I'm upgrading to a quadcore, few questions.

Catsmokinpot

Is XP compatible with quadcore pcs? because i don't really want to upgrade to Vista.

And if so, is DX10 unsupported on XP?

Any help much appreciated.

TerrorFirmer

Yes, works fine. And yes, Dx10 is Vista only, but most games using Dx10 effects run so poorly with current gen cards in comparison to the almost identical Dx9 path that it's not worth worrying over. In fact Crysis, the real hardware killer out there, can be tweaked to look the same in Dx9 as it does natively in Dx10, with a far lesser performance hit.

Catsmokinpot

HavoK wrote: »

Yes, works fine. And yes, Dx10 is Vista only, but most games using Dx10 effects run so poorly with current gen cards in comparison to the almost identical Dx9 path that it's not worth worrying over. In fact Crysis, the real hardware killer out there, can be tweaked to look the same in Dx9 as it does natively in Dx10, with a far lesser performance hit.

Crysis is the reason why i'm upgrading! my old girl just cant handle the power gonna get a new gfx card too

Thanks for the info! really didn't fancy upgrading to vista yet..

stevejazzx

HavoK wrote: »

In fact Crysis, the real hardware killer out there, can be tweaked to look the same in Dx9 as it does natively in Dx10, with a far lesser performance hit.

Except all theDX10 only effects like motion blur etc, I think the tweak you're referring to is the one which lets selct very high in XP, previously only available in Vista. Even so the differcne is negligible.

Blazer

If you're upgrading for Crysis I hope you're getting 2 x 8800GTX in SLI...as this is the only config close enough to run Crysis like it's supposed to.
I'm running SLI on Crysis at very high and 1680x1050. For the first 3rd of the game getting about 35-39fps, this drops to about 20-25fps when you join up with the other marines and take on the Koreans..low 20's really.
Basically what I'm telling you is don't bother upgrading for Crysis..Nvidia/ATI's new cards will be out in Feb/March and should give about 30% improvement over the 8800GTX ultra at present. In other words they're still going to struggle with Crysis so you're not going to be able to buy a video card that will play Crysis at high for about years. Pick your 2nd game such as COD4 and see if you current card can handle it. If yes hang on for a while before upgrading..if no pick up one of the newer 8800GT models to keep you going for a while

RoyalMarine

Mathew Reilly wrote: »

If you're upgrading for Crysis I hope you're getting 2 x 8800GTX in SLI...as this is the only config close enough to run Crysis like it's supposed to.
I'm running SLI on Crysis at very high and 1680x1050. For the first 3rd of the game getting about 35-39fps, this drops to about 20-25fps when you join up with the other marines and take on the Koreans..low 20's really.
Basically what I'm telling you is don't bother upgrading for Crysis..Nvidia/ATI's new cards will be out in Feb/March and should give about 30% improvement over the 8800GTX ultra at present. In other words they're still going to struggle with Crysis so you're not going to be able to buy a video card that will play Crysis at high for about years. Pick your 2nd game such as COD4 and see if you current card can handle it. If yes hang on for a while before upgrading..if no pick up one of the newer 8800GT models to keep you going for a while

your not seriosusly reccommending him to buy 2 x 8800gtx to just play crisis.

TerrorFirmer

RoyalMarineComm wrote: »

your not seriosusly reccommending him to buy 2 x 8800gtx to just play crisis.

Mathew Reilly wrote:

Basically what I'm telling you is don't bother upgrading for Crysis.

Blazer

HavoK wrote: »

Thanks Havok saved me the trouble:D

L31mr0d

Mathew Reilly wrote: »

Thanks Havok saved me the trouble:D

Yeah, what he said. DON'T upgrade to play Crysis. Graphically its excellent, but gameplay wise its short and gets repetitive. Wait until the 2nd or 3rd episode of Crysis is released before playing it, i'd say playing them back to back will make it feel like more of a complete game.

Also why all the hating for Vista. Vista is awesome. You'll find most of the people complaining about Vista are the ones who've either a) never used it and believe the hype b) used it for a short period, encountered one bug or incompatibility and shouted "the hype was true, QUICK, run for the hills and back to XP"

Most sensible and logical people are using Vista now. I've been running Vista x64 for about 6 months now and i'd never go back to XP, and with the coming SP1 and the promise of superfetch becoming a lot better the WOW is going to be NOW

TheThreeDegrees

L31mr0d wrote: »

Also why all the hating for Vista. Vista is awesome. You'll find most of the people complaining about Vista are the ones who've either a) never used it and believe the hype b) used it for a short period, encountered one bug or incompatibility and shouted "the hype was true, QUICK, run for the hills and back to XP"

c)they dont have the hardware to run it.

Fnz

TheThreeDegrees wrote: »

c)they dont have the hardware to run it.

Exactly... it's seemingly ok for an operating system to be resource hungry. :rolleyes:

TheThreeDegrees

what use is an OS if it doesnt use the resources available to it?
and its not as if it cant be controlled.

I **** you not,
this afternoon I installed vista 64bit and everything and I mean everything is much better and faster than anything MS have come up with in the past 10 years.

I was even using Ubuntu for a couple of days last week and its not a patch on vista ultimate.

theres no way i'm going back to XP.

Deliverance XXV

TheThreeDegrees wrote: »

theres no way i'm going back to XP.

Ditto.

Kintarō Hattori

Same here, I've been using vista since it came out and wouldn't go back to XP- it's fantastic.

Fnz

TheThreeDegrees wrote: »

what use is an OS if it doesnt use the resources available to it?

The only use of the OS is to run applications, right? I'd prefer if it was better optimized - leaving resources available for programs to use.

I was surprised to hear that machines would require more processing power to run Vista than to run XP. I had expected that Vista would be an advancement in efficiency.

RoyalMarine

HavoK wrote: »

thanks for pointing that out. im blind. lol

Mathew Reilly wrote: »

Thanks Havok saved me the trouble:D

im blind. sorry about that. lol

L31mr0d

Fnz wrote: »

The only use of the OS is to run applications, right? I'd prefer if it was better optimized - leaving resources available for programs to use.

I was surprised to hear that machines would require more processing power to run Vista than to run XP. I had expected that Vista would be an advancement in efficiency.

your argument is flawed in every way conceivable. Firstly saying an OS shouldn't use the resources of the PC is like saying only OAP's should be allowed to drive sports cars.

Vista is progress. Do you think XP would run on the PC's that first ran Windows 3.1? Should it have to? Efficiency is being able to utilize new technology to the fullest, if anything i'm annoyed Vista doesn't use more of my RAM and processing power

Plus it isn't expensive to buy a PC MORE than capable of running Vista. In work we bought 2 Quad core, 2GB RAM, HD2600XT DELLs for around €650 each. Thats around 500 of the old pounds. Have a look back at how much it would of cost to buy a pc to run XP when it was first released, you'd be looking at close to €1500 minimum.

I've used every MS OS since 3.1 (even ME for all of a day *shudder*) and Vista has been the best one yet imo. Sure it has bugs, but so did every other MS OS after it was first launched. What makes Vista different is that for me, the transition from XP to Vista was a lot smoother than the transition I had to make between 95 and 98 or 2000 and XP.

stevejazzx

I'm really enjoying vista but why all the versions..I mean vista basic! what a complete waste of time!
Anoter thing that bugs is indexing in vista is insane..I seem to have constant hard drive access...and the media center audio sync issue (a common issue) otherwise I do genuinely think it's it's a great OS but not million miles from say xpmedia center...I like the instant photo editing..and extra back up utilities (the full hard disk image backup is only available in ultimate, i think)
oh yeah and it's very pretty!

ps the extra security features are mostly a huge pain the ass...if haven't already switch them off..otherwise vista is a nightmare when installing!

L31mr0d

stevejazzx wrote: »

I'm really enjoying vista but why all the versions..I mean vista basic!

lol, I will agree with you there, I know a lot of people who have gotten confused by the different versions. Especially the fact that some versions don't contain the much touted flip 3D or the dreamscene wallpapers of ultimate, but this isn't made evident by the name or even by the list of features on the box. Whoever marketed Vista needs to be fired.

reminds me of this

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/02/02

TheThreeDegrees

couple of things I'm not happy about,three actually.

all their huffing and puffing about IE etc and they dont even bother to put an anti-virus solution on it.Not even a basic one.
for a system builder that would have been a blessing seeing that the first thing you gotta do when you have the os installed is go online and update the damn thing!

dont like the new WLAN autoconfig.they made a relatively simple process a complicated and stupid one.I used to always use windows zero wireless config before a cards wireless utility.now I will be disabling wlan auto and using the adapters utility.

dont like the format tool at the beginning.seems to me its far too quick and not doing a proper job.

Blazer

TheThreeDegrees wrote: »

couple of things I'm not happy about,three actually.

all their huffing and puffing about IE etc and they dont even bother to put an anti-virus solution on it.Not even a basic one.
for a system builder that would have been a blessing seeing that the first thing you gotta do when you have the os installed is go online and update the damn thing!

dont like the new WLAN autoconfig.they made a relatively simple process a complicated and stupid one.I used to always use windows zero wireless config before a cards wireless utility.now I will be disabling wlan auto and using the adapters utility.

don't like the format tool at the beginning.seems to me its far too quick and not doing a proper job.

The Anti virus is done through the Live care add-on. Besides if they included AV ppl would be bitching about MS deciding what they should have and then MS would be facing another monopoly abuse hearing..they just can't win.

Agreed..the whole network setup is painful..whoever designed it should be nailed to their desks

Do you have any evidence that it's not doing it job? Maybe they optimized it better for Vista?

Khannie

TheThreeDegrees wrote: »

I was even using Ubuntu for a couple of days last week and its not a patch on vista ultimate.

Then you're not using it properly tbh.

I run gentoo (the ricers linux). When I boot into my nice pretty graphical environment, 68MB of ram is in use, leaving 1.9G free for the OS to use for caching, etc.

I've never used vista, but my understanding is that it's pretty resource hungry. I'm not saying it's not a good OS. Not at all. But here's the thing: I thought Windows 2000 was a good OS. It was stable, not that resource hungry and loaded quickly. I still haven't heard a decent argument for upgrading to vista from XP (if you exclude the fact that MS wont support XP users fully any more).

Deliverance XXV

Khannie wrote: »

Then you're not using it properly tbh.

I run gentoo (the ricers linux). When I boot into my nice pretty graphical environment, 68MB of ram is in use, leaving 1.9G free for the OS to use for caching, etc.

That's fairly good!

Khannie wrote: »

I've never used vista, but my understanding is that it's pretty resource hungry. I'm not saying it's not a good OS. Not at all. But here's the thing: I thought Windows 2000 was a good OS. It was stable, not that resource hungry and loaded quickly. I still haven't heard a decent argument for upgrading to vista from XP (if you exclude the fact that MS wont support XP users fully any more).

It is resource hungry. Without a doubt. But if you got the memory available Vista is fairly impressive. Besides, you can get 4 Gigs of 800mhz ram for €75 now so no excuse! Link

Anti

Vista can be a resource whore, especially on your ram. But then again it is alot more complex then any other ms os. I would give mroe examples on why vista is awesome, but my back is killing me and making me loose focus

TheThreeDegrees

Khannie wrote: »

I still haven't heard a decent argument for upgrading to vista from XP (if you exclude the fact that MS wont support XP users fully any more).

DX 10.

Khannie wrote: »

Then you're not using it properly tbh.

visually i'm not sure what your looking at Khannie but vista does look great.
performance wise a linux flavour has always to be better than an MS OS otherwise its dead in the water.

pandabat

L31mr0d wrote: »

your argument is flawed in every way conceivable. Firstly saying an OS shouldn't use the resources of the PC is like saying only OAP's should be allowed to drive sports cars.

Vista is progress. Do you think XP would run on the PC's that first ran Windows 3.1? Should it have to? Efficiency is being able to utilize new technology to the fullest, if anything i'm annoyed Vista doesn't use more of my RAM and processing power

His argument is sound. Less resources to the OS means more resources and better performance from your apps and, furthermore, efficiency is not being able to utilize new technology to the fullest; in fact, it is quite the opposite!

That's not to say that as more power becomes available that it shouldn't be used to come effect but it shouldn't be disproportionately used by the OS leaving precious little for games, apps and so on to work with.

For those sticking with XP for now, MS has SP3 lined up which is meant to give a performance boost of up to 30%. With a lack of compelling DX10 games, I see no reason to upgrade to Vista unless it's coming as part of your new PC.

nibble

Khannie wrote: »

Then you're not using it properly tbh.

I run gentoo (the ricers linux). When I boot into my nice pretty graphical environment, 68MB of ram is in use, leaving 1.9G free for the OS to use for caching, etc.

I've never used vista, but my understanding is that it's pretty resource hungry. I'm not saying it's not a good OS. Not at all. But here's the thing: I thought Windows 2000 was a good OS. It was stable, not that resource hungry and loaded quickly. I still haven't heard a decent argument for upgrading to vista from XP (if you exclude the fact that MS wont support XP users fully any more).

ROFL, but definately true..
I'd generally be of the mind that windows is not that bad to use if you absolutely must, but recently trying to do some stuff that should be relatively simple like move different directories off the root drive (users, program files etc) is near impossible. I could easily acomplish this in any *nix having /home and so on held on other drives/partitions from install.. MS just seem to complicate the whole issue, the godforsaken registry is a big part of this, could they use a more archaic way of storing configs?

Anyway that's all kinda OT, but Vista is no worse than XP, I mean I'd use it over XP if I had the choice.