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Pu-239 wrote:What's the point of Superfetch when stuff could just be cached in RAM? W/ larger memory sizes being supported...

Superfetch does statistical analysis of the applications and resources are commonly used per user, and then tries insures they aggressively cached in memory or slightly faster secondary storage(aka USB flash drive).

For example; if you use Firefox/IE a lot, it will try to keep a copy of the DLLs, exe, resources and any other files commonly touched at hand. This should vastly reduce startup times.

The Kernel wrote:This is true (although there are still latency problems with USB under certain conditions), but the problem with using small filesizes is that you have to prevent them from being swapped often or else you will degrade the flash memory in the drive over time.

Really I agree with the people at Seagate and Western Digital here, the best way to handle this is with putting the memory on a hybrid drive instead of trying to use a flash memory drive.

The Vista makers claim that their system does not degrade flash memory significantly for years of operation in the SuperFetch system. A hybrid drive may or may not be a better system, but they will also be realistically more expensive than a flash drive.

Master of Ossus wrote: The Vista makers claim that their system does not degrade flash memory significantly for years of operation in the SuperFetch system. A hybrid drive may or may not be a better system, but they will also be realistically more expensive than a flash drive.

I would doubt it. A 512MB flash drive is around $50, which would probably be the increase you would be looking at for a hybrid drive over a standard drive, at least once they hit a reasonable volume. After all, it isn't any more expensive to solder 512MB of flash to a hard drive then it is to put on in a USB stick.

I thought you could only write a certain number of times to a flash drive?

skyman8081 wrote:I thought you could only write a certain number of times to a flash drive?

Correct. Using it as cache seems like a bad idea, unless they're thinking of some other sort of non-volatile secondary storage.

I think Vista is going to be the finest Microsoft OS period, in spite of the shitty name. I plan on buying a $5,000-$10,000 gaming rig when it comes out. In the unlikely event that it blows, I've really been stocking up on XP hardware of late, so I'm well covered (and of course you can always go with Apple, or Linux, or a Sun workstation with Solaris...)

-WGW

Are you being serious? How can you possibly spend that much on a gaming rig? I mean, I suppose you could get a $1,000 processor, SLI'd 7800 GTX 512's, raided SCSI hard drives, 4 GB of low-latency RAM, a case with phase change cooling, etc. and get into that range, but the real-world performance increase over a $2,000 system would be negligable, and the depreciation in its value over mere months would be like watching an ice cube melt.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Are you being serious? How can you possibly spend that much on a gaming rig? I mean, I suppose you could get a $1,000 processor, SLI'd 7800 GTX 512's, raided SCSI hard drives, 4 GB of low-latency RAM, a case with phase change cooling, etc. and get into that range, but the real-world performance increase over a $2,000 system would be negligable, and the depreciation in its value over mere months would be like watching an ice cube melt.

This is Rthourmont, sucessor of Tech'Buying SCSI drives for home computers is worth the added cost!'Salvager.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Are you being serious? How can you possibly spend that much on a gaming rig? I mean, I suppose you could get a $1,000 processor, SLI'd 7800 GTX 512's, raided SCSI hard drives, 4 GB of low-latency RAM, a case with phase change cooling, etc. and get into that range, but the real-world performance increase over a $2,000 system would be negligable, and the depreciation in its value over mere months would be like watching an ice cube melt.

Although the graphics performance would certainly depreciate rapidly, an ultra-high-performance array of SCSI hard drives (which could easily consume a few grand) would maintain it's value pretty well; the fastest hard drives money can buy still rotate at merely 15,000 RPM.

Alternatively, he could go the "fucking nuts" route and buy some obscene quad Opteron behemoth with 64GB of RAM, which would in turn necessitate that he install Windows Server 2003 (either Enterprise or Datacenter edition) so as to fully take advantage of such a mammoth system. That could easily suck up several thousand dollars.

Uraniun235 wrote:Although the graphics performance would certainly depreciate rapidly, an ultra-high-performance array of SCSI hard drives (which could easily consume a few grand) would maintain it's value pretty well; the fastest hard drives money can buy still rotate at merely 15,000 RPM.

Buying a good high end RAID card would almost cost $1k

Alternatively, he could go the "fucking nuts" route and buy some obscene quad Opteron behemoth with 64GB of RAM, which would in turn necessitate that he install Windows Server 2003 (either Enterprise or Datacenter edition) so as to fully take advantage of such a mammoth system. That could easily suck up several thousand dollars.

Needs more zeros in that number, $2K just for the board. ~$6k-10k for the CPUs, and lets not touch the 64GB of RAM.

Win2k3 Enterprise would be in the $2k region too.

RThurmont wrote:I think Vista is going to be the finest Microsoft OS period, in spite of the shitty name. I plan on buying a $5,000-$10,000 gaming rig when it comes out. In the unlikely event that it blows, I've really been stocking up on XP hardware of late, so I'm well covered (and of course you can always go with Apple, or Linux, or a Sun workstation with Solaris...)

Solaris is free on IA32 and AMD64 now, so if you wanted that you could play with it. But what the hell are you planning to spend $5-10K on??

Uraniun235 wrote:Although the graphics performance would certainly depreciate rapidly, an ultra-high-performance array of SCSI hard drives (which could easily consume a few grand) would maintain it's value pretty well; the fastest hard drives money can buy still rotate at merely 15,000 RPM.

There's also the somewhat-cheaper but still crazy option of hardware Raptor 150GB RAID.

Alternatively, he could go the "fucking nuts" route and buy some obscene quad Opteron behemoth with 64GB of RAM, which would in turn necessitate that he install Windows Server 2003 (either Enterprise or Datacenter edition) so as to fully take advantage of such a mammoth system. That could easily suck up several thousand dollars.

You forgot the addition of the 4-socket daughterboard option, for smooth 8-way sixteen-core goodness (now, what he'd do with that I have no idea)

Ace Pace wrote:

ggs wrote:

Chardok wrote:wait a second, so a 500 dollar video card today will not support DX10 which comes out in a mere 4 months?! Ridiculous.

Welcome to the video card industry, All your money are belong to us.

It gets worse, non of them support HDTV copy protection, so all those Home Entertainment video cards*cough* ATi AiW*cough* are useless.

Huh. Sorry for the slight hijack, but as I'm looking to get a video card for my computer (at long last...), how long should I wait? Or should I just not worry about it until I get a new comp (which will probably run on Vista)?

Rogue 9 wrote:Huh. Sorry for the slight hijack, but as I'm looking to get a video card for my computer (at long last...), how long should I wait? Or should I just not worry about it until I get a new comp (which will probably run on Vista)?

Wait until video cards supporting HDMI physical connectors and HDCP are out if you want to play protected HD content at maximum resolution.

I'm more worried about games, honestly. Running Dawn of War at minimum graphics is annoying as hell.

Rogue 9 wrote:I'm more worried about games, honestly. Running Dawn of War at minimum graphics is annoying as hell.

Something new is always out soon but a DX10 card will last longer than the current crop of DX9 cards.

phongn wrote:

Rogue 9 wrote:I'm more worried about games, honestly. Running Dawn of War at minimum graphics is annoying as hell.

Something new is always out soon but a DX10 card will last longer than the current crop of DX9 cards.

I keep hearing August as the release time frame for Nvidia's G80 DX10 cards. That's only five months away.

As for the $5k to $10k gaming rig - lets try quad SLI with a 30 inch LCD.

Arrow wrote:

phongn wrote:

Rogue 9 wrote:I'm more worried about games, honestly. Running Dawn of War at minimum graphics is annoying as hell.

Something new is always out soon but a DX10 card will last longer than the current crop of DX9 cards.

I keep hearing August as the release time frame for Nvidia's G80 DX10 cards. That's only five months away.

As for the $5k to $10k gaming rig - lets try quad SLI with a 30 inch LCD.

I'm upgrading a Dell, not building a kickass gaming platform.

Possible update on Vista OpenGL support: http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=14042
The 50% comment is probably bullshit though.

phongn wrote:

Rogue 9 wrote:I'm more worried about games, honestly. Running Dawn of War at minimum graphics is annoying as hell.

Something new is always out soon but a DX10 card will last longer than the current crop of DX9 cards.

I'm sure they'll keep making games DX9 compatible. Hell, there are games being released that still have support for DX8 cards.

By the time you're forced to run DX10, the current DX9 cards will have gotten to be too slow anyway.

Arrow wrote:

phongn wrote:

Rogue 9 wrote:I'm more worried about games, honestly. Running Dawn of War at minimum graphics is annoying as hell.

Something new is always out soon but a DX10 card will last longer than the current crop of DX9 cards.

I keep hearing August as the release time frame for Nvidia's G80 DX10 cards. That's only five months away.

Damn. I hope my old rig lasts that long. What with some of the capacitors on the MB leaking, it'd suck to have to buy a new machine just to replace it a few months later.

Edi

People buy computers to run apps, not operating systems. I will upgrade my computer when there's a particular game that I want to play which runs like shit on my present rig, and not before. Buying a new computer so you can run a new OS is a truly bizarre way to waste your money. Games are recreation, ie- enjoyment. But I would suggest that anyone who derives real enjoyment from using a new OS is in dire need of a life.

Darth Wong wrote:[...] I would suggest that anyone who derives real enjoyment from using a new OS is in dire need of a life.

Does wanting to see what the new OS looks like, and browse the features before deciding when to buy it count as "real enjoyment" for this purpose.

Darth Wong wrote:Buying a new computer so you can run a new OS is a truly bizarre way to waste your money.

Lets not let the fact that the requirements for Vista are nothing compared to any of the last games released in the last 2 years, if your computer isnt good enough to run vista it really isnt goog enough to run any modern game. Never mind by the end of this year when Vista is actually released, or 2 years for it to hit true mainstream

Xon wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:Buying a new computer so you can run a new OS is a truly bizarre way to waste your money.

Lets not let the fact that the requirements for Vista are nothing compared to any of the last games released in the last 2 years, if your computer isnt good enough to run vista it really isnt goog enough to run any modern game. Never mind by the end of this year when Vista is actually released, or 2 years for it to hit true mainstream

So the problem starts when you want to run Vista AND a game at the same time. Y'know, an OS is supposed to leave some resources for applications to use and not hog all of them itself.

Jawawithagun wrote:So the problem starts when you want to run Vista AND a game at the same time. Y'know, an OS is supposed to leave some resources for applications to use and not hog all of them itself.

Or if you had a vague understanding of how an OS works, you would realize that the OS gets out of the way when something else is inuse.

In the vast majority of the time, you only pay the bill for what you use. The graphical improvements in Vista are no exception