Windows Vista RC1 gives great gaming experience

o_deadly furby · 09-21-2006, 02:11 PM

Windows Vista RC1 gives great gaming experience

First INQpressions Half Life Episode one on Vista eats a modest 826 MB

By: Fuad Abazovic Wednesday 20 September 2006, 21:04
WE PLAYED with Vista for a few days and on our test machine Vista Aero "Eva" Glass works just fine. We decided to use the Gainward 7800 GTX 512 MB card and we can tell you that the Vista performance determination tool rates this card at 5.8 which is more than good enough for Vista.

You need to score between four and five to be able to run Aero Glass, the Eva Glass like sexy graphic user interface. After we played with the user intertface for a while we decided to try to play some games under the mighty upcoming DirectX 10. The card that we tested is DirectX 9.0c only as there is absolutely zero DirectX 10 hardware at the moment, but we didn't have any problems to play this very popular game.

We decided to use our Athlon 4000+ - a good old single core CPU - and we plugged 2x512MB of Kingston HyperX DIMM Kit 1024MB PC4300 DDR CL3-4-4-8-1T (PC533) but we clocked it at a rather standard 433 MHz. After installing Episode One, we wanted to see whether at least we could run the game. To our immense happiness and ecstatic surprise, the game ran without any problems, and the performance was rather good. At 1280x1024 with the FSAA and Aniso on and all other settings at high we were getting between 40 FPS where we had a lot of reflections to 120 FPS in some less demanding scene. On average, we were getting 80 FPS which was not that bad at all.

We took some memory screenshots as it transpired that Vista needed only 800 from the available 1024MB of physical memory. To save myself from answering some mails, we know that the Page file is not the same as the physical memory that we like to call RAM but it reflects how much memory was used.

Overall Half Life 2 episode one is working great under Vista. After all this new operating system has some gaming potential. I can easily advise to prepare you for getting an additional 1 GB of memory. Two GB should be the optimum for Vista ultimate gaming experience as the games such as FEAR and Battlefield 2 already wants more than 1 GB even under XP.

We think that Vista Release Candidate 1 has a lot of potential but there are still a few bugs that we would like to see fixed. Some of the SATA drivers are acting weird as my older 120 GB SATA one drive tends to crush explorer but just when you browse this drive while the other 160 GB one works flawlessly. Well MS has some three months to fix the bugs before it ships the OS. We will try more games and will let you know about it. µ

* BUT PERHAPS it would be wise to wait until Vista Aero and Eva and Harta Glass are released before you buy a graphics card, No? Ed.

o_nuk3m · 09-21-2006, 02:13 PM

unreal my pc is better then that, i guess im gonna have a great time on episode 2 then

Mulchman MM · 09-21-2006, 02:51 PM

There is nothing worse than reading broken English in some kind of faux tech article.

o_kam · 09-21-2006, 03:42 PM

I don't get it, is that supposed to be running better than XP or something? Because it sounds a lot worse.

o_puppychow · 09-21-2006, 05:06 PM

i think the point is twofold, from my moderate technical understanding:

1) vista is pretty hardware intensive - a 7800 gtx only a bit above average on the scale being able to run the new gui? Sheesh. But even with vista being hardware intensive, there was still a good gaming experience.

2), and more importanly, vista is a more efficient os, memory wise - grabs less physical / virtual memory than xp - which is awesome.

thats what i garnered anyways.

o_nuk3m · 09-21-2006, 05:55 PM

regardless vista is going to be the next OS, so like were all gonna buy it anyways. when Office 2007 comes out

o_puppychow · 09-21-2006, 06:11 PM

will be interesting to see if theres a backlash at all with vista. there has never been an OS release that so required the user to upgrade hardware to run it with all the features enabled (which is having a dual core processor, 2gig memory, dx10 video card).

I'll be happy to upgrade, but im sure others will not want to (or can't) and thus XP should have quite the long shelf life.

o_sh4x · 09-21-2006, 07:38 PM

what's so great about office 2007?

This article was shit btw.

o_lithium · 09-21-2006, 07:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by puppychow

will be interesting to see if theres a backlash at all with vista. there has never been an OS release that so required the user to upgrade hardware to run it with all the features enabled (which is having a dual core processor, 2gig memory, dx10 video card).

I'll be happy to upgrade, but im sure others will not want to (or can't) and thus XP should have quite the long shelf life.

YOU'LL BE GIVING YOUR COMPUTER , AMIRITE!?

o_frenchtoast · 09-21-2006, 08:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nukem373

regardless vista is going to be the next OS, so like were all gonna buy it anyways. when Office 2007 comes out

'Cause everyone bought XP, right?

o_johnnyc · 09-23-2006, 06:42 PM

you guys actually BOUGHT m$ office and windows xp?

yikes... I feel sorry for you fella's.....

what's next, PLEASE don't tell me you paid for adobe products too.....

lol....
~JC

Circuitous · 09-23-2006, 07:12 PM

Paying for Adobe products is a requirement if you intend to sell what you make with 'em. They can call some hounds* on you if they think your software isn't legit, then you gotta pay.

(* Not real hounds.)

o_mooga · 09-23-2006, 07:46 PM

When Adobe found me, those hounds literaly costed me an arm and a leg

o_tennovan · 09-26-2006, 02:22 PM

Its common sense to pay for software if you're using it to make money. Or I'd think so, at least. As far as this article, blaaaaaaaaaah. The computer they tested with would barely be called average today, much less next year (on release day). The Athlon 64 4000+ isn't sold on Newegg anymore but the 3800+ is $109. I think by next year, you'll see a huge migration to dual core, especially in the computer-illiterate market.

o_zaskar · 09-26-2006, 03:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FrenchToast

'Cause everyone bought XP, right?

who isnt usin XP?

Anyone not isnt not usin it cause of tech reasons but either because their cheep or cant handle change and their masking it with a reason like "2000 is way better if you Know computers" or some crap :P

And you can DL it.. but man, outta all the software... windows is just too much a PITA anymore to work around (unless u never intend to update) maby im just gettin older and lazier ><

o_sh4x · 09-26-2006, 03:55 PM

You can download a winxp with all updates installed and activation cracked too so you can do all the future updates.

o_the russian · 09-26-2006, 04:59 PM

I have a legal copy of WinXP from my university that I paid for with tuition, but it got scratched up and MS wants $30 to send me out a copy after the lady on the phone verrified that mines was legit, at which point I said BS, yelled at the woman and told her I will not stop using the pirated version because of this BS. And yes, I use the automated-installing version available off of PirateBay.org which already has a ton of upgrades and extra optional programs as well as SP3 preview with Vista.

o_|404|innoc-tpf- · 09-26-2006, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by puppychow

will be interesting to see if theres a backlash at all with vista. there has never been an OS release that so required the user to upgrade hardware to run it with all the features enabled (which is having a dual core processor, 2gig memory, dx10 video card).

I'll be happy to upgrade, but im sure others will not want to (or can't) and thus XP should have quite the long shelf life.

Perhaps not forced to upgrade by something MS stated in advance but from an operational standpoint I can remember plenty of hardware that seems fine in the prior version and was HORRIBLE in the next. The Windows 3.x to Win95/NT4 move being particularly horrible. Video cards were the worst on that transition. Then we've also had the new feature sets with Direct X. DirectX also has the distinction of being so bad in one version (Version 3 IIRC) that if you botched the install the only way to recover was a reformat and reinstall of the OS.

So, perhaps MS has never stated it openly and in advance but there's definitely been "gotcha's" in the past for not upgrading.

o_frenchtoast · 09-26-2006, 08:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zaskar

who isnt usin XP?

I know plenty of people on 2000. Why bother to switch if the current system works perfectly?

o_abjure · 09-26-2006, 08:10 PM

CITE YOUR SOURCES!! =D

Lol, I feel like an English teacher..

09-21-2006, 02:11 PM	#1
o_deadly furby Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Cell Block 17 Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	Windows Vista RC1 gives great gaming experience Windows Vista RC1 gives great gaming experience First INQpressions Half Life Episode one on Vista eats a modest 826 MB By: Fuad Abazovic Wednesday 20 September 2006, 21:04 WE PLAYED with Vista for a few days and on our test machine Vista Aero "Eva" Glass works just fine. We decided to use the Gainward 7800 GTX 512 MB card and we can tell you that the Vista performance determination tool rates this card at 5.8 which is more than good enough for Vista. You need to score between four and five to be able to run Aero Glass, the Eva Glass like sexy graphic user interface. After we played with the user intertface for a while we decided to try to play some games under the mighty upcoming DirectX 10. The card that we tested is DirectX 9.0c only as there is absolutely zero DirectX 10 hardware at the moment, but we didn't have any problems to play this very popular game. We decided to use our Athlon 4000+ - a good old single core CPU - and we plugged 2x512MB of Kingston HyperX DIMM Kit 1024MB PC4300 DDR CL3-4-4-8-1T (PC533) but we clocked it at a rather standard 433 MHz. After installing Episode One, we wanted to see whether at least we could run the game. To our immense happiness and ecstatic surprise, the game ran without any problems, and the performance was rather good. At 1280x1024 with the FSAA and Aniso on and all other settings at high we were getting between 40 FPS where we had a lot of reflections to 120 FPS in some less demanding scene. On average, we were getting 80 FPS which was not that bad at all. We took some memory screenshots as it transpired that Vista needed only 800 from the available 1024MB of physical memory. To save myself from answering some mails, we know that the Page file is not the same as the physical memory that we like to call RAM but it reflects how much memory was used. Overall Half Life 2 episode one is working great under Vista. After all this new operating system has some gaming potential. I can easily advise to prepare you for getting an additional 1 GB of memory. Two GB should be the optimum for Vista ultimate gaming experience as the games such as FEAR and Battlefield 2 already wants more than 1 GB even under XP. We think that Vista Release Candidate 1 has a lot of potential but there are still a few bugs that we would like to see fixed. Some of the SATA drivers are acting weird as my older 120 GB SATA one drive tends to crush explorer but just when you browse this drive while the other 160 GB one works flawlessly. Well MS has some three months to fix the bugs before it ships the OS. We will try more games and will let you know about it. µ * BUT PERHAPS it would be wise to wait until Vista Aero and Eva and Harta Glass are released before you buy a graphics card, No? Ed.

09-21-2006, 02:51 PM	#3
Mulchman MM Retired FF Staff Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Lacey, WA Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	There is nothing worse than reading broken English in some kind of faux tech article. __________________ Head of the Orca Revolution (TM)

09-23-2006, 07:12 PM	#12
Circuitous Useless Retired FF Staff Join Date: Jun 2005 Class/Position: D Soldier, O Scout Gametype: AvD Posts Rated Helpful 9 Times	Paying for Adobe products is a requirement if you intend to sell what you make with 'em. They can call some hounds* on you if they think your software isn't legit, then you gotta pay. (* Not real hounds.) __________________ Look at all those dead links.

09-21-2006, 02:13 PM	#2
o_nuk3m Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: New Jersy, USA! reppin' Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	unreal my pc is better then that, i guess im gonna have a great time on episode 2 then

09-21-2006, 03:42 PM	#4
o_kam Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Melbourne Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	I don't get it, is that supposed to be running better than XP or something? Because it sounds a lot worse.

09-21-2006, 05:06 PM	#5
o_puppychow Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Washington DC Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	i think the point is twofold, from my moderate technical understanding: 1) vista is pretty hardware intensive - a 7800 gtx only a bit above average on the scale being able to run the new gui? Sheesh. But even with vista being hardware intensive, there was still a good gaming experience. 2), and more importanly, vista is a more efficient os, memory wise - grabs less physical / virtual memory than xp - which is awesome. thats what i garnered anyways.

09-21-2006, 05:55 PM	#6
o_nuk3m Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: New Jersy, USA! reppin' Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	regardless vista is going to be the next OS, so like were all gonna buy it anyways. when Office 2007 comes out

09-21-2006, 06:11 PM	#7
o_puppychow Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Washington DC Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	will be interesting to see if theres a backlash at all with vista. there has never been an OS release that so required the user to upgrade hardware to run it with all the features enabled (which is having a dual core processor, 2gig memory, dx10 video card). I'll be happy to upgrade, but im sure others will not want to (or can't) and thus XP should have quite the long shelf life.

09-21-2006, 07:38 PM	#8
o_sh4x Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Montreal Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	what's so great about office 2007? This article was shit btw.

09-23-2006, 06:42 PM	#11
o_johnnyc Join Date: May 2005 Location: Behind You. Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	you guys actually BOUGHT m$ office and windows xp? yikes... I feel sorry for you fella's..... what's next, PLEASE don't tell me you paid for adobe products too..... lol.... ~JC

09-23-2006, 07:46 PM	#13
o_mooga Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: A Small Box Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	When Adobe found me, those hounds literaly costed me an arm and a leg

09-26-2006, 02:22 PM	#14
o_tennovan Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Texas Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	Its common sense to pay for software if you're using it to make money. Or I'd think so, at least. As far as this article, blaaaaaaaaaah. The computer they tested with would barely be called average today, much less next year (on release day). The Athlon 64 4000+ isn't sold on Newegg anymore but the 3800+ is $109. I think by next year, you'll see a huge migration to dual core, especially in the computer-illiterate market.

09-26-2006, 03:55 PM	#16
o_sh4x Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Montreal Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	You can download a winxp with all updates installed and activation cracked too so you can do all the future updates.

09-26-2006, 04:59 PM	#17
o_the russian Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Buffalo, NY Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	I have a legal copy of WinXP from my university that I paid for with tuition, but it got scratched up and MS wants $30 to send me out a copy after the lady on the phone verrified that mines was legit, at which point I said BS, yelled at the woman and told her I will not stop using the pirated version because of this BS. And yes, I use the automated-installing version available off of PirateBay.org which already has a ton of upgrades and extra optional programs as well as SP3 preview with Vista.

09-26-2006, 08:10 PM	#20
o_abjure Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	CITE YOUR SOURCES!! =D Lol, I feel like an English teacher..

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