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Never been much of a custom myself, I never done anything to a pc although I would like to in the future, its the best way to do it.

ooooh yeah, and you save a shit load of money ^^ but there's no way you'll ever convince your parents to give you £600 and a week to order and put together your own pc.

that and OEMs generally don't let you overclock

haha, it'll probably come out on 7th gen consoles eventually too, so It's just a waiting game

That is a whole other story for me...

Me, myself and Wii

My cousin and my best friend have 360's thom so if I want to play a game, I just end up convincing them to get it. Thats how I got to play gears of war and soon to be halo 3

I am anxiously awaiting Xaudio2. Essentially what we've been living with is the equivalent to running our 3d games with VGA.inf. It's essentially the lowest level of software emulated sound compatibility. It really is unnoticeable, but it shouldn't have shipped that way.

For all of those wondering why they didn't leave Directsound in, it can be attributed to the same reason all sound cards needed new drivers, and why many were incompatible. Vista has a completely new (and very nice) audio stack. This is the same stack that allows different volume settings to different applications. With this came a whole new audio driver level, as well as audio drivers and sound compatibility. So Directsound, because of it's hardware integration, would have to be completely reworked for the DX 10.0 release, only to be replaced in the 10.1 release. I guess Microsoft did an ok move there by not wasting time, but still, I'd like to have my accelerated audio from the get go. (I'm not sure how it does DirectX 9 Directsound compatibility, but I'm pretty sure there's no native Directsound functioning).

Apparently DirectInput and Xinput are both in DirectX10. Directinput received it's last major overhaul in DirectX 8, and Xinput was introduced in DirectX 9, and in the Xbox 360. See on wikipedia about the limitations.

Again, I'm not too keen on DirectX specifics, as all of the 3d application writing I do is cross platform, and therefore, used OpenGL (which I find to be inferior and hard to code for in the respect of gaming graphics.)

DirectSound compatibility will be achieved through DirectX 9L, just as DirectDraw compatibility since DX8 was achieved through the 7 driver.

AFAIK, Microsoft is trying to make its X-Technologies cross platform, I don't know if they'll conveniently forget about linux though.

Microsoft are jumping in large steps, causing a lot of problems, as seen with vista and its compatibility issues, taking smaller steps to iron out things may take longer but it will result in a better experience in the end, people can wait if its for the better.

I know that. I understand that it's achieved through the layer. What I'm saying is is it truely accelerated audio? Or are they "emulating" the acceleration, and using software compatibility on it in a sense.

I think it's good that Microsoft makes it's DirectX cross-platform (although this is the first I'm hearing). People who want to game on a mac (which is useless, because despite going to intel, with the same EEPROM, any old card you get may not have Mac support for Quartz Extreme/Core Image/Core Animation, becausae Apple has to write the "kexts".) Still, it would prevent things like EA having to use a wrapper to change low level DirectX calls into OpenGL calls.

Yes, Microsoft is jumping in large steps, but remember it's for the better. Things such as moving most drivers out of Ring0 for instance. Sure, performance, especially in games, was marginally effected, but now that drivers are running in userspace (hence new drivers/stacks) there's better stability, and allows software design to be easier. Unfortunately, this breaks parts here and there of the Win32 API, but eventually, things will come around with new updates. At some point you have to cut off old software, and I'm glad to see stuff from 1997 using outdated Win9x kernel calls, and running on Wizard 97 guidelines.

Remember, the NT kernel has parts in protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking that no other kernel in existance has. NT is by default no more vulnerable than linux. Popularity and how the GUI are applied are some of the insecurities. Still, it's undoubtedly the fastest kernel available, and has less discovered flaws per month than Linux, and is patched the quickest (just google about it). And honestly, the kernel is just as stable as linux. People compare a GUI windows (the only kind there is) with a CLI linux. Sure a vanilla compile of just the kernel will be more stable. But go feature for feature. Add Xorg, add Gnome, alsa, etc. Watch linux have just as many bugs.

I'd love it if microsoft would actually license the kernal to someone else, that way we could actually have a streamlined Vista: Gaming Edition, for example.

But, I guess that'll never happen :/.

While we are on the subject, are we expecting cross platform shoot outs from this game?

Once this game has had a bit of time on Pc I expect it to head over to 360 with some added features, much like gears of war will do.

It's simple too.  All they need to do is strip the server stuff of Windows server 2008, add on the 3d grahpics (keep the basic UI), and there you go.  No BS user services, no nice UI, just the NT kernel, and a barebones system config.

The amount of hacks I've done on my gaming machine is ridiculous.

I'm not even using explorer as my shell XD

That's the only reason I'm reluctant to UG to vista atm..

Awesome.  I imagine you have most of the unnecisary processes disabled, no or light AV.  No Anitspyware.  I know there are some registry, and even dll level hacks some gamers are getting into to increase even .01 FPS if possible.

That's great about the shell.  I did that once, but I never quite liked the windows replacement shells.  KDE is coming, but there's no point to that, explorer>KDE?  Exactly which shell are you using (j/w).

And that's an understandable issue.  Eventually Vista's requirements will be tiny, and the difference in power between the two will be negligable.  (ex. Heh, Vista only uses 384 RAM than Xp), I imagine, gaming will start to take place in the 64-bit era, between how gamers quickly upgrade, and 32-bit is getting pushed to the wall in regards to gaming performance.

That, and newer Vista apps can use DWM, in theory, to accelerate the entire GUI app (like using system memory to utilize superfetch), so as of right now, I don't know if any replacement shells would work...

hehe. I have windowblinds 5 (running a UIS1 visual style) because it increases performance to the windows GDI for the windows themselves and the actual shell is a hacked up litestep.

but yeah, I'm wondering if I should make the 64-bit jump when I do upgrade...

Isn't windowblinds just a skinning theme for explorer and crew, I didn't know it skinned litestep, pretty cool stuff. I never heard anything of it enhancing the performance of GDI, GDI+, but I'll surely take your word for it. The only thing I'm wondering is the overhead that running windowblinds.exe gives you? Doesn't that app have large overhead?

Anyway, I run 64-bit Linux. Linux has matured greatly, since it's been supporting 64-bit on various CPU types since almost it's introduction. All 3rd party apps run natively in 64-bit for Linux (I don't think you can run 32-bit, no compatibility layer that I know of). Some things like Adobe Flash still need to come around and support 64-bit linux/win etc.

I know Windows does let you run 32-bit apps in 64-bit editions, by using the wow64 compatibility layer, which utilizes part of the 32-bit mode in the x86 processor. I'm not quite sure how it would effect 32-bit games, running in wow64 and all that. I'd presume any new CPU you'll buy for your next machine will almost guaranteed have 64-bit (I think they all have it standard now)(My Core 2 Duo has EM64T), but I imagine that eventually 64-bit will become the standard when games require more resources, and will likely be the first major group to make the jump (maybe after video editing groups or scientific groups). (I know I'm already working on CAD code that's 64-bit). I would go with 64-bit Vista if I were you, assuming that you'll have all compatible hardware, DX10 graphics, etc. I went with 32-bit for compatibility., but I will eventually switch to 64-bit soon

What litestep does is replace the taskbar

you still use explorer for browsing the hard disk, and with explorer comes the heavy uxtheme.dll library. Also the uxtheme.dll is attatched to every process with a window, if windowblinds uses its unified executable to do the skinning you shave off a lot of redundant dlls

What windowsblinds (since ver5) does is completely abstract the theme system and it actually comes out faster than the windows classic UI especially if you use a low-complexity theme (like a UIS1 or is it USF1, I can't remember XD) and since windowblinds replaces the need for the uxtheme.dll and it's associated dependancies explorer actually uses less memory and CPU time.

Litestep is its own beast ^^ just make sure the skin you use doesn't load any particularly heavy dlls and you'll be set.


but, being me, I want the best possible performance, surely the 32-bit emulation has some huge overheads?


edit: but generally, I'm not browsing my hard disk when I have games up ^^

*skips the long posts.*

Which comes out first Fall Out 3 or this?

Cause I'm waiting for an upgrade for FO3 at the moment.

I heard this game is coming to Australia a day early or something... awesome.

I understand now, so it's basically a replacement for GDI+ skinning.  uxtheme.dll is basically an Xp only thing, IIRC.  So when you have explorer running, it's obviously only allocating resources needed for the file browser (which makes sense)  It still obviously takes cycles durring gaming, but not as much.  

As far as 32-bit on 64 goes, as I said, it's not emulation.  The x86 64-bit extension has compatability built in for 32-bit applications.  Unfortunately, however, it's impossible for a 64-bit operating system kernel, or application (hence why a 64-bit browser can't run a plugin in 32-bit, any 64-bit application won't work with a 32-bit extension).  With this stage, it's more complicated than 16 to 32 bit was.  However, this compatibility that's in the x86-64 instruction set allows, through a lightweight layer, to run the 32-bit code essentially natively, and the wow64.exe layer just "adapts" the code, if you will, for the 64-bit kernel/low level API calls. The bottom line is performance is marginally affected, at the most. Some places, 32-bit software may run faster, because if the app is kernel dependant, it may execute those commands better (NT 64 is obviously faster). Some API heavy apps won't run as well in wow64, but almost identical to under 32-bit. And the same really goes for 64-bit apps, some of them will run considerably faster, especially memory intensive ones, while others, while even 64-bit native, will run in the equivalent speed of their 32-bit counterparts.

ahh, fair dos, a misunderstanding on my part ^^. I'll probably dual boot for a while with 64 as my primary. If all is well I'll delete the 32 partition.