so I finally got the new upgrades :

CPU: Intel pentium 4 3.2 GHZ
HDD:160 GB SATA II
GPU:Inno3D 9600 GSO (768 MB dedicated + 768 shared=1.5 GB total)
RAM:2x1 GB 676 MHZ
PSU:discovery 500 Watt
display:LG 17" LCD
OS:Windows Vista SP1 64 Bit

and compared to my shitty old PC , this has been one phenominal jump in preformence , since now crysis runs at steady 20 FPS most of the time ,except for some open scenes ,that is when it is absoloutely maxed out and running at 1024x768 with 0 AA.

did I also mention that I have stored about 15 top games that I haven't even touched and saved them for this day (goes back from the days of test drive) and just to mention some:
GRAW2
Rainbow six :vegas
Test drive
Call of dutty 4
crysis
lost planet
GOW
UT III

So am I the luckiest man on the planet or what ?

how'd you get all this, given your current location?

GRATS btw.

I know crazy huh ? The most difficult part was to find a geforce9600 , no one in Iraq seems to have even heard of it . So i'm extremely lucky to find it and for a good price too only 175 $ . Anyway thanks man

Ha, I upgraded from a P4 3.2Ghz the other day. It's a good chip, for the age anyway.

well , it's doing good so far. But I'm having an issue here and I want your opinions about it :should I keep the 64 bit version or would the 32 bit improve performence ?

Eh... You have a different one to me. Mine was a Northwood core, yours must be a Prescott or something. To answer your question though it's advisable to use 32-bit.

I've been doing some reading on the web and almost every review I've read recommended vista 64 bit . So now I'm confused ,memory usage reads 680 mb at idle , is that too much for a 2 GB ram or will the 32 bit take similar amounts ? Also I'm having some performence issues with (test drive) is it because it's not compatible with 64 bit ? Finally , I know I'm being annoying but I have to ask this: when I run Crysis it plays fine till the part when you find that frozen ship parked in the jungle , you know the part when you chase that alien (the one that grabs your team mate) , then you have to jump down a cliff just to find him lying dead , when I do that the game shows the objective completed icon and the screen goes dark , like when a cut scene is about to begin , but then nothing happens , the screen stays black and I can still hear myself moving and shooting , when I pause the game the black screen is removed , but when I resume it returns . Any one have an Idea about why this is happening ? Thanks alot .

I imagine any performance issues are down to the fact you're using Windows Vista, and any massive bugs are down to the fact hardly any games actually support 64-bit properly.

Seriously, if you like games, go back to XP.

A lot of gaming problems with gaming in vista are now fixed.

Yeah, but it's still inferior to XP and hogs double the memory.

Vista isn't bad, it was before but now it is pretty much error free. Games work damn fine on it.

XP no longer has support, so why even stay with it. It will no longer improve.

Just go with vista.

Install vista 64-bit
Install all updates/SP1
Enjoy your pc

I appreciate you trying to help Guns but support for XP hasn't ended, what the hell are you on about. I don't think someone who's in denial for buying it, probably for jumping blindly on the DX10/64-bit bandwagon, is in a good position to give advice. You've also just demonstrated the above to be true, as you used to avidly defend Vista but now just admitted that back then it was shit. Congrats.

Telling someone to get 64-bit Vista is possibly the worst advice this forum section has seen. Yes Vista runs games (wow!), but it does so with an undeniable performance hit which although improved since release, a system like Change's could really do without. Ontop of that I can recall dozens of cases where Vista has caused, and still does cause, issues with games installing, patching, let alone actually playing. And the 64-bit version, don't even get me started on that. I can count the number of games that support it, without issue, on one hand, and even then they get fuck all out of it worth the hassle you'll go through.

At the end of the day if Vista wasn't such a failure MS wouldn't be rushing it's successor out years earlier than planned, and everyone I've met, plus a significant portion of this forum's members who have had Vista wouldn't of reverted, or are desperately wanting to revert, to XP.

Lol this is the same argument you put out when it first came out.

And that issue with his game has noting to due with vista, it is a ingame issue.

Try patching it or reinstall it. Just keep you saved game file.

Well yeah. Because not much has changed...

A lot has changed. You would have to use vista to understand that.

I do use Vista, it's on my laptop. Drivers have improved, it's been optimised a little, thats it. It still can't match XP.

Hehe, vista + Laptops = no no.

My mom has a laptop w/vista and it isn't very good. I mean the laptop is good, just vista on it isn't.

Also vista is adaptable. For example, when your not running anything, just windows it uses more resources to make it faster and so your are fully utilizing your components. And when you open a program, it frees up ram that it is using and put it towards that program. And vice versa.

It shouldn't have to dedicate so much resources to completing mundane tasks. If a laptop meets the disgustingly obscene system requirements of Vista it wouldn't be a "no no" its simply that Vista is a worthless resource hog. If you're going to game and want to get the most out of your system's resources, stick with XP.

Er, yeah. You're talking shit Guns. There's nothing special about laptops which makes Vista treat them badly. Yeah they have lower specs which generally makes laptops perform worse, but I'm pretty sure the 2.4GHz Core2 and 2GB RAM in this one is enough to run it as well as it's going to run.

Besides, that's only PCs in current possession. I was running Vista before about 8 weeks ago on my old PC before it died, I was running Vista on a relatives PC a few months ago, I was running Vista on a friends PC last year, every time I've used it, it's been shite.



That's been a function of pretty much any modern OS I can name, it's nothing special or unique to Vista.

I mainly use vista for it's DX10 support , seriously it's awsome.
I'm also a bit surprised , you see I installled the 64 bit version by mistake , but I didn't run into much compatibility issues ,yet.
Here is what I think is a good plan :I think that I should keep the vista 64 bit , seeing that most DX 10 games support it anyway, and install XP alongside with it.

or will that hit performence?

Oh dear. Don't buy the DX10 hype, seriously. It offers no noticeable visual improvement over DX9, mauls performance, and is buggy as fuck. MS actually have to pay off developers to implement it, and disable otherwise standard DX9 features to make DX10 look better. Even if you do stick with Vista do yourself a favour and don't run in DX10 mode.

I think you've got everything you're going to get out of this thread - All I can say is go and install XP 32-bit and see the difference in performance and stability. If you want to listen to the one single person on this forum (literally, everyone else either insta-reverted or still suffer under it) who tolerates Vista then go ahead. And no having 2 installations won't damage performance, but it will take up a lot of space.

Oh good then , 2 installations it is.

Thanks

Just incase you thought I was talking out of my arse...

Edit: See post below.

Images are hotlink protected. Check them out here. Near the bottom of the page. No noticeable difference at all.

9/10 PC gamers recommend XP.

I can't get through to the links you gave me El , it keeps reverting back to main page.
but don't worry As I already saw a video of both , DX10 Main difference is in the depth of field effects and rain effects + some nice advanced indirect lighting.
so Yes I know that crysis does not have a big difference between the two modes,but some other games do ,for example Grid.or so I've heard.

No, it has NONE. Those can be enabled in DX9. There is rendering differences and DX10 does have new effects, but they are insignificant. Trust us.

Edit: Here, uploaded them so you can see just how insignificant the changes in DX10 are - can you spot even 1?

So let me get this right , you're saying that all games will look alike under both modes?

If running with the same options (like above) then they will barely differ at all, aside from in framerate where DX10 takes a significant turn for the worse.

The problem arises when MS pays off developers under their 'Games for Windows' program to artificially remove effects from DX9 while keeping them in DX10, in an attempt to make DX10 look better and thus make people upgrade to Vista. Most early DX10 games have this, and it's a disgrace, but luckily on a few games like Crysis they can be enabled through configuration tweaks. Others though you just have to accept that MS and the developers fucked the game over.

The good news though is now DX10-mania is over and it's downfalls are widely known, less and less people care about having it, and less and less developers are bothering to go through all the effort and hassle of implementing its 'benefits', sticking only with basic support. Of course that means the number of games supporting it will slowly increase, but the chances of it actually being worth having anytime soon are poor at best, it will mainly serve only to satisfy benchmark nuts and lure those who don't know the facts into the Vista trap.

/thread

Ok now I understand , but there is one fact remains standing:Some games in DX10 do have some worthy visual effects over DX9 ,it doesn't matter whether it's because the developers are cheating or not ,as long as I can't change it .
taking all of these facts into calculation ,I still think that a 2 installations system will be the ultimate solution to my problems , for example I will run crysis on XP 32 bit but run grid on vista 64bit .

How does that sound?

EDIT:By the way it's good to hear how you think that DX10 games won't be increasing fast , cause I don't want to be short on computer resources anytime soon.

Do you only want Vista for DX 10? From what I've read around it's really not worth it man, if your PC can run games on great settings to start with, keep it on XP just because you'll have a better experience.

More: "ZOMG BEAUTIFUL EXPLOSIONS"

and less: "IF I COULD JUST LOOK LEFT I COULD SEE THE BEAUTIFUL EXPLOSIONS"

/agree

I'm not sure the PC in question could run DX10 that well anyway...

nah my pc can run DX10 games fine , well lets say 20 fps average for most games that i've tried so far , give or take a little .for example I ran Crysis on all Very high at 1024*768 with 0AA at constant 20 fps while running in the jungle . (That is in Vista).

on another note I've installed XP SP3 and tried out some of the DX10 games , and honostly I've got to say that so far I've noticed almost no difference in graphics quality of Crysis , Grid , and UT III.
but I did notice a huge 30% preformence increase in all of them.
so Yes El you were right ,I was wrong ...again.

bottom line :anyone who wants to play games should stay away from vista, but to be fair Vista has a feature or two that are a bit better than XP,the biggest change is Vista's better ability for multi-tasking
and basically it is faster than XP in some aspects,,but not for gaming performence , vista is a big joke when it comes to gaming.

P.S/ I'm going to install vista 64 bit side by side with XP , and use XP as a gaming platform ,while Using vista for every thing else . but maybe later when I get a larger HDD.

Glad to be able to help.

That is with your system specs, i mean with that type of gain you should stick with xp.

But for example

Quad core
4gb of high performance ram
8800GT

Runs vista and any game with out issue on high settings at 1650x1050 res.

And elanzer was right about vista for your computer, but the rest of the world don't have the same spec as you.

I think everyone needs to keep in mind, you need a higher end system with a decent amount of ram at a good clock speed and a decent cpu to get the full benefits of vista with out problems.

Everyone just needs to test the two OS's themselves and see what is best for their system .

Again, systems don't change the way Vista behaves. If it's sucking those resources, then it's sucking those resources, yeah it will be less noticeable on a higher end computer, but is that any reason to still be putting up with it behind the scenes? Not for me it's not, nor anyone else I know but you Guns.

The main reason why DX10 is so crap is because of nVidia, they pretty much crippled it because they can't seem to be able to implement it into their cards, DX10.1 is more like what it would have been originally which does see the performance and visual gains promised by dx10, problem is no games have been developed for 10.1 yet.

vista is slightly prettier...thats about it.

FACT- I ran CSS at about 80 FPS at all high settings, 4xaa 8xaf, 1280x1024 resolution on xp.

I ran the same at 30 on vista.

suffice it to say im not upgrading to vista until i NEED to.

Hey....I've just upgraded to DX10 card so I wouldn't consider the lack of 10.1 games a problem , since they wouldn't be supported by my system fully , and I would be back to square one if they do implement it.
besides From what I've read (at ATI web site when they first announsed it) the only feature that is available with sm 4.1 is somthing called indirect illumination .

on another note :I ran DMC 4 yesterday at 1024*768 , x4 AA, all very high at 120 fps ,which is awsome .

Don't really matter about 10.1 or 10, because it has been said that dx 11 is coming out.

It won't be out until at least 2010.

Yeah, but it is pretty crazy that it was announced. I mean hell, games barely even use DX 10 let alone 10.1

Games should start getting developed for dx10 and dx10.1 only, no DX9 as it's the only way things can progress.

True, i guess we will have to wait. PC gaming market been kinda slow lately. Nothing new really coming out till December-January (Next year) mark.