Wednesday, August 29th 2007
Microsoft Issues Windows Vista Hotfix for Gaming - KB940105
Microsoft has made available the following Windows Vista KB940105 hotfix. All NVIDIA GeForce 6, 7 and 8 series users should install this update in order to resolve potential Graphics Virtual Address problems that may occur when running Windows Vista OS. This hotfix resolves abnormal application behavior such as crashes and extremely low frame rates when running some 3D applications at very high graphics settings. This issue has been most commonly noticed on high-end graphics cards and the following applications: Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, Civilization IV, Company of Heroes, Half-Life 2, Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth II, Supreme Commander, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas. In order for this hotfix to be effective, GeForce customers must also update to the latest ForceWare Release 163 drivers.
Source:
Microsoft
17 Comments on Microsoft Issues Windows Vista Hotfix for Gaming - KB940105
might DL soon
:rockout:
Gaming was fine on my 7900gtx
this DOES work on ATI. What it does, is fixes a bug.
In DX9, the video card ram was shadowed into the memory address space, so that the 32 bit programs/drivers could access and modify it as if it was system ram.
However, for some reason it was always maxed out in vista - if you have a 768MB GTX, that was 768MB of address space gone. Under 32 bit vista, when you hit 4GB address space.... you crashed. BF2142 on titan maps was very prone to this.
All this fix does is reduces the amount a fair bit, so its not at max - a 768MB card might use 200-300MB now, giving you some more headroom before you crash. A proper fix should come out some time in the future, but most people are reccomending vista x64 instead.
P.S
It should be noted that this affects memory *address space* and not system memory itself - system memory is part of the address space, video card ram, and all shadowed ROM's (bios, PCI cards, etc use some) - however, i have noticed 1-200MB less ram usage after installing this, i assume this difference will be lower for users with less than 512MB of total video ram.
vista 32bit is the best system for you htpc
in vista x64 you get more than 3GB RAM!, this is why you can get upto 16GB on motherboards when running x64 version of windows aka windows amd64
all heil to amd for getting this revolution to the consumer :respect:
Dont forget you need the 163.xx drivers, they arent available on laptops yet. Vista64 is great - so is 4GB ram :)
And shhhh, the intel users *cough* who are running x64 *cough* might hear you ;)
(Intel did have 64 bit first, just not a chip that did 32 and 64 simultaneously)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_architecture