Vista for gaming?

[dyuman]

I vaguely remember Brian using Vista, not sure if anyone else does as well...

I've seen a ton of stuff online on nightmares about vista not letting you run stuff, but DX10 is really appealing.

Is it as bad as people are saying? Or is it ok to go with it on a new computer build? Or should I be afraid?

[Pikachu]

Vista makes gaming a little more difficult and can randomly jack you in ways you can't see coming. It does not make it impossible, or even implausible. Just expect something dumb to happen which will get you screaming at your machine every now and then. Vista is all about "security", so it'll see certain actions from game applications as unsafe.

It's a little easier to criticize Vista for f'ing up your gaming. Keep in mind that Vista is constantly monitoring your activity, how you use your copyrighted digital media, and when you take a dump. That's the *real* issue at hand, and one Microsoft is starting to take real shit for. But really, you don't have tons of options right now when it comes to new machines, unless you want to buy a whole new machine, wipe it clean, and install XP.

[buhwhyen]

Vista has a new graphics thingy that makes stuff look prettier, but when I get around to cleaning out my hard drive I'm dumping vista and installing xp. (I have a copy of xp) Theres just a bunch of hoops you have to jump through to get stuff running, mostly permission stuff when patching and or installing, though overall the OS runs slower than xp with no real benefit at the moment (new graphics aren't utilized in 99% of things I will ever do and there are NO vista only games that would ever feasibly be worth the cost/hassle of switching to it)

[feedback]

I'd vote against vista, but that's probably because I've read way too much about how bad it is. Even with SP1 coming out the benchmarks aren't that much better than XP w/SP2 and soon SP3. Yes DX10 is nice, but there aren't a lot of games on the market right now that really use it. The only game that comes to mind for me is Crysis and that takes a pseudo-monster system to run anyways.

[dyuman]

Spending 2,000-2,500 on my new system from Central so it's going to be pretty beefy. Central would be putting in the drivers and jazz and I can hopefully ask them to shut off the security features as much as possible.

Basic parts I remember off top of my head are
9600 GT 512mb graphics card
3-4 gigs DDR3 1333 ram
500gigs-640gigs HD space (32 mb cache)
Intel Duo Core Wolfdale, 3.0gigz 6mb L2 Cache (people saying they air cooled this baby to 4.0 with better heat sinks and junk, I'm getting huge fans and sink for CPU, RAM, GPU, and the case itself has 3 fans on it... so prolly go at least 3.6 OC)

There are a couple games coming out that I'd like DX 10 for, age of conan, warhammer online. My keyboard, and printer have drivers for it as well. The look of fire and water graphics are night and day between the two DX's. Sadly there was a company that was making a version of DX10 that runs on XP and got pretty damn close to it, but called the project off (I'm sure because of microsoft pressure)

With Central doing the setup and it being so pricey I'll be taking that service warranty plan they offer (if anything goes wrong they'll take care of it for free for the 1st year or something like that).

Going in on Friday to setup the order (won't receive it for about a week or so after) - anyone feel like coming along?
PS: Jon wanted to meet with you on friday to go over the website stuff too if you're avail.

[Pikachu]

Wait... this is a desktop? If so,

Desktop = Epic Fail

Unless you're willing to move it around.

[buhwhyen]

I hope...
1) You are willing to move something that I would honestly be afraid of breaking (that box sounds hella fragile)

2) You play massively graphic intensive games. The specs are overkill for anything I can think of thats not like huge graphic design projects. I didn't even realize they made 512mb video cards yet. I also didn't realize we had moved onto DDR3 RAM.

3) By "oc" you don't mean overclocked, though I'm pretty sure you do. (First of all you're talking about overclocking a duo core 3ghz?) Is two 3ghz processors too slow? Why overclock? Depending on your front bus speed...you may or may not get any real benefit from overclocking. The way to calculate the speed of your processor goes like...
(Front bus Speed)*(multiplier, number of connections on motherboard)
So if you have a 133 front bus speed and a 10 multiplier, you get a 1.33 ghz processor. Increasing the number of connections gives you faster processor speed and comes with "some" risk, depending on how frequently and the duration of each occurrence where you utilize the maximum processor speed. "Some" can in a lot of cases mean no risk, but also generally means the increase in performance is minimal.

[dyuman]

Gonna get case with handles/semi friendly with moving around (prolly a bit on the heavier side). Justin had no trouble taking his comp around and had comparable parts.

Getting Crysis along with the system to play with Lapulis (guy we were playing WoW with for a bit), get back into Oblivion, and possibly CS:Source.

I saved quite a bit cus I did some research and found that DDR2 800 and DDR3 1333 are like... 5% increase in performance (has to do with CAS latencies on the higher ram clogging things up, where as a low CAS of 4 or 5 compensates on the DDR2) but 400% increase in price. Prolly gonna get an extra graphics card and SLI it.

Age of Conan is something I'm gonna try in May, which is DX10 as well, and if not that Warhammer Online (DX9 tho). Graphically either way, if I don't use it all now, I'll use it 4-5 years down the road.

Prolly wont overclock the CPU, just reading a lot saying that its ultra friendly for it. It is an option either way.

Will have details on friday after I go to central tomorrow.