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Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:21 pm
by The Phoenix
Burrito wrote:trust me I am as much a power user as akapj and I don't notice any difference between my vista box and my xp box running the same apps
I was as much a power user as my friend when I was playing GTA, and I didn't notice any difference - until he did, and I saw it running on his machine. That doesn't make me naive, it just means I didn't notice what he did.
Burrito wrote:sounds like you're suggesting that we're naive... 80
Not at all. Thats a very different meaning that what I am suggesting.

You could go in the opposite direction and say I'm suggesting that PJ is making a mountain out of a molehill, but I'm not doing that either.

I'm saying you both look at the same picture and see different things. He sees a jerky redraw, you see a wicked awesome game. You are both right. :)

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:22 pm
by Benjamin
If I bought $3000 worth of hardware and was given the choice to either give that to the operating system, or to the applications I run, I would choose the applications hands down. Pretty effects, poorly written code and obscene hardware requirements don't help my productivity.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:24 pm
by miro_igov
XP also had higher hardware requirements - 512MB of RAM. Was this not too high requirement in the Windows 98 age when people had 64MB RAM computers?

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:26 pm
by The Phoenix
Its not a question of whether you are POWER users, its a question of whether you are PERFORMANCE PERFECTIONISTS.

Let us recall that PJ is regularly complaining that Firefox uses an unacceptable amount of resources. N'est-ce pas?

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:42 pm
by Burrito
The Phoenix wrote:I was as much a power user as my friend when I was playing GTA, and I didn't notice any difference - until he did, and I saw it running on his machine. That doesn't make me naive, it just means I didn't notice what he did.
I have two machines with virtually the same hardware (one is a lappy, one is a desktop (lappy is running vista)). I play the same games on both, run the same applications on both and if anything my laptop out performs my desktop in all aspects. Your suggestion that I haven't seen the other side therefore holds no water. I AM SURE that I am comparing apples to apples here.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:15 pm
by miro_igov
I agree firefox uses large amounts of memory but this is caused after you browse many pages without to close it, also if you open a page then hit back and open another. This could be an issue of the firefox itself, but on Vista it runs much better than on XP.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:18 pm
by superdezign
I'm curious... How much truth is there to the rumors that the new visual effects of Vista cause it to run slower than XP? From this discussion, it doesn't sound true, but most of what I've heard up to today has said this. Is it simply an issue of having a good video card, as the software shouldn't be forced to handle it?

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:23 pm
by miro_igov
Ah yes, PJ's video card maybe is using shared RAM and this causes high RAM usage. My video card has 256 MB dedicated memory and may use 256 MB from the RAM if needed so total of 512MB but initially the RAM is not reserved, only if there is a need of more VRAM.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:28 pm
by Burrito
superdezign wrote:I'm curious... How much truth is there to the rumors that the new visual effects of Vista cause it to run slower than XP? From this discussion, it doesn't sound true, but most of what I've heard up to today has said this. Is it simply an issue of having a good video card, as the software shouldn't be forced to handle it?
the aero theme most definitely requires some more beef under the hood. But Vista knows how much beef you've got and turns certain elements of aero off accordingly. For example, when I first got my laptop I nuked the install that was on there and started fresh with an Ultimate install. In doing so I didn't have the drivers for my video card. Vista has some kind of performance index that it does on your machine and scores your machine's ability to perform with all the bells and whistles on. Because I didn't have the correct drivers for my vid card, my index was lower than it should have been. I tried using the cool window toggle thing (windows-tab vs alt-tab) and it just displayed the regular alt-tab window toggler... as soon as I installed my drivers and reindexed the performance, it realized that my machine could now handle the cooler effects so it enabled them.

I don't notice any performance hit (as compared to xp) with everything turned on.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:32 pm
by superdezign
That's interesting. Maybe some people don't like it when Windows takes the liberty to just handle something like that on it's own... Maybe we're having some control issues here? :P

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:40 pm
by Burrito
superdezign wrote:That's interesting. Maybe some people don't like it when Windows takes the liberty to just handle something like that on it's own... Maybe we're having some control issues here? :P
you can override it, but by doing so, you're more than likely going to take a pretty big performance hit. Vista also automatically turns all of that off when I load games so it's not sitting in memory eating my resources.

To me it's just like game settings... sure I could turn everything all the way up (shaders, AA, textures etc) on my 1ghz p3 to try and play UT3...but at 1/2 fps (if that), why would I? The point is: you can run Vista w/o all of the eye candy and it runs just fine if your machine can't handle the higher settings.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:48 pm
by superdezign
Another rumor: Is it true that Vista loads Google Search slowly? I heard that Google was going to file a lawsuit in regards to it, so Microsoft decided to "look into the 'bug.'"

It sounded like a legitimate claim, but you can't always believe what you read in biased blogs.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:51 pm
by Burrito
superdezign wrote:Another rumor: Is it true that Vista loads Google Search slowly? I heard that Google was going to file a lawsuit in regards to it, so Microsoft decided to "look into the 'bug.'"

It sounded like a legitimate claim, but you can't always believe what you read in biased blogs.
I can't speak to that as I'm not even sure what 'google search' is. I use firefox and just search google from the search box at the top right of my toolbar and that works just fine.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:06 pm
by superdezign
Hmm. Maybe was referring to the the desktop search that Google released. I don't really search my own computer, so I've never used it.

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:13 pm
by Burrito
superdezign wrote:Hmm. Maybe was referring to the the desktop search that Google released. I don't really search my own computer, so I've never used it.
ahh yes that...never used it on XP nor Vista so I really can't say.