Shadowrun no longer Vista exclusive

[Mussels]

i dunno why but i love vista and everyone hates it

or just cant afford it

when it doesnt even cost that much it cost way less than xp did on launch

I love it cause its fast, has a lot of easy to use features (the windows search is a lot better, even with indexing disabled) Its more reliable (apart from the early GTX drivers, i am yet to have a BSOD on any of my 3 vista systems)

I like my Vista, i just dont like that they want 35% of my ram all the time just to sit on the desktop

I was playing company of heroes last night, alt-tabbed and the game was using 1.9GB of memory (i was on 2GB ram at the time) - vista easily releases the ram as needed, its a 3D desktop - like any good 3D app, it releases ram when its not on-screen!

Maybe it is the fact that games run a lot better on XP than on Vista?

Thats probably just this game in itself.

I mean, a lot of ppl complained about the performance of Halo 2 on while running under Vista, even on very high spec systems, and in fact MS didn't want ppl to know that these "Vista only games" could run without a hitch on XP systemes (even faster and more stable than on Vista as a matter of fact)

Actually, a lot of those people are using shite hardware and cranking the settings right up. I saw a lot of threads about people trying to run it on Onboard video (Nvidia 6100's/6150's) with 512MB of system ram, and abusing bungie/MS for releasing a game which was "so crap its a waste of money" - of course XP, a lighter OS is going to run faster on systems like that - also, drivers could be a large part of why its slower in vista for some people.

For me it's not that I hate Vista, in fact I like the UI very much, and was part of the beta testing for a long time, but if I know that a game will run a lot better on my system with XP rather than with Vista, at least for now, I see no point in moving to Vista ATM.

Thats your system - a lot of others run faster and better, particularly games with dual core support.

There's also the fact that Vista doesn't support a lot of features like sound acceleration (unless you have an X-Fi and use alchemy, but that's buggy as well) and poor SLI and Crossfire support, definitely lower performance across the board on all 3D applications than on XP with the same hardware... the list goes on and on, you see...

Crossfire support is poor everywhere SLI works fine, theres just a few beta drivers that dont support it and never claimed to. I dont miss EAX at all - it rarely worked for me anyway, and vistas sound is a lot better. I guess changing the quality to 24/96 in windows, to the max my hardware supports, kicks the ass off the 16bit 22KHz audio XP supports by default?

I'll move to Vista when I see an advantage from a hardware and gaming point of view over XP, in the mean time, I'm really happy to play Halo 2 at 1280x1024 without a hitch, when I heard about the XP patch I went and bought a copy immediately, as I was dying to see the game in all its glory after beating the Xbox version two years ago.

Its fun, but no coop

So, for me it's not that I hate Vista or anything like that, it's just that besides the enhanced UI, I see no particular advantages from moving to XP to Vista with the way I currently use my PC.

personal choice there, cant argue that one. The enhanced UI, the enhanced dual core support, the lack of 2D GUI bugs (how many times did you run into balloon tips hiding behind the start menu in XP for example? What about balloon tips destroying performance in any 3D apps in a window such as ATI tool?)

 

[hat]

Vista is probably is some ways faster than XP. For example, I get 43 seconds doing SuperPI 1M is XP vs 54 seconds in windows 2000.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

personal choice there, cant argue that one. The enhanced UI, the enhanced dual core support, the lack of 2D GUI bugs (how many times did you run into balloon tips hiding behind the start menu in XP for example? What about balloon tips destroying performance in any 3D apps in a window such as ATI tool?)

Vista is gonna be a personal choice for many people.

And for me, I just got asked to erase it and put XP on a computer for someone thats pretty computer-illiterate.

It seems the general public doesn't see aero justifying the retarded over simplification.

 

[Mussels]

Vista is gonna be a personal choice for many people.

And for me, I just got asked to erase it and put XP on a computer for someone thats pretty computer-illiterate.

It seems the general public doesn't see aero justifying the retarded over simplification.

Disable UAC and use the classic start menu/classic folders, try that next time and see if they like it more.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

Disable UAC and use the classic start menu/classic folders, try that next time and see if they like it more.

Thats how it was set. Thats how all my vistas are set atm.

Vista "new" start menu is just rediculious.

I forsee little to no vista "exclusive" games that wont be modded...

 

[joinmeindeath417]

Thats how it was set. Thats how all my vistas are set atm.

Vista "new" start menu is just rediculious.

I forsee little to no vista "exclusive" games that wont be modded...

yeah but now microsoft will work harder to make it not possible, i highly doubt crysis will play on xp no im pretty sure it wont

 

[15th Warlock]

Thats your system - a lot of others run faster and better, particularly games with dual core support.

I would appreciate it if you could show me benchmarks that support this And I mean games with proven multi-core support, like Quake 4 and others; I know Vista has better support for multi-proc systems than XP (and not just dual core systems, I'm looking at 4 core procs becoming more accessible as soon as next year), but right now, most games don't take advantage of that. Most hardware sites have come to the same conclusion, gaming on Vista is generally slower than gaming on WinXP with the same hardware configuration, at least on current games, once multi-core enhanced games like Crysis, Unreal 3, Quake Wars and many others start shipping, this, of course will change.

Then again, maybe I missed a review or two showing the contrary

About missing 3D sound acceleration, that's a matter of taste, if you have a surround speaker configuration, trust me, you miss having sound coming from all your speakers all of the sudden, only to get positional sound on your front speakers but that's because I'm used to having surround sound in all my games

Anyway, as I was saying, that's my choice, and as you point out, maybe that's what's more favorable for my system in particular, and I know that's the situation for a lot of ppl, for me it's just a matter of choice

Alas, this will all change in the future, with DX10 enhanced games like Crysis and many others, so once I have enough money to get DX10 hardware (and I'm saving every penny I have left after paying rent, the car, and everything else ) I'll move to Vista, it's just that, once again, I see no point in my particular case at the moment, and I know for a fact that a lot of ppl has taken the same choice

 

[15th Warlock]

yeah but now microsoft will work harder to make it not possible, i highly doubt crysis will play on xp no im pretty sure it wont

In fact, it does play on XP, and it looks really good running on DX9, not as much eye candy as the DX10 version, but still, very stunning

EDIT: Found something you may find interesting

Crysis will support both DirectX 9 and DirectX 10, which means that you can run it on a Windows XP PC, as well as an upcoming Windows Vista PC. You'll get the absolute best graphics with a Vista machine, but DirectX 9 still will look good. The version of the game we saw was using a DirectX 9 machine "simulating" DirectX10 by brute force, and it looked amazing.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/crysis/news.html?sid=6150139

And remember, I'm not saying that Vista sucks quite the contrary, it's just that right now I see no compelling reason to switch over, but looking at Crysis trailers, it seems that's about to change I'm waiting for MS to release SP1, (and to have enough money available for a worthy hardware upgrade), but if more great looking DX10 games are released soon, I see a lot of ppl migrating to Vista very soon

But going back to topic, this patch will certainly help MS get a spike in the sales of Halo 2 long after its release

 

[Mussels]

I would appreciate it if you could show me benchmarks that support this And I mean games with proven multi-core support, like Quake 4 and others

Simple - go to the relic forums, Company of heroes - it has official dual core support for physics, and theres at least 3 threads over there (older ones, now) with pics of the in-game benchmark showing higher FPS on vista. I got the same thing with Supreme commander too.

About missing 3D sound acceleration, that's a matter of taste, if you have a surround speaker configuration, trust me, you miss having sound coming from all your speakers all of the sudden, only to get positional sound on your front speakers but that's because I'm used to having surround sound in all my games

I have the same speakers as you, lol. And they work fine in 5.1 without EAX - EAX and surround are totally differnet things. This argument is useless, as even with an audigy 4 i cant do EAX 5.0 - and EAX games never have backward compatibility, its the latest or its 2D sound (with the exclusion of the Call of Duty games, which had several choices) And i refuse to buy an X-fi for EAX in vista for the same reason i havent bought an X-fi anyway - because as soon as creative release a new product, old product owners get shafted.

 

[jydie]

Well, this proves that the Vista requirement for some of these new games is just a big hoax. It kind of upsets me that the developers (including Microsoft) would give up on Windows XP so quickly. Oh well, it is only hurting the developers because the sales will almost surely be lower because there are a LOT of Windows 2000 and XP users in the world.

It almost doesn't make any sense to remove XP support from a game at this time. ?????????

 

[15th Warlock]

Simple - go to the relic forums, Company of heroes - it has official dual core support for physics, and theres at least 3 threads over there (older ones, now) with pics of the in-game benchmark showing higher FPS on vista. I got the same thing with Supreme commander too.

Thanks for the update

It's nice to see some games do run better for a difference, but in all fairness, you can't deny it's sad to see the other 98% of games don't But it sure shows hope for the future And I'm quite sure that'll change in time when companies release drivers that have matured under the new OS, but now is not the time yet.

I have the same speakers as you, lol. And they work fine in 5.1 without EAX - EAX and surround are totally differnet things. This argument is useless, as even with an audigy 4 i cant do EAX 5.0 - and EAX games never have backward compatibility, its the latest or its 2D sound (with the exclusion of the Call of Duty games, which had several choices) And i refuse to buy an X-fi for EAX in vista for the same reason i havent bought an X-fi anyway - because as soon as creative release a new product, old product owners get shafted.

Kinda lost me there, EAX 5.0? Most games even still support EAX 2.0, and I can use EAX 4.0 for positional sound even on the latest games with my Audigy 2, no need for 5.0, and I certainly don't have any problems with any recent game on the sound department, but some ppl do have problems with creative cards and certain hardware configurations... Maybe there's a game or two out there that only supports 5.0, but I haven't seen one yet...

But more to the point, it's no so much about EAX (the industry standard hardware sound acceleration, not only found on Creative cards, but in a lot of different add-on cards from other manufacturers and in most motherboard on-board sound solutions), but about DirectSound 3D positional audio, which, as far as I know, Vista doesn't support as of this date on any card, at least not on its present form, except of the alchemy software emulated support for ppl with X-Fi cards as both you and I mentioned before; some current games that use OpenAL for 3D sound positioning, but as far as legacy support for Vista, it's practically non-existent for a huge percentage of games currently available for ppl with non X-Fi cards.

Of course, that'll change in the future, with more games moving to OpenAL...

And it was not Creative who shafted ppl with older sound cards, but MS who suddenly decided to drop all 3D DirectSound support on for their new OS; as I mentioned before, I can use positional sound under XP in every single game without a problem. MS did this to reduce the number of audio and video related crashes on Vista, but in doing so, support for 3D sound on legacy games was completely lost.

EDIT: Found this and it helps clear a lot of doubts about 3D positional sound under Vista:

Audio in Windows Vista

The Vista audio architecture disables DirectSound 3D hardware acceleration; resulting in legacy DirectSound based EAX game titles not working as they did in XP.

Issues that may be encountered:
Could range from loss of EAX functionality in EAX enabled games to a complete game incompatibility, depending on how the game title was authored. This would only happen with games that render 3D audio using DirectSound, it should not affect games that render 3D audio using OpenAL.

(Note: There is a known bug due to a change to Vista which confuses an OpenAL component. A proper fix in progress, but a workaround is to copy c:\windows\system32\ct_oal.dll into the doom3 folder and rename it to OpenAL32.dll)


Status:
These issues cannot be addressed by the Creative audio driver, because the functionality was purposely removed by the operating system. We look forward to game titles moving away from DirectSound and toward OpenAL for fully optimized Creative 3D audio hardware and technology support.

Upcoming 3D Audio Apocalypse in Vista?

With Microsoft's decision to remove the audio hardware layer in Windows Vista, legacy DirectSound 3D games will no longer use hardware 3D algorithms for audio spatialization. Instead they will have to rely upon the new Microsoft software mixer that is built into Windows Vista. This new software mixer will give the users basic audio support for their old Direct Sound games but since it has no hardware layer, all EAX® effects will be lost, and no individual per-voice processing can be performed using dedicated hardware processing.

EAX has become the de facto standard for real-time effects processing. It has been incorporated in hundreds of games and has become the method of choice for game developers wanting to add interactive environment effects to their titles. Some of the best selling games of all time use the EAX extensions to DirectSound 5.0 and beyond, including Warcraft3, Diablo2, World of Warcraft, Half Life, Ghost Recon, F.E.A.R. and many others. Under Windows Vista, these games will be losing the hardware support that came as standard under the previous Windows Operating Systems, and will no longer provide real-time interactive effects, making them sound empty and lifeless by comparison to the way they sound on Windows XP.

In some cases, where a game specifically looks for a hardware audio path, it may even fall back to plain stereo output. This will be a very different landscape for 3D audio than the one that both Creative Labs and Aureal Technologies® pioneered 8 years ago.

10 Reasons You Don't Need Vista Today (Ed. and please note the emphasis on "Today")

4. No Hardware Audio

During development, Microsoft removed a couple of crucial gaming-audio related features from Vista, including DirectSound 3D (hundreds of games use DS3D to deliver positional 5.1 audio) and support for hardware accelerated 3D sound. This isn’t a problem for new games going forward, as most developers have embraced the alternative OpenAL technology, which will continue to work in Vista. It is, however, a problem for legacy DS3D games, such as Call of Duty 2 and Max Payne. When you run a DirectSound 3D game on Vista, it won’t give you the option to enable 3D sound or features that require hardware acceleration, such as EAX. Unfortunately, there’s no easy solution. Creative will release its Alchemy application, a workaround to a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Alchemy is basically a wrapper program—it intercepts DirectSound 3D functions and converts them to OpenAL functions using a custom DLL. Alchemy works OK, but we’d much rather have a less-kludgy solution from Microsoft. Hopefully, they’ll hear our cries and include hardware support with Vista’s first service pack.

 

[Mussels]

Thanks for the update



Kinda lost me there, EAX 5.0? Most games even still support EAX 2.0, and I can use EAX 4.0 for positional sound even on the latest games with my Audigy 2, no need for 5.0, and I certainly don't have any problems with any recent game on the sound department, but some ppl do have problems with creative cards and certain hardware configurations... Maybe there's a game or two out there that only supports 5.0, but I haven't seen one yet...

EAX 5 is what the X-fi cards use. They changed the name a little, but i think of it as 5.0 just to avoid confusion in my head.

Most games support ONE mode of EAX Call of duty 2 and Empire at war are the only two i know of to provide a lot of options for EAX. Battlefield 2 only supports X-fi cards (Software, hardware (no EAX), X-fi) Having trouble finding other examples atm, but i've ran into many of them over the years (i had an audigy1 until this rig, which 90% of EAX games did no support due to its lower EAX level)

Basically i just hate creative for not supporting older products. This is still ongoing with the Alchemy project, which is X-fi only. (for another argument - modders have got drivers out there to have even the Audigy 1 support Audigy 4 drivers, and work with all features of the card under XP. full A4 apps, settings, EAX support - they have it all. Creative however, release a new product and just forget the old ones)

Edit: they wont add hardware sound, OpenAL is the solution for that. Vista uses its new software solution and i've read some game devs being extremely happy about this - EAX costs money, vistas solution is free to use. Game devs can do what they want with audio, without being limited to 2D or using creatives solutions. (Cant find a link, sorry)

And really, non creative sound cards are still locked at EAX 2.0 - thats why its supported more widely... but why cant they let other cards use it (for a price)? Creative just want us to constantly get new hardware, and dont give a crap about anything else.