Impending Vista and current GPUs - is SM3.0 enough?

[Kaotik]

That's not even remotely surprising. Until I broke it yesterday, I was dual-booting 5270 and XP - XP runs circles around Vista when it comes to performance! BUT, and this is the important part, one is a stable mature 5 year old OS, one is only just feature-complete

I'd imagine that the true performance of Vista won't start to be known for a while yet - 5308 is feature complete, which means they're now going to be working on bug fixes and optimizations rather than new stuff.

Jack

I find this a bit interesting, as in my opinion, based on my own experience on Build 5270, it's already faster in general usage than XP is or ever was - after you've set everything up to your likings. Only thing lagging sometimes was the Aero Glass UI, but I'd blame my half-broken 6800LE 128MB for it rather than the UI itself.
Of course, if you mean games performance I don't really know, as I've only played a bit of WoW on it where I find no chances in performance that I could have noticed.

 

[Fox5]

Vista outperforms XP .. just hope it helps with DX9 games.

Considering the much higher system requirements, I wonder about that.

Supposendly the new DX will remove a lot of the baggage the old DX stuff had, though I'm not quite sure how much time the driver took up anyway.

I also wonder how java will handle vista, considering it uses opengl for 3D, and vista disables aero if opengl is used in windowed mode.

Java can use Direct3d or OpenGL, or feasibly even Glide. (at least Java3d is just a wrapper that has both direct3d and opengl runtimes)

 

[Demirug]

Can you use the OpenGL ICD in an AeroGlass window yet?

How should I test without an OpenGL ICD?

 

[Unknown Soldier]

My source is a developer on Vista, so have no reason not to believe him.

US

Ok .. seems I was incorrect in my assumption that I read from my source. He says that the component that they worked on was much faster than XP.

Game Performance is on level with XP. (Good news I suppose )

Sorry, my bad.

As for Vista itself. He recommends a 2 Gig system as the memory manager handles the memory chunks alot better than XP.

Apparently .. the graphics card of choice for vista is still ATI though, but that's because of the MS/ATI deal(conspiracy theorists go wild).

They fixed an annoying bug with WoW.

They've ran a system with a Maxtor 400 Graphics card and Vista runs fine.

US

 

[Kombatant]

A couple of stuff on where Vista is currently (February CTP):
a) It is still a beta, meaning that some things don't work as they should. But this particular version is feature complete and should give us a good representation of what we'll see in our PCs by year's end.
b) Right now a PC with 512MB of RAM runs Vista like a 256MB PC runs WinXP. Also bear in mind that, due to the fact that it's still a beta, there's lots of debug code in there.
c) Aero Glass should be a piece of cake for every modern DX9 card (and that takes us back a few years) - you won't have a problem with that. Animations are smooth and fades/shadows/etc pose no visible strain to the system.

 

[Guden Oden]

b) Right now a PC with 512MB of RAM runs Vista like a 256MB PC runs WinXP.

That is considerable bloat. Then again, like you said, it IS beta, and besides, XP with 256 meg is hardly ideal. I sure hope they manage to slim things down though before they're finished.

Cool to hear that aero glass seems to be light on the CPU though. I'm very excited about seeing it for myself.

 

[Kombatant]

That is considerable bloat. Then again, like you said, it IS beta, and besides, XP with 256 meg is hardly ideal. I sure hope they manage to slim things down though before they're finished.

Cool to hear that aero glass seems to be light on the CPU though. I'm very excited about seeing it for myself.

I hope so too; I attribute it mostly to the debug code which is present (those who have programmed know what I mean). As for Aero Glass, it gets its fancy stuff from the GPU instead, hence it's light on the CPU resources (you can easily check that out by opening the Task Manager, go to the CPU usage tab, and start moving/minimizing/closing/maximizing stuff). One of the most cool effects is when you press Win+Tab where all windows stack up in 3D, and you get to choose which one you use by pressing Tab while Win is pressed.

http://www.utaks.net/Vista/5308/5308.winmain_idx01.060217-2200_-_Flip3d.jpg

Btw, all thumbnail views are dynamic. More screenies here: http://blog.utaks.net/, I'll prolly post some on my blog later today.

 

[Kaotik]

I hope so too; I attribute it mostly to the debug code which is present (those who have programmed know what I mean). As for Aero Glass, it gets its fancy stuff from the GPU instead, hence it's light on the CPU resources (you can easily check that out by opening the Task Manager, go to the CPU usage tab, and start moving/minimizing/closing/maximizing stuff). One of the most cool effects is when you press Win+Tab where all windows stack up in 3D, and you get to choose which one you use by pressing Tab while Win is pressed.

http://www.utaks.net/Vista/5308/5308.winmain_idx01.060217-2200_-_Flip3d.jpg

Btw, all thumbnail views are dynamic. More screenies here: http://blog.utaks.net/, I'll prolly post some on my blog later today.

Indeed, you can be running videos, games in windowed mode etc etc etc and they all continue playing while win+tabbed like that.

 

[stepz]

Linux actually has something real similar with Xgl. There are some screenshots and small clips over here. And a longer clip over here.

Works really nice and fast. Moving windows around, switching desktops, switching windows, etc. is actually faster with 3d accelration, because the cpu doesn't have to do any redrawing.

 

[KimB]

Linux actually has something real similar with Xgl. There are some screenshots and small clips over here. And a longer clip over here.

Works really nice and fast. Moving windows around, switching desktops, switching windows, etc. is actually faster with 3d accelration, because the cpu doesn't have to do any redrawing.

Hmmm, nice, maybe I'll have to check that out pretty soon Looks like it's still in the beta stages (or earlier) at the moment, though.

 

[Kombatant]

Looks like it's still in the beta stages (or earlier) at the moment, though.

It's actually pretty usable - I wouldn't call it final quality, but not earlier than beta definitely.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Oh my, they gave us back the sidebar finally? I guess it really will be in the final release since the Enterprise CTP is supposed to be feature complete. I'm not really bothering to get it though until it comes out as Beta 2.

 

[ANova]

Vista is in a weird state right now, it's fast and yet it's not. With 1 GB of ram there is anywhere from 600-700 MB free yet it's still slow. Opening windows is slow but programs and Aero are fast, faster than in XP. Startup and shutdown is very slow and buggy plus the hard drive is almost constantly accessing resulting in frequent stuttering and freezing, probably due in part to its whopping 500M commit charge and probably the debug stuff as well. Even after disabling a ton of unnecessary services there are 40 processes running on average (I count 11 svchosts). Disabling Aero and using the classic theme is abhorishly slow, maybe because it's software rendered now? Quite funny because Aero is actually much faster with all the bells and whistles enabled. For some reason just moving the mouse around results in as much as 50% cpu usage from the csrss process. Every once in a while everything becomes very sluggish as well, including Aero, maybe because of buggy drivers? I'm running the ATI beta 5270 on 5308 so that might be at least partly to blame. Also the audio cuts in and out as well as changes in volume randomly. There are quite a few bugs, these are only the tip of the problems that I've run across, but otherwise it seems like a capable os.

 

[rwolf]

Vista is in a weird state right now, it's fast and yet it's not. With 1 GB of ram there is anywhere from 600-700 MB free yet it's still slow. Opening windows is slow but programs and Aero are fast, faster than in XP. Startup and shutdown is very slow and buggy plus the hard drive is almost constantly accessing resulting in frequent stuttering and freezing, probably due in part to its whopping 500M commit charge and probably the debug stuff as well. Even after disabling a ton of unnecessary services there are 40 processes running on average (I count 11 svchosts). Disabling Aero and using the classic theme is abhorishly slow, maybe because it's software rendered now? Quite funny because Aero is actually much faster with all the bells and whistles enabled. For some reason just moving the mouse around results in as much as 50% cpu usage from the csrss process. Every once in a while everything becomes very sluggish as well, including Aero, maybe because of buggy drivers? I'm running the ATI beta 5270 on 5308 so that might be at least partly to blame. Also the audio cuts in and out as well as changes in volume randomly. There are quite a few bugs, these are only the tip of the problems that I've run across, but otherwise it seems like a capable os.

GDI no longer hardware accelerated now.

 

[Fox5]

GDI no longer hardware accelerated now.

What would the reasoning for that be? Aren't there legacy apps that depend on it? Think of Age of Empires and Diablo!

 

[Reverend]

Vista is in a weird state right now, <plus other complaints>

Thanks for an update on the beta version of this OS.

 

[Kombatant]

Vista is in a weird state right now, it's fast and yet it's not. With 1 GB of ram there is anywhere from 600-700 MB free yet it's still slow. Opening windows is slow but programs and Aero are fast, faster than in XP. Startup and shutdown is very slow and buggy plus the hard drive is almost constantly accessing resulting in frequent stuttering and freezing, probably due in part to its whopping 500M commit charge and probably the debug stuff as well. Even after disabling a ton of unnecessary services there are 40 processes running on average (I count 11 svchosts). Disabling Aero and using the classic theme is abhorishly slow, maybe because it's software rendered now? Quite funny because Aero is actually much faster with all the bells and whistles enabled. For some reason just moving the mouse around results in as much as 50% cpu usage from the csrss process. Every once in a while everything becomes very sluggish as well, including Aero, maybe because of buggy drivers? I'm running the ATI beta 5270 on 5308 so that might be at least partly to blame. Also the audio cuts in and out as well as changes in volume randomly. There are quite a few bugs, these are only the tip of the problems that I've run across, but otherwise it seems like a capable os.

I can't say my installation is so sluggish, and I have it installed in my old PC (AthlonXP 3000+, Radeon 9700, 1,5 GB RAM). I agree with most of the things you said, apart from things becoming too sluggish at times, the audio cuts/probs (I have an nForce2 mobo) and the mouse CPU usage. But yes, as I said, Aero is fluid.

Thanks for an update on the beta version of this OS.

You had to say that, didn't you

 

[chavvdarrr]

I just don't get, whats so "cool" with Vista?
Stacked 3d windows when pressing win+tab !? I prefer to be sure which icon which app represents, with dynamically changing icons (or whatever are they called) that will be harder... Fancy effects when windows are opened/closed ? Who uses such things?!
GDI no longer hardware accelerated?! Oh, well, I can see the reason....

I have a feeling that MS will shoot themselves in the leg trying to make a more ecure OS, a more responsive OS AND more... don't know how to name it... funny OS ?
So far these beta version can be used for everything but working on them

 

[Reverend]

I just don't get, whats so "cool" with Vista?

It's basically the same "cool" factor when when we went from MS-DOS to Windows.

I.E. (btw, can anyone tell me just wtf "i.e." stands for... I use it so often) :

Folks just want a pretty OS on their PC. And there are a lot of PCs.

 

[Neeyik]

I.E. (btw, can anyone tell me just wtf "i.e." stands for... I use it so often) :

Latin - id est which means "that is".