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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.
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
Pfft. Until there's a decent RPG or flight sim, consoles have nothing for me.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I don't agree. Demand for PC games is still very high, and although they may not be coming out at the same time, PC versions of games are still coming out in decent numbers. There are also plenty of titles that are released exclusively on PC, like Crysis.
Also most hardcore gamers with the will to get the best out of their system use Vista64. There are just so many advantages, like DX10, proper 64bit support, better multi-core support, etc... I use Vista and have appsolutely no problems with it. You just have to set it up correctly, get rid of the stupid theme and animations, and disable things like the UAC and you have a brilliant OS with basically no drawbacks compared to XP (on a recent computer). And I'm not a M$ lover, I use Ubuntu for a lot of my desktop work.
Also, PCs have DRM too, its bloody irritating!
I guess it'll have to join BSD, mice & keyboards, desktop PCs, email and all the other things that we're always been told are dead & buried; to be inevitably replaced by something newer and shinier.
The 360 is hardly a sales giant - its top selling game is Halo 3 at a mere 8 million copies. The Sims 2 expansion packs sell almost that many on their own. The original SMB has sold over 40 million copies. The PS3's top seller clocks in at less than 3.5 million copies.
Interestingly, of the Top 20 highest selling console games ever, Microsoft don't have a single title for the XBox or 360. Sony only have 3 (Gran Tourismo 3, Gran Tourismo & GTA: San Andreas). Every other game is for a Nintendo console or handheld.
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.
PC Gaming is dead?
Not bloody likely when it is a billion dollar industry.
Your statement doesn't bare up to the dollar facts.
I'd take .1 % of that business thank you very much.
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.
UAC is one of the brilliant features to Vista. You should not disable it.... nor should you be running in administrator mode. You, as a linux user, should know better.
RES PUBLICA NON DOMINETUR
UAC only exists because almost everything on a Windows box at some point requires super user powers.
As a UNIX user that is not the case. So yes us UNIX users do know better.
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
UAC in vista sucks, and then vista continues to moan at you if you turn it off. I understand the reasoning behind it, however in vista it's just an annoying pita that won't go away. It's so much better in windows 7, with it's nice "how much of a retarded computer user are you" slider, and the simple fact it doesn't bug you for turning it off.
Not bloody likely when it is a billion dollar industry.
[citation needed]
http://au.gamespot.com/news/6185347.html
And that's only 1 vendor.
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'
Diablo3 and Starcraft2 will probably be the last two major PC game titles.
I'm guessing the people at Valve and a number other studios that we could mention would disagree with you there.
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.
I don't think MS wants to kill of Windows gaming really. Many game makers would like to, because it is easier to manage their rights at the expense of the users on consoles. I'd say MS's position with the xbox family is more making sure they get a share of the console market pie rather than wanting to push people that way themselves.
What is the difference to MS between me having bought bioshock for the PC and Karl having bough it for the xbox? In both cases MS have had money from the user directly (a windows license or the console) and from the game producer (in terms of SDK/support sales and licenses to use relevant logos on packaging), and in both cases none of that income is going to Sony or Nintendo.
Consoles cost less than PCs.
As someone that has always owned a reasonable PC for other reasons that "console are cheaper" has never worked out that way for me. Paying an extra 50 quid for a better graphics card than I'd otherwise have is cheaper than plumping down 200+ for a console and from what I've seen a given PC game is cheaper than the console equivalent more often than the other way around (especially a while after release). OK, so that extra for the graphics card is not a one off as I'll probably upgrade my 18ish month old 3850 at some point in the next year but buying a console isn't a one-of either given how many new controllers and other add-ons I've seen my cousins nag their mum into buying because some games aren't as good (or just plain don't work) with the standard ones.
Consoles don't have varying technical specs like PCs. Consoles have DRM and make it easier to sell downloadable content. Etc. Etc.
Those points I can agree with and they can make console much more attractive to game developers, but in an ideal world these shouldn't be my problem as an end-user. Of course the variation of PC hardware can be an advantage - if you make a game for a fixed spec (i.e. a console) there is a limit to how far you can push things, but 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.
Everyone else has already moved on to consoles
Translation : I bought a Xbox 360 when it came out and since then I never play PC games anymore, which gives me the feeling that the whole world has done the same as I have.
Here's a hint : PC gaming has over the last 15 years been given about as many death knells as Apple.
You just got troll'd!
I have a computer magazine (Svenska Hemdatornytt) from April 1988 here that says the same thing (Amiga, Atari, PC and C64 will soon be dead as gaming platforms! Everybody will focus on Nintendo and Sega in the near future!). And I've been reading the same stuff over and over again for the past 20 years.
As long as people use "PC's", there will be a huge market for games, and there will be new (major) games for them, no matter how much more convenient it is to develop for some console.
"Diablo3 and Starcraft2 will probably be the last two major PC game titles."
Your post shows your complete ignorance of the recent releases for the PC, like Empire total war and Street fighter 4 and other games
Lets not also forget PC's still have RTS and FPS genres licked in case you weren't paying attention, Battle field 1943, team fortress 2, left 4 dead, these are hardly "console only", and these are all fairly recent releases.
I really wish the "PC gaming is dead" crew would get a life, everyone has been saying PC gaming is dead and games still keep being released for the PC forever now.
The fact that Diablo 3 and starcraft 2 are being made is proof positive that it isn't dead, the truth is game developers who couldn't produce good games moved to consoles because they simply lost their mojo and couldn't control development costs. Also console players tend to be easier to please and also generally more stupid on average, you're also selling to mom + pop crowd who will buy any shit in a box for little johnny.
Every point you have made was made 10 years ago with the advent of the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox.
In case you weren't paying attention, Resident Evil 5 is coming to PC and also Street fighter 4 was released for the PC and it's heads and shoulders above the console versions, so much so I've bought a copy.
Enterprising Companies like Capcom will come into fill the PC void because they know there is money to be made by the vacuum left behind.
Only an idiot would write off the PC game market, those who say PC gaming is dead haven't been paying attention at all, or are not really into gaming that much at all. There are plenty of games on the PC.
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.
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);
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.
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.
almost everything on a Windows box at some point requires super user powers
It should just be Installing software and tinkering with certain OS settings.
In fact, about the same class of things that prompts gksudo or similar to pop up on Linux.
The main difference is that UAC just allows you to push the button and assumes that you are the user who logged in originally. Linux takes the harder route and asks for your password.
So ; they both do the same thing, only on Linux it's a bit more secure/tedious.
The problem with UAC is largely because sloppy programmers got used to both themselves and home users running with administrative rights by default, so instead of keeping their stuff to the user profile and user documents folder, they do stupid things like writing config files to the same folder the program is installed in, editing the system hive of the registry (when they should just use the user hive), etc. It's very tedious to develop software as a non-admin user on XP, so most Windows programmers are in the Administrators group, and thus things like this slip through the net rather easily.
Because Linux programmers don't habitually run as root, they don't tend to do this as much. So you'll see fewer (but more annoying) prompts for elevation on Linux.
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?
It works as well as XP for old stuff. It works better than XP for new stuff supporting DirectX 10/11.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
Oh? So when will we be seeing World of Warcraft, or.. well, any other MMO on consoles? Or any other good RTSes?
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..
I can give you some real data to back that up:
According to Bitkom (the German organization for IT, telecoms and new media), 73 percent of online games are played trough the browser (e.g. Flash games). And the most used gaming device by far, is the PC.
So that whole "PC gaming is dead" thing, is just a "monkey see, monkey do" parroting problem. A tiny group of uninformed but loud people said it first, and a ton of parrots repeat it over and over. Hmm... it does remind me of the 40s. :P
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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
Umm... World of Warcraft, anyone? There are many types of games for which the PC is simply a superior interface, and it allows much more user control over the games than consoles do. There is a non-trivial population of "modders" and such that love being able to add and modify content in their games. You just can't really do that with consoles. Yes, consoles are where the mass of the market is, but you're saying "SUV's are dead, everyone is driving smaller cars now!". Most people do drive smaller cars, but many people find use for and own SUV's still.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
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?
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!
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
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.
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
Well the Amiga, Atari and C64 are all dead as gaming platforms. It probably has something to do with the PC, and wide ranging adoption of a single standard among other things. I remember the last Amiga system that rolled out, and it was a glorified PC with a few extra bells.
Om, nomnomnom...
Most companies didn't "switch to" console gaming, they added it as an additional platform because the tools have become mature enough to make this easy (especially if your game was already in Direct3D) and doing so increased their potential market, and therefore potential profit margin.
Just because TF2 and Fallout3 are on consoles in addition to PC doesn't make the PC platform dead.
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.
The funny thing is, Blizzard got it's start as a console developer named "Silicon and Synapse". I wonder what in their mindset changed that they don't do console games anymore. They don't even encourage ports! IIRC the last Blizzard console gamew that I'm aware of were the PSone ports of Diablo and Warcraft 2 and the N64 port of Starcraft. They never got around to porting or allowing someone to port Diablo 2. Of course, Diablo 2 isn't as pretty as all those Snowblind engine based Diablo clones are on the PS2 that came out just after.
You did know that C&C: Red Alert 3 IS a console game, as is the original C&C and Red Alert.
That depends if the consoles use cheap parts that break from POS(Point of Sale) to 1 year after warranty. I stopped buying xbox 360 games until I bought a new system because the original ate the disks. I have yet to replace my PS3 because I'm still debating to either replace the blu-ray drive myself, through a 3rd party, go through sony, or buy a new PS3.
Yet the laptop I bought for $890 dollars plays all the PC games at decent graphics settings and serves as also my school/work laptop.
On top of all the other replies above, consoles don't seem to work for the MMO games such as WOW or Eve Online which seem to draw a large part of the gaming crowd these days. So while there's some interesting developments on the console front (with the Wii notably), it will remain a parallel market that merely intersects with the PC on some titles.
And as another poster pointed out, the games most people play are, oddly enough, Flash games. Which require a PC of some kind.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Supporting your cause: Top selling games by platform, comparing PC vs XBOX360 The Sims (PC) - 16 million The Sims 2 (PC) - 13 million World of Warcraft (PC) - 12 million Starcraft (PC) - 11 million Half Life (PC) - 9 million Halo 3 (360) - 8 million Half Life 2 (PC) - 6.5 million (does not include sales on Steam, which Valve doesn't release) Guild Wars (PC) - 6 million Myst (PC) - 6 million The Sims 2: Pets (PC, expansion pack) - 5.6 million Gears of War (360) - 5 million PC Gaming looks pretty dead - selling too many copies to stay alive! The Cake is a Lie!
There's an additional note for TF2:
The PC version is the only one that receives new content. The Xbox 360 version is supposed to get some of this at some unspecified later date. The PS3 version... well, don't ever expect it to be upgraded.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
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.
DX11 includes the following:
Designed for multicore CPUs (DX10 and before were designed to work with a single CPU)
Hardware tessellation (Hull Shader, Domain Shader, and Tessellator)
Improved texture compression (the demo I saw focused on HDR)
Shader Model 5.0 (this was glossed over, so I don't know what is in it)
Increased max texture size (something like 4096x4096 is the current limit and they're bumping it to 16k.)
Compute Shader (essentially General Purpose GPU like CUDA)
Some of this stuff sounds pretty cool - I'm mostly interested in the Tessellation shaders, especially if they work (geometry shader was terrible for tessellating) and I'm hoping OpenGL also picks up at least that feature (which will be about 9 years later at the rate they're adopting stuff into core right now...).
Windows 2000 (aka Windows Classic) style is present in both Vista and Win7.
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.
Not anymore. The PS3 and Wii have built in browsers with Flash capability.
Pfft. Until there's a decent RPG ... consoles have nothing for me.
Two words:
Mass Effect
Note that if you run as a non-administrator account in Vista and try to do something that requires privilege escalation you get a password prompt on the UAC alert (exactly like in Linux or OSX).
If you run on an administrator account UAC only requires a mouse click to escalate your privileges.
Personally I'm surprised at people who'd used Linux before complaining about UAC, you'd think working with Linux would have taught them, the benefits of escalation password prompts and being able to run with limited privileges and escalating only if necessary
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?
And just to support your post, it would be unwise to forget any mmopg, that are ALL running on pc's only.
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?
Except that you've got a huge expense just to get a console to start with. Add in a keyboard, mouse, external monitor or high def TV, rerouting ethernet, extra storage, a second desk for more space, and the cost goes up more. Then in two years the next big thing will be out and you'll be obsolete. Are all those players whos keep saying "upgrading a PC every 5 years is a waste of money" still only using Playstation 1s? Even after all that, the consoles still won't play all my old games, the not so old games that I like, or the MMO I play, and the selection of console games that seem interesting to me is very tiny.
If you also need a PC for other things (taxes, quicken, email), then you end up buying two computers, the console and the PC. Simple consoles make sense for a few simple games to keep the kids out of your hair.
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]
I was probably a bit unclear, by "PC's" I meant computers in general. Those specific platforms might be a bit behind these days (sorry, I'm a diehard Commodore user), but my point is that the market for computer games is alive and well. Since people still use computers, there's still a market for computer games, even if consoles have all kinds of advantages from the software houses point of view.
Yeah, except this : you stop playing PS2 and buy an Xbox 360, $350. You change your graphics card and buy more RAM, $100.
You just got troll'd!
I'd also like to say, it's also remarkable how you fail to see that the point you make just turns against itself.
See, a new gen of consoles arrive. You're forced to buy a new machine, unless you wanna stick to the old gen games. At the same time, on PC, you upgrade your machine *once* so it catches up in power with the new generation of consoles. You don't need two machines to play the old and new games, and you don't need to buy a new machine at all to begin with. And on PC the transition is a bit cheaper.
So your point just falls over, and long live PC gaming.
You just got troll'd!
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.
That is one of the things I was referring to as "licenses to use relevant logos on packaging".
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.