Woo my Vista is finally usable!

In this thread ( http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=81606 ) I posted my Windows Experience Index which had a poor graphics card performance. Well today I plugged in a Geforce 9800GTX and the Graphics and Gaming Graphics both give 5.9, which is the highest I believe.

Anyway it's made a HUGE difference. I was really getting annoyed by several things, which have all been fixed now:

1) When scrolling through a long Internet page the updating was slow and practically visible!
2) When holding down a key to scroll up or down in Excel or the Blitzmax IDE, when I released the key the app would carry on scrolling for maybe 500ms thus missing the line I was aiming for! At first I wondered if this was a USB keyboard thing but then I tested it in notepad and it was fine. The new video card 100% fixes this. Clearly the old video card could not keep up with the scrolling, how sad is that!?
3) Just opening windows and doing various windows tasks seemed sluggish.

So anyway, the moral of the story is get a really good video card if you have Vista otherwise it sucks. Also trust your instincts if you are experienced with computers - I knew the video card was stinky and causing lots of problems and this upgrade proves it. Now my "worst" component is my RAM with an Experience Index of 5.2.

Nice! Only have an old 8800gts... :/

I still can't bear that fact that Vista eats resources like pie.
Why waste such a gfx card just for some badly coded eye candy that slows down the whole system. - Try WinXP with your new card and you should see a difference as well.

If you have a mediocre video card, turning off the aero transparancy effects will also do wonders for the speed of Vista.

(Under aero everything is treated as a 3D texture, rather than flat 2D-as-usual like the older Windows versions)

I have an intel GMA X3100 sitting on here and Vista runs every app fine... With full Aero too.

I'm testing DX9 on this and as far as the frame rates go, there seems to be plenty of juice spare, obviously not as much as an 8 series card granted... But theres still enough.

Dabz

@Grisu, yep I agree.

With the resources Microsoft has its a bit stinky they make you upgrade your graphics card to run their new OS.

A cynic might say back handers bounce around from grpahics card companies to Msoft - no, your new OS is still too efficient, does not hug enough resources yet, can't you make it a little more sluggish - make it worth your while.

Then again MSoft make CPUs and motherboard ish stuff which may need to be upgraded to run new OS thangs. I'm just a countree bumpkin - whadda I know. XP still works though.

hmm, doesn't need that heavy a card, 6600GT runs vista fine with the eye candy, better than xp even with the transparency on, though I prefer the glass effect turned off since it confuses things a bit when you can see stuff through the titlebar.

My old card must have just been really crap. It was noticeably more rubbish that my XP machine and that was annoying me. It felt like a step backwards despite the PC being 4.5 years newer!

heh a Quadro. I always coveted those when I was really into 3d graphics and those were supposed to be the cards to have. I suppose gaming cards must have overtaken them at some point when shaders began to take precedence over polycounts even in 3d apps like 3dsmax.

I never would have thought they would have run that badly though. Maybe they only really ran well in GL. Looks like your sorted :). Wish I had a mobo that would take a modern video card, I'm still using leadwerks old AGP 7800 he sold me ages ago on my primary machine.

Actually my game crashed on that card in GL, so that was a no go too. Perhaps it was some driver issue, but the new card definitely rocks.

I have AGP on the home PC and I maxed it out with the best card I could get (+ upgraded the PSU). Soon I will get a new home PC hopefully, but I need to persuade the other half that it's a valid expense. It was when I was programming at home self-employed, but now I program at work there is less need for me to get a new home PC (except for when going to work due to snow is impractical like now!)

My old desktop runs Vista reasonably. Having only 1GB or RAM was the deciding factor for me in removing Vista from it.

My laptop, the beast that it is, did occasionally have issues with scrolling web pages. This was a known issue. Not sure if it's fixed in a newer driver though, but I'm running XP now anyway.

Keeping my eye on Windows 7. There's a fair bit of positive propaganda going on with regard to performance. I'll be installing the beta on my old desktop later this evening.

Nice, Grey. Was it a belated Xmas pressie from BFG or did you shell out for it?

My windows experience index says that the ram (2GB) is the bottleneck on my system with a score of 5.0 and everything else has a higher score even the hard disk...not sure that can be right or what it actually means?

my computer has an overall index of 4.2 in vista thanks to a slow processor. Still runs games like crysis quite well though. Got slow ram but 2mb of it which is 4.5 gaming graphics on my 7800 is 5.7

Actually I requested a new one about a month ago, but with the snow in Seattle meaning people were off work, and the IT guy having a huge holiday (to use up his unused holiday) it didn't get ordered. Then on Friday my graphics card started crashing my machine in a bad way and I need to get a beta ready for Monday so I just ran out and bought a new one :-)

It's all relative -- it just means that your HD is fairly speedy compared to the average HD, and your memory is slowish compared to average memory.... But your 'fast' HD will still be hundreds or thousands of times slower than your 'slow' memory is.

My score is 5.3, with the CPU (core 2 DUO @ 2.4GHz) being the lowest
My RAM score used to be 5.6 when I had 2GB of RAM with a latency of CAS5. I added 4 GB of dirt cheap CAS6 memory for 6GB total. It lowered the score to 5.4, but my machine feels much snappier regardless.

@xlsior: Do you have 64-bit Vista to make use of all that RAM? I only have 2GB but will put in matched pairs of 4Gb total even though my 32-bit OS will only see 3GB (according to what I've heard). Why 3Gb anyway? I thought it should be 4Gb as that's a 32-bit int! weird...

[edit] found a link to explain the 3GB thing: http://www.vistaclues.com/reader-question-32-bit-vista-memory-limits/

I'm runing the Windows 7 beta now. It's fairly nippy. They've sorted out a lot of the lag which was present in Vista's Aero interface. That alone gives the impression of a fast, responsive OS.

Vista drivers for my video card and motherboard chipset seem to be working perfectly.

Looks like I may have a worthy OS to upgrade to later this year. I've not run benchmarks or games on it. I'm going to use it every day for the 30 days to see if it falls down. It apparently dies on its arse on laptops when trying to wake from sleep, but I've not seen (or tested for) that behaviour myself.

Interesting. What's so different about it though (yes I could google...)

** EDIT ** BlitzMAX and Blitz3D work perfectly. Have to run Max as Administrator to be able to compile code, just like in Vista. UAC pops up when doing this.

There's not a lot different from Vista, to be honest. Desktop themes are far more nicely integrated and accessible. I can't find a way to drop Aero and go back to the old Win2000 style. There perhaps isn't an option for that anymore.

The sidebar is gone. Sidebar gadgets are now free-floating entities on the desktop. Much nicer way of doing things.

UAC isn't a pain in the ass any longer. My priviliges are Administrator by default. Whether this is only because it's a beta build, I don't know.

The Windows Experience indexes now go up to 7.9. There's a lengthy explanation of why this is so if you click on the relevant 'help' link after you run the test.

You still have to restart your PC if you change your network workgroup.

The taskbar is quite a lot different, showing just an icon for open programs. Customisable though.

The 'quick launch' bar is sort-of gone. You can just pin programs to the taskbar instead. Again, a much more nicely integrated way of doing things, compared to Vista or XP.

System notifications are centralised (e.g., one icon which you click on shows you the "you need antivirus" and "you need to do a scan [with Windows Defender]"). Nice and unobtrusive.

I haven't delved into the networking too much. Quick glance shows there's a lot of similarity to Vista's networking, but with some obvious layout changes. I will mess with this more tomorrow.

It's bloody nippy. My desktop is not exactly the fastest PC (CPU and RAM index of 4.1) but I'm heartily impressed with system responsiveness. I've installed Steam and run Team Fortress 2. HL2.exe crashes on exit occasionally (crashed on loading, the first time). 3D performance seems OK. Haven't really stress-tested though.

There's a 'biometric devices' entry in Control Panel, to support the fingerprint readers common in laptops, I'm sure.

There's an 'action center' entry in Control Panel. This leads to a seemingly useful maintenance section, where you can do a system restore (amongst a couple of other things).

There's a 'parental controls' entry in Control Panel. Not investigated this. Good idea though.

In 'Sounds' in Control Panel, there's a feature whereby you can have the computer sounds reduced in volume when you're making a phone call (or probably Skype, Live Messenger + headset etc).

There's a 'default location' thing in Control Panel, to integrate with GPS wizardry.

Even Paint and Calculator have had a decent make-over. Calculator has a 'Programmer' mode, where it shows the binary-digit groupings. Genius.

There's a 'HomeGroup' feature in networking, which seems designed to facilitate photo and file sharing above and beyond normal Windows file sharing. Haven't messed with it yet. Seems a bit of a white elephant.

All in all, I'm really impressed. It's what Vista should have been. **EDIT** I can't believe this is beta. It seems complete.

Noooo! What if somebody -likes- the old behaviour? I have the sidebar set to 'always on top' so it acts like the taskbar, on the right side of the screen. I have a widescreen monitor so it's not like it takes up -any- space at all... is the option still there to do that?

I think the sidebar may still be there, but operates slightly differently. 'sidebar.exe' runs, but by default the graphical effect is not literally that of a big bar at the side of your screen. I'm guessing there's probably an option to go back to the old format.

@VinylPusher: Thanks for the info. Gah I guess this means my games will need to support it when it comes out, unless it works the same as Vista internally.

Under vista you can also use the gardgets free-floating.

That said, to me the solid-bar-on-the-side-of-a-widescreen-monitor seems a much neater setup that a ton of free-floating stuff, so I sure hope that you can go back to the old behavious as well.



Most likely it's pretty much the same as Vista for any of the major components: Ironically, Windows 7's internal version number is 6.1 (with Vista being 6.0)

That's not ironic.

> All in all, I'm really impressed. It's what Vista should have been

Exactly .. I am glad I have managed to completely avoid Windows Blista

I'd never thought I'd say this, but: Vista 64-bit SP1 actually is pretty nice, as long as you have RAM coming out of your ears.

Apparently, it's Microsoft's intention to do away with the sidebar. It's still conjecture, until the final version ships.

Vista and Win 7 must share a lot of internals. Drivers for Vista work for Win 7. From what I can gather, Win 7 is an incremental change (despite Microsoft marketing it as otherwise). The phrase I've read on a couple of sites is "what the server team [at Microsoft] would have called an interim release (e.g. Vista R2).

Microsoft are apparently using some new profiling technique to identify poorly performing code paths, in order to optimise the hell out of them. We're at build 7000, no publically released beta and it already performs well. With perhaps 6 to 9 months left before it goes gold, there should be some good things to come!

On paper it's one of their objectives, so there shouldn't be much to worry about.


But they didn't market it as otherwise... they clearly stated the same foundation was going to be used.
I would say that Vista was centered on developing a new architecture, and 7 is centered on restyling (not only aesthetically but in regards to functionality), which actually is very important in a OS and I was looking forward to it, and optimization.

to be honest I don't like the sidebar, it gets in the way of my everyday computing. Often I use my desktop as a current work area and drag and drop a lot of stuff from ftp and reference images etc from internet explorer. Usually have a lot of windows open. You can'd drag and drop files over the sidebar and for some reason thats the area of the screen that is most likely to have empty space I can easily drop to.

My new keyboard has a gadgets button that opens the sidebar when you press it. Just wish it also closed it, seems a bit dumb to only work one way instead of being a full toggle.

The sidebar (and UAC) are the first things to go whenever I reinstall.

I don't want to know the time, and if I do, there's a clock on the taskbar. I also don't care if its raining/snowing and if I want to know, I'll look out the window. I don't have the time or inclination to watch a slideshow of the sample pictures that come with Vista either, because I'm doing other stuff.

Its all a bit pointless.

on a 4:3 screen the sidebar is annoying -- but on a 24" widescreen it's pretty nice.

I like having the 'applauncher' gadget that allows me to put a whole bunch of program shortcuts right there, always on top. Also weather gadget, time, calendar and sticky notes for jotting down quick notes.

I'll wait for Windows 7, for now I'm sticking with my XP SP3.

yup, vista 64.

I was a little apprehensive at first because I was afraid I'd run into a bunch of compatibility issues, but realistically nothing major has popped up.

the only thing I ran into is a few older programs that do driver-level access not working properly (such as older Nero, and WS_FTP (thanks to its integration into explorer))

As far as the 3GB issue: Windows can deal with a 4GB address space in 32 bit. The catch is that it' snot just RAM that uses these addresses, but also other components such as your PCI slots, network cards, video cards, etc.
Depending on the exact components and such that make up your PC those peripherals will eat up a good chunk of the 4GB address space, typically leaving between 3 and 3.5GB that can be used by your RAM.
(And the more memory on your video card, the more likely you'll be seeing the lower end of that)

my biggest moan about vista these days is the stupid file/nav interface where NOTHING is comfortable. Its as if its designed by monkeys to actually slow you down. Even the start menu sucks.
EG. every time i open the explorer/load/save window i want to see "Computer" and all drives there as well as the docs etc., not have to add them as favorites, scroll arround on the tree, make links in "documents" or type c: into the address to get there.

SP1 was a vast improvement but its still feels slow clunky compared to say Ubuntu or OSX and still has weird network problems periodically.

Seeing as Windows 7 Beta is not available to the public but to only a set few trusted beta testers who are under NDA and sworn to secrecy I figure that the few here who were testing were either one of them (Not possible with all the info released) or they turned to the Dark Side, which is where I just found it. ^^ :)

I've made some amendments to the Win 7 beta installation which should see me going past 30-days usage without a hitch.

To be perfectly honest, Windows 7 may well just be the first ever Windows version I go and buy a retail box of (rather than putting up with whatever OEM flavour comes with my machine...).

Yeah I was tempted but worried about compatibility so got 32 even though I have to use less RAM, but figured 3GB ought to be OK for day to day anyway. So if I had say a 1GB Graphic Card then I would have a stink low amount of RAM. Imagine that! It could actually affect performance...luckily I've only got 512MB.

lol, love the casualness of "amendments" :-)

and people said shared gfx memory sucked, its damn near the same thing but the chips are split up

'shared memory' (in the traditional sense) is still worse, since the biggest problem is that the data has to be transferred over your regular memory bus, instead of all staying on-card where it can operate at higher frequencies and won't interfere with the other memory transfers happening in your regular RAM

Sorry to pick up something from far above, but:


Why is that? I've never run BlitzMax as administrator on Vista and haven't had problems. Even building modules works fine.

EDIT: My account is an admin account, but I'm not using "Run as administrator" and there are no popups.

BlitzMax installs to C:\Program Files by default. Also with default settings, BlitMax uses C:\Program Files\BlitzMax\tmp\ to store the temporary .exe if you do a quick compile. Vista and Win 7 block permission to any prorgram without Admin rights trying to write to C:\Program Files\

Don't know why yours doesn't do this, unless you've installed BlitzMax to a different folder?

UAC disabled probably.

The memory cache super fetch thing works very well indeed here. Switching between 3dsmax and photoshop and outlook is instant, even when checking email lol.

In XP I couldn't do a lot on my single core cpu when the computer was checking email or rendering video, the system would all but lock up. So the memory management and multitasking capabilities are far superior in vista if you have a fair amount of ram, whilst in XP there is almost no difference between 1gb and 2gb. Meanwhile Vista is night and day between 1 and 2

That's where it is on my computer.



I'm not sure (how to do that). When I copy in a module directory it asks for admin password... So enabled?

On vista it just asks if you want to continue (two times actually) unless you have more than a user on the machine and you are using a different user than the administrator. It should ask for a password only standard users.

Anyway, to check just go to the Control Panel, then User Account. On Vista you have a link called "Turn User Access Control on or off".

I prefer Vista above XP now, it just takes a little time to get used to the interface. You need a good graphics card a bit more memmory compared to XP but I like the idea in Vista that the graphics card is used more to lower the CPU load a bit.

The only problem in Blitzmax I had was the delay in sound, but that was easy to fix with help of this forum.
I disabled UAC as well because for me it was anoying, but it's still good MS is creating a safer enviroment to surf the web.

I got Vista Ultimate running on both my game/work system (for specs check below) as on my Acer One 150 netbook and on the netbook I can still play the game Spore without any troubles.

I waited a long time before trying Vista until they released SP1 to be sure most bugs where fixed.

Vista has great improvements on the network connection, no long waiting times before seeing others in network and giving a detailed connection with even all devices you put between your computer and internet, so most network problems are a lot easier to trace.

I'm using Windows 2008 Server enterprise on my main server which runs smooth as well but it took me also a bit of time to get used to at first, but I like how it works and it's easy to maintain.

I wonder if Windows 7 will be that great compared to Vista. Windows 7 is based on Vista in the first place, and the only new feature I see so far is better buildin options for Touchscreens/Tablet PC's.

What are the advantages of using Vista? DX 10.1, what else?

Besides the way it looks :

- It's better configurable with networks
- When Sharing folders on the network you can tell which users have access to it now.
- UAC makes it safer for first time computer users who are unfamiliar with the dangers from the internet.
- Using your graphics card for faster menu buildup and getting less cpu load from that.
- Handy search option in the Start menu.

These are a few improvements I noticed, but there could be more.

Better memory management
Improved multitasking between hungry apps that use a lot more resources. Even on older single core CPU's

Safer graphics driver environment (now able to crash to desktop instead of blue screen if driver has a problem in game/fullscreen mode).
Enhanced audio support.

To elaborate a little on that: One particularly nice feature of the audio is that in addition to the master volume, you also have a mixer where you can set volume at an application level -- so you can make an 'important' program louder, or make an annoying program be quieter / silent.

If you have a widescreen monitor, then the sidebar can be nice.

64 bit Vista has much better driver support than 64 bit XP

If you have aero enabled the GUI gets handled through your videocards 3D acceleration, which adds some nice features: You can see a real-time thumbnail preview of the window when you hover over a taskbar entry, which makes it easier to find the window you want if you have many programs open. You can also see your applications close-to-lifesize rolodex view where you can flip through a stack of your open windows (when pressing windows-Tab key, kind of like a more visual representation of the old alt-tab stuff)

Arguably, it's prettier.

Of course, there's also plenty of changes just for the sake of change -- plenty of things are different, not necessarily better. It does take a little to get used to.

I can't stand the Vista file search stuff myself, and would switch back to the Win2000 classic search if it were possible.

As a trained network person, I disagree.You could before! (At least with XP pro).True, but its still a long way from Unix/Linux quality 'UAC'What for? All that extra power and all those millions (collectively) used killowats just to render a pretty desktop/menu. A computer in this day and age should use a fraction of its power to render something as simple as a window environment. Other OSs/GUIs dont seem to need it (except mabe fusion but thats in a different 'class' entirely :).The whole start menu in vista is a usability disaster (but yes it does search faster)The only thing i like about vista over using Ubuntu or XP is the chess program.

I agree, Vista networking is more or less broken on a professional level. For nubs, it might be great. But I wouldn't know =]


If it's all offset by the gfx card (ie on a good gfx card) it's better to have your CPU freed up for whatever you want to do - there's no ifs and buts. Personally, I quite like the snappier window interface and more processing time for CPU heavy apps...


Maybe you should go back to MacOS BEFORE it got the 3D acceleration.


Oh yeh that's another one - all the old games that come with Windows now actually look really good and there's more of them, too.

Id rather have the window interface looking good without needing it in the first place.

Still each to their own :)

I rather like the interface in Win 7. Couple of rough edges but the basic ideas are quite sound. It is possible to go back to the Vista or 2000 way of things though.

I often preferred the bleak grey look but as the Aero theme is now as responsive as the bleak grey theme, I find myself using it more.

**EDIT** Something else I'm noticing, apps really do start a lot faster. I'm sure there's a counter-argument that precaching apps is wasteful of RAM, but... if stuff is faster overall, then I'm happy my RAM is being put to good use in this way.

Quitting out of RAM-hungry games also no longer results in disk thrashing after you get back to the desktop.

how did you blag a copy of 7 then? O_o

Is it beta-ble yet?

The beta of 7 was oficially released

The beta is officially out tomorrow for public consumption. I'll grab it direct from Microsoft and install the x64 version. I've mentioned it before but I'm seriously interested in parting with some cash for Win 7. It runs great on my old desktop machine so I'm going to guess it will run fantastically on my laptop, my housemate's laptop and the VMWare machine he runs to keep business stuff away from personal.