by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24, @05:17AM (#28804849)
It's nice to hear that Windows 7 does a good job in further optimizing the DirectX based display mgt. subsystem (especially considering it's now in usermode/Ring3/RPL 3 levels of operation now, totally, as it was back in Windows NT 3.x-3.51 (which DID create a "performance hit", bigtime, & was part of the reason MS moved the User32 + GDI subsystems out of kernelmode/Ring 0/RPL 0 operations, & introduced DirectX to NT-based Windows OS's))
However - per my subject-line above?
WHAT IS "THE DEAL" WITH OPENGL CODED GAMES NOW ON WINDOWS 7?
See, I'd like to see Windows 7 be the BEST MS Windows NT-based OS there is, bar none... mainly because it's the most used on the most used hardware platform there is from home user pc's up thru mission critical enterprise class server systems, & has kept me employable for 16++ yrs. in this field (mostly this, other platforms too of course) & I'd like to see it continue to do so, on ALL levels.
Fact is, on that very note?
WELL - I took a LOT of 'slack' here recently, in pointing out some things going on in VISTA/Server 2008, & yes, Windows 7 that bothered me (as regards the new WFP & HOSTS files hassles in VISTA/Server 2008/Windows 7) &, here on this website, here:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1300193&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=28672163
As well as other spots where I noted it on this site's forums (most times, my points were "modded up" though, & those EXACT ones, on WFP & HOSTS, however they were modded up elsewhere, & not in that URL above though)...
That's ok, even the trolling & down modding, often with NO visible detractor replying with facts that disproved the ones I used... it's ok, as long as it reaches the RIGHT ears (Microsoft's) in regards to the points I made there, to either prove me wrong with cold, hard facts, OR to fix it on those points (HOSTS & possibly WFP)... I do this, because NOW is the time to voice any doubts &/or objections to what goes into Windows 7, before it goes "final release" to the public.
(Simply because I'd like to see this be "The Windows" a person "wants & NEEDS", over other previous versions, & those were some 'sticking points' imo, from my perspective @ least, in terms of security AND PERFORMANCE - so, I don't mind getting 'busted on', that badly, as long as this version of Windows does well (because when it does well, I DO WELL)).
APK
P.S.=> The reason I ask, is simple: Many games I possess are of OpenGL nature (IDSoftware being my favs thru their Wolfenstein, Doom, & Quake series of games, & in myself even possessing "ports" of the original DOOM I/II, Wolf 3D, & Quake I games into OpenGL vs. bitmaps + sprite animations blasted thru the vidcard framebuffers as their original code did)... I ask, because I don't use VISTA here @ home is why, but have a pal who does, & he could not even install Doom III or Quake 4 on VISTA (let alone play it)...
Thanks for the information in reply, on OpenGL games on Windows 7, people! apk
On Windows unless you're on the primary monitor you can't run games, view videos, or do much really.. open a browser maybe?
Wrong. Some games give trouble on a second monitor, but generally you can do anything on a second monitor that you can on the first.
Just made sure on a fully patched XP SP3 with a dual head ATI.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I haven't tried this myself, but I heard you can fix this issue by using pbsetup and refreshing your punkbuster definitions that way.
http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=pbsetup.php
The EA UK Battlefields forums are pretty good and DICE's devs pop in their quite frequently. This thread contains some good info about resolving the Win 7/Punkbuster issue.
http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-2/598895-windows-7-bf2.html
I could have written that article and saved you all some trouble.
Instead I'll debunk some of his bullshit.]
Bullshit.
First, no game as benefited from this branding. If anything it has made the 6 games it has much harder to play. Your saves are tied to your live account. Any DLC you want to get is also deadlocked into the G4W live marketplace. Can't get them anywhere else. Why is this bad? If you're like me, the G4W Live client seems to be an afterthought. I bought my add-ons for Fallout 3 and then coudldn't download them due to some cryptic error message. It took no fewer than 13 calls to Microsoft before I got the right department and even then they had no clue what the G4W Live client was. The calls couldn't resolve the issue, only time did. I would label G4W Live as an abysmal failure that only hinders the title rather than boosting it.
If you're coming from XP as most gamers are, it is. The most annoying thing about it from a gamer's point of view is the handling of the audio system. Other than that, it's quite amazing. Speed is much better than XP. The ability to pop in an 8GB thumb drive and create a readyboost cache is quite amazing also. Do games run better or faster? No, but the OS does and that in-turn makes the games experience better.
Windows 7 has compatibility options for every MS OS from windows 95 through windows vista sp2. You probably won't need to use compatibility much if ever though. Some really old games run great in the windows 7 vdm. As for some more recent games, Arma 2 has severe performance issues with windows 7.
Ugh, fact checking? 32-bit has a 4GB memory limit, not 2GB. With your video ram, it sometimes came out to be 3GB or a little more.
Windows XP is less of a security risk than Windows 7 at this point. The bugs are mostly ironed out and the security suites all run on XP natively. Windows 7 still hasn't undergone much scrutiny for bugs and most security suites don't run properly on the OS. It's more of a real security risk than XP at this point.
They're using their grammar skills there.
why i should pay for software that decided when and how i could use it? not for me peeps
why slashdot is sooo slow????
"Nvidia and ATI have been shipping quite good Win7 graphics drivers for months now" Lies. ATI refuses to release a Windows 7 driver for my X1950 Pro card, while Nvidia has a driver out for their even more ancient Geforce 6600 GT card. I know who I'm never buying from again.
And even for those:
A) a faster hard drive will do you more good than a new OS
B) more free RAM will do you more good than a new OS
Loading Vista or Windows 7 on a 1GB machine is pretty much self-defeating, for example. No matter how much it optimizes file management, as long as the HDD still does have a very slow seek time, the less free RAM will cause more loading and unloading, and make it run slower.
And in that vein, if the user can't close other apps... a more bloated OS will only make it worse.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The real problem with Vista was that people were taking functional XP boxes and crippling them. Many times the home user wouldn't recognize the upgrade would be risky and end up with peripherals, which are major features on all PCs, being useless or require aggressive tinkering with settings and drivers to get them back to what they had with XP. It was this giant unknown risk that really hosed adoption of Vista for many. Someone would ask me "Should I upgrade to Vista?" where the only safe answer would be "I'd wait" because I didn't want to get into a protracted support trying to get them to gather all of the updated, Vista versions of their old drivers on disk. This "unknown upgrade stability" was the thing that really hurt Vista where it appears to be fairly well addressed in Windows 7. So far there I haven't run into a combination of hardware that flaked out stopped working post upgrade but there is an occasional piece of software that complains which requires a little tinkering to get working correctly. This is much improved over Vista for sure where the option to return functionality was to go back to XP.
Windows 2000 (aka Windows Classic) style is present in both Vista and Win7.
First, it is August 6th/7th for some of us. Only people without MSDN etc. wait till October ;)
Second, "it just works". Pretty well acutally ;) I like it a lot more than Vista. Using RC1 right now in the important systems already ;)
Can you stop winking at me please? :(
Speed? That's the best argument to run Aero Glass. It offloads compositing from the CPU to the GPU, improving performance for apps.
Easy test to try with Glass On/Off. Open up Task mangager.
Open up a nice big JPEG image or something.
Grab the window and shake it like crazy. Watch your CPU meters
With Glass off, you can peg a whole core trying to render all that motion. But with Glass on, the GPU's doing the work and your CPU load hardly goes up.
Windows 7 improves this over Vista, as it pushes GDI-style 2D rendering to the GPU as well, and adds hardware YUV overlay support back.
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/04/25/engineering-windows-7-for-graphics-performance.aspx
My video compression blog
I use Windows exclusively for gaming. Frankly console gaming for me is niche with only a few titles I enjoy on it. Some games are certainly better on console, most are comparable or better on PC. More control, mouse is a better rapid inputdev than a controller etc. Especially as a sporadic MMOG player, I'd hate that on a console.
Anyway, I've had 4g of ram but XP is 32bit so I lose some of that. My video card is 1024m as well, so a 64bit OS would unlock some resources. I didn't bother with Vista because the OS itself would consume all those additional resources and more ;)
I just get worried about all the DRM kludge and backdoors they probably have jammed into w7.
If anyone of you have a large collection of music and video's, and use windows 7 with WMP, you will notice how the system still hangs itself outright when it indexes time after time after time.......... i know, maybe i have a good lot of media stuff, but still the OS is not aware of say a MPC i have open watching a movie. So yes, it will start indexing again, and make the movie stutter. The thing that i could track it to, was that wmpnetwork part, was indexing all my stuff to be searchable for my nonexistant networked pc's who allso supposedly would be playing from my pc. So i am now in a lucky position, that MS have made WMP uninstallable, now that its gone, i am really liking the OS okay. But i could imagine they should fix the issue with the system not recognizing a video bieng played by another program, be course it sucks as it is.
Apart from the odd game like The Sims that caters to casual gamers or the biggest of MMOs like WoW, PC gaming really is dead
Did you mean "PC gaming really is dead" or "major label gaming on the PC is dead"? What platform do you see as most suitable for independent games?
As someone that has always owned a reasonable PC for other reasons that "console are cheaper" has never worked out that way for me.
Do you own one "reasonable PC for other reasons" or four? My relatives' children often visit me, and I would rather buy one Wii + TV + controllers than three more PCs to make a LAN for them to play on.
from what I've seen a given PC game is cheaper than the console equivalent more often than the other way around
Apart from a few older games by Blizzard, I don't know of any major label PC games that let a single copy of a PC game legitimately run an entire LAN party. Wii games, which tend to support four players per console, also tend to run cheaper than 4-packs of PC games.
(especially a while after release)
A used Wii game might run me $30.
in the PC world you can push the boundaries for the benefit of high-sec kit as long as you make sure the game is playable and looks good enough on more common configurations.
The trouble is that major PC game publishers tend to neglect owners of older PCs, while major PlayStation 2 game publishers continue to support a console that has already celebrated its ninth birthday in Japan.
the games most people play are, oddly enough, Flash games. Which require a PC of some kind.
Not anymore. The PS3 and Wii have built in browsers with Flash capability.
How many levels of "Please upgrade your Flash Player" have you completed?
The DirectX APIs [...] control low-level functions, including two-dimensional (2-D) graphics acceleration; support for input devices such as joysticks, keyboards, and mice
Keyboards and mice, plural? I thought DirectX funneled all events from attached keyboards and mice into one virtual device, and an app had to use some obscure Raw Input API to distinguish them.
>It certainly prolongs the MTBRBICWC for Windows
I read that as "mitburbikwik," is that right? I am so behind on the jargon...
[UID-HeinzIntel]
My preferences for OS aside, the recent Q3 profits for MS prove that MS MUST make this work. This isn't just about bug free or gaming rich, nor is it "OMG we will lose the desktop market!". This is about getting back the confidence in MS products and base OS delivery as a software company. For the last few years, the arrogance of having XP everywhere came at a price. That price was Vista and all the marketing crap they put in.
It is good to talk about what Windows 7 has, but remember to list all those crappy marketing features that Vista tied the user to, that Windows 7 doesn't have (or at least not half baked or forced like Vista). How many pirated Windows 7 copies will be European copies and ship without Windows Media or IE?
MS will comply only as far is it will take to gain back their $50 per share, which right now is quite a bit.
"You're modded troll because your random capitalization, bold font, misuse of ellipses, bizarre random punctuation, and misuse of paragraphs make your posts completely unreadable." - by ildon (413912) on Friday July 24, @11:34AM (#28807739)
See subject-line, because I see a rating of "What about OpenGL based games? apk (Score:0)" on my post. It's an honest question I'd like the answer to in regards to OpenGL gaming on Windows 7...
APK
P.S.=> Will someone tell me what the scoop is on OpenGL games like Doom III &/or Quake 4 on Windows 7 is? Thanks... because, once more, a pal of mine has VISTA (I don't use it @ home, & cannot game on the job while using VISTA, so I'd like to know the deal on VISTA/Server 2008 & Windows 7, as far as OpenGL based games not running on them... once more, thanks for your time! apk
n/t
7 runs games slower than Vista.
"What?"
This computer runs both Vista SP2 and the official RC of Windows 7 released by MS a bit ago. Same specs, same basic configuration of both systems. 4GB RAM, an ATi midrange card, quad core AMD.
7 absolutely lags behind Vista in pretty much every single game I've tried on it. At best it runs about the same speed, at worst the games are *noticeably* slower, as in I don't even have to check FPS to see that the games are running much worse. And worse, running a game for a while makes it slow down.
I think people that say 7 is faster than Vista:
* have never actually ran Vista day to day
or
* are comparing a fresh install of 7 to an install of 7 that's been on their system for a while and has contracted the usual "Windows rot" that happens when it's been on for a long time.
I'm saying all this as someone that wanted 7 to be better than Vista; Vista isn't terrible like many make it out to be (SP1 improved it in a big way), but I just don't see 7 being an improvement over Vista; it's really a step back. And for those that say "well, you're using the RC", others that have used the RC claim it's faster so the fact that it's an RC doesn't make any difference here.
Of course, no one will believe me, and I'll be modded down to hell as a troll or worse, so I'll check that Anonymous Coward thing.
But really, have you people actually TRIED 7 and compared against a fresh, clean, updated Vista install?
Do it. You might be surprised and actually agree with me.
Are you serious? File searching was always several orders of magnitude slower than the indexed search in Vista. In XP, I've had the thing open for over an hour looking for a file, whereas with Vista I type the name and get the file almost instantly. I've never had the XP search work usefully for me, and I think I and many people would like to know what you and your coworkers are smoking.
All your base are belong to Wii.
I've ran Win7 since beta. It games fine. That's not the important question.
The important question is what does it offer for gaming that XP doesnt? Really, nothing you need. Maybe if a game ever uses the latest directx, but theres not even a visual difference between that and the previous one so I wouldn't call that a need.
If your desktop is ONLY used for gaming, you can keep running XP and not miss out on anything. Or buy an xbox360.
If your desktop is used for gaming and general desktop use, then yeah. windows 7 will work out fine.
But saying that "console gaming is cheaper than PC gaming in general because of the cost of playing as a group" implies that everyone plays games in the same way and for the same reasons which simply isn't the case.
It is the case in every household with more than one child that I've seen. College dorms might tend toward the LAN model because every student has a PC for another reason, but the K-12 age group usually has to use daddy's PC.
See subject-line above, & by the by: Do YOU possess a PHD in English that gives you some kind of right to critique the writing style of others? No, of course you do not.
APK
P.S.=> After all, & above all else - it's JUST A FORUMS, not legal correspondence, or my "last will & testament", or even a paper for a grade in academia... so, keep your brain deficiencies to yourself, as it might hide your obvious illiteracy on your part... apk
See subject-line above, & your opinion? Is merely that - opinion. Opinion from an unqualified "critic" who has no PHD in English, & yet thinks he "has the right" to critique others' writing. That's the last resort of the 'technically challenged' in this field, and in case you have not noticed??? This is not the "english grammar section" of this website, & that alone, makes YOU, off-topic.
See subject-line above, because you read it, AND UNDERSTOOD IT WELL ENOUGH, far enough down enough as well, to see where there was a complaint for being modded down on off topic premises (such as 'writing style', give us a break - this is NOT "the english grammar section for the mentally damaged dyslexic or ADD/ADHD riddled brains of the world", period).
See subject-line above, & answer that simple question.
You won't answer the question in my subject here, of course, because it WILL show you, for what you are: OFF-TOPIC, period.
(As well as your lack of a PHD in English to your credit (Which MIGHT actually make you worth listening to, on the subject of writing... however, unfortunately for YOU? This is NOT the "english grammar section" of this website, now is it?? Nope...))
"TOO easy"...
APK
P.S.=>
"You're modded troll because your random capitalization, bold font, misuse of ellipses, bizarre random punctuation, and misuse of paragraphs make your posts completely unreadable." - by ildon (413912) on Friday July 24, @11:34AM (#28807739)
Again, once more, the question from my subject-line above: IS THIS THE "ENGLISH GRAMMAR CRITIQUE SECTION OF /."? Answer - NO, it is not... & funny how you read & UNDERSTOOD my post above, yet avoided answering its questions on OpenGL though (lol, "Will wonders NEVER cease?")...
However, it IS apparent that despite your complaints of my writing style, it would appear that you understood my initial post well enough, however ("oddly", NOT), to see my complaint on my being "modded down" for b.s. reasons, period... and, yet you say my writing is bad? You understood it though... care to explain THAT, bullshit artist?
(Give us a break, You off-topic, trolling little loser - you're attempting to use the "oldest troll trick in the book", & it's NOT 'holding up' too well, now is it? Ho, not @ all... period! apk