Down with XP, long live DX10 and up!

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.
JAYDEEJOHN

JAYDEEJOHN

Champion
Aug 23, 2006
19,840
0
50,860
steam_os_0911.jpg

Looks like XPs reign is over
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
I'm not saying that the market isn't shifting (it is); what I'm saying is it probably isn't shifting as rapidly as the Steam graph shows.
Using the Steam graph as a sole source (I should have worded it this way in my first post) is not an accurate view of the OS usage by the gaming community. I could give theories as to why the Steam graph might show a larger shift, but alas, I don't have sources for them.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
For the mass gaming market that you refer to, your elation may be justified - if you live in a box with a swarm of other people living in boxes around you I guess you would actually appreciate (if not outright need ) the graphical bling of DX10 and up.
However, I live in one of the most beautiful, bountiful places on the planet, and it is getting tough to get kids to do much of anything in the real world - hunting, fishing and just plain old exploring and playing outdoors. Every hour that we can pry them away from a video screen to learn real skills and their own language and culture is a chance to help them be truly independent in the real world - the world where if you can hunt and fish you can actually live separate from the corporate world and discover what being a living part of nature feels like - not to mention the topic that never gets discussed in tech forums - what happens when the economy collapses ( and it will - it is only a matter of when, whether that be this coming year or many years in the future ), or what they can do when they want a break from the growing police state syndrome I see happening. DXwhatever may numb the pain if you're trapped in a police state, but it isn't going to free you or feed you.
Don't take this as a condemnation of computer tech - I'd just like to remind people of what we are losing amidst the rush.

And yeah - I'm still using XP.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Recommended Frostbite PC Specifications for BFBC2 & BF1943
Processor: Quadcore
Main memory: 2GB
Graphics card: GeForce GTX 260
Graphics memory: 512MB
OS: Windows Vista or Windows 7
Free HDD space: 15GB for Digital Version, 10GB for Disc Version (BFBC2)
10GB for Digital Version (BF1943)
http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/battlefield_bad_company/archive/2009/12/01/oh-snap-pc-info-ladies-amp-germs.aspx##
While low end does include some of DX9s finest, and it can run on XP, this shows progress.
As to accuracy, sure, steam controls 80%, but that isnt just digital downloads only in these figures, so, saying digital only is excluding the numbers already included here.
Maybe the digital only numbers are actually much higher if non digital only is lower overall, and thus lowering the mixed total numbers being shown.
Either way, this is the way its going, with speeds only ramping from here, and I might add, PC sales are down by 30% yr to yr, and once it picks back up, the XP numbers will only drop faster.
New games requiring the highest DX9 HW has to offer is another sign XP is all but ended

PS Note the obvious minimum requirements? Its what we have on our consoles folks, and again, thats minimum
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
And only as the start, XP is already not the main OS combined with DX9. Thats the point, it only snowballs from here, as everything is pointing away from it, which just not long ago, all these things werent.
I more or less am saying these last few changes, W7, DX11, MT usage, new games and their minimums etc, are the final nail in XPs coffin
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


You're contradicting shown facts; Steam owns approx. 70% of digital market (technically not a fact but an estimate), and your OS usage chart only applies to those who subscribe to Steam (aka 70% of those who use the digital market) so yes, those numbers do only apply to those who use Steam. Those who do not use Steam and/or only buy their games as physical copies are not represented in Steam's data. That being said, this data is an indicator regarding gamers' OS usage, but it is not as accurate as it seems since (as I've said before) it does not include all corners of the gaming community.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
And as to my link, another 10% is also owned by them, so the numbers are as they are.
When you sign up for updates or whatever, your specs are included, so yes, there is some crossover here, which ignoring this is also not including parts of the gaming industry.
Its what a few devs and coders etc have brought up elsewheres as an indicator, so me bringing it up here is appropo, and is only a part of the larger scenario, but a vital one.
Its our only indicator, unless theres others, and not the overall office/business aunty em and everyone else that never games indicators, but something specific.
To ignore it or discredit it, is fruitless, and its only a part of it all

I point alot of this out, as alot of us have spent our monies and waited, only to see DX10.1 being discredited also, and anything DX10 with Vista as a "flop", and the delays, and also even the taking away of DX10.1 in 1 title.
We need to move on. Its time, the indicators are here, and maybe the economy will accelerate it even faster, but it is time.
nVidia has even moved on, and will have a DX11 card coming, DX11 games are coming, everythings pointing towards it. By placing more importance on steam alone than what I am and ignoring all other things is just that, and its not steam alone, and we all know that
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


I wouldn't hunt or fish or any of that primal stuff if someone payed me. I'll stay connected thanks.

And for the record I live way out in the country in Madison County, GA so I know what the outdoors are like and I would love to live in a box with other boxes swarming with people all around me instead of the middle of nowhere.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Apologies Jaydee, but this post is way off topic - but c'est la vie, it'll be off the radar by morning anyway...




I'm connected - just not as connected as some, I guess. I'm on an island in the Pacific ocean, but I used to live (relatively briefly) in a city many years ago.
Basically my point was that the civilization on this island has been around for between 13 to 15,000 years, going by the sites where people were buried ceremonially in much the same way for this whole stretch of time. I would rather my children and grandchildren keep a connection to this way of life which has a history and the potential to continue indefinitely, rather than be absorbed utterly into a culture where anything more than a few years old is obsolete and no longer compatible.
I just hope that the rush of tech be put in a larger perspective - in the span of my life entire swathes of jobs and tech have been wiped out, replaced by things that have a lifespan of a few short years before they also are going to be wiped out. DX10 is now "old" despite the fact that it never even became truly widespread.

I would like to advise you to think about something before you jump into one of the boxes in a major city - there are signs that the U.S. dollar is going to stop being the world reserve currency soon, and the massive debt that exists there ( with the financial derivatives bubble included ) of 30 times or more of your entire GDP, you do not want to be anywhere where you cannot feed yourself or in the middle of a million people who also cannot feed themselves and have found themselves enslaved by debt. This has happened in many other countries before, and I would not wish this on anyone. There is a reason that guns and ammo are selling so well in the U.S. right now and it isn't a very wholesome one - it ain't for fishing and hunting, but for taking food and goods from others, which is a very hard and dead end road.
Video games are fun, don't get me wrong, I play games as does my wife and family, but please don't let the shiny stuff blind you to what is going on in the world is all I'm saying. This high tech vision of a future has very little chance of surviving 15,000 years.
But wth, enjoy it while it lasts, kids. Hopefully I am wrong and you are right. Either way I am covered.

P.S. - Primal feels great. It's downright fun to be dangerously healthy and aware.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


Speaking of Minimum requirements, theres a reason why every single game can still "run" (to various degrees of performance) on a 6800Ultra: DX 9.0c SM3. Thats the lowest supported standard, and will continue to be so for a while to come. Fact is, ~99% of the market can run DX9.0c SM3, where about 30% can run DX10+ SM4+. Guess which one remains the minimum requirements? (Its that same reason why most games can still run fine on a Pentium4; we've only just begin to see Core2's as the bare minimum in games)

And don't bring consoles into the debate: With the exception of the Xbox line, every gaming platform users OpenGL (Wii, PS3, Iphone, Android, Linux, Mac, etc), so I don't want to hear anyone proclaim that consoles are holding up progress.

And I should point out, unlike DirectX, you could easily enable the equivalent DirectX features on XP if you so wanted. I have a suspicion that we might see a few studios flip API's in the coming years, which would make the entire debate moot.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
And on a side note: If W7 is really as good with MT usage as is said: Why don't newer games run significantly (if any) faster in 7? Heck, any benchmark gain in 7 is minimal at best (I've yet to see a case of a 10% gain in any benchmark). Even games known to scale (Lost Planet) don't show any noticable gain on 7 over XP.

Fact is, the OS can only help so much with MT usage, but the only real way to take advantage of more cores is from within the program. Proper coding for MT support will have a far greater impact on the ability of programs to use more cores efficently.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote

Minimum Frostbite PC Specifications for BFBC2 & BF1943
Processor: Core 2 Duo @ 2.0GHz
Main memory: 2GB
Graphics card: GeForce 7800 GT / ATI X1900
Graphics memory: 256MB
OS: Windows XP
Free HDD space: 15GB for Digital Version, 10GB for Disc Version (BFBC2)
10GB for Digital Version (BF1943)
http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/battlefield_bad_company/archive/2009/12/01/oh-snap-pc-info-ladies-amp-germs.aspx##

Notice the minimum? Its as I said, not a 6800 but a 7800, or exactly whats in the consoles. So the bare minimum is whats in the consoles, not a lessor spec
 
Upvote 0 Downvote

If you read up on the difference of the 2 OS, once we have 8 cores that are usable, unlike HT unfortunately, both Vista and especially W7 will start to walk away from XP, and its only a matter of time for this to happen, and if AMDs CMT solution shows up anytime soon, we will maybe see it happening, as HT on Intels soluton doesnt work on games yet, tho DX11 and CS will change this somewhat, as well as Opencl
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
^^ I've been using Lost Planet for that test.

As to JD, BC2 is the first game I know of to require more then a 6800Ultra as its minimum. And I suspect the game will still run on a 6800Ultra, just at a low framerate the devs didn't want to be held accountable for...

Finally, Multi-threaded != Multi-core. Multithreading is basically just switching between two tasks at a rate where it appears both execute at the same time, nothing more.

Without multithreading, you wouldn't be able to do two things at once (eg, all other tasks would halt while a program was in execution, or opening an IE window would cause sound processing to stop).

An OS simply can't make something that is non-threaded (seriel in nature) act in a threaded manner. The OS has no clue how programs are structured; its easy for us to say that each major piece of code could run seperatly, but the OS doesn't know that; as far as its concerned, execution is serial, and executes whatever the program in question spits out. Unless the programmer uses long established libraries (pthreads in C, for example) to allow individual parts of the program to execute concurrently, the OS will have very, very minimal impact on program performance. And even then, unless the program is explicitly told to use more then one processing unit, its unlikely more then one unit will be used.

Windows can't even handle moving stand along programs to individual processing cores. So why do you expect Windows to be able to efficently move individual parts of an individal program in a simmilar manner?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
OK, so as you say, this is the first of many games to do so, or another sign.
The OS plays a huge role in MT. Arguing the single thread is the future isnt right. Its dying too, and thats where the better OS (Vista,W7) come into play.
If not for DRM, both of the newer OS would be better than XP even on single threaded apps. XP has nothing for the future, much like W98 did, its time to move on, and tho some would ignore steam or DX11 or MT thru OS better usage, an avalanche is coming, as thats whats supposed to be done from here on out, Intel, M$, AMD, nVidia (see baddaboom) ATI etc etc etc are geared for it, been doing it, its being taught in our uni's, and is replacing IPC and clocks in gpus and cpus, the things that make progress happen
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Heres an older article on it, a good read, and shows what can and will be done
http://www.infoworld.com/t/platforms/generation-gap-windows-multicore-273?page=0,1&source=fssr
As a result, current-generation software products incorporate additional optimizations to allow them to perform at their best in the low-latency, shared-cache world of multicore. This includes Windows Vista, which shipped at the beginning of the multicore transition, and Windows 7, of course, but not Windows XP.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I don't understand this arguement.

Either an OS supports MT or not. It then puts those threads in a queue and assigns them to a core. What can seven do that XP cannot in terms of assigning those threads to the correct cores unless it is being contended that XP is so bad at dishing out the threads that it is letting CPU cores sit idle while many threads wait for the same core?

There are a billion reasons I ahve not used XP in years (except here at work... shudder) but really?

Sure, we can improve the ability and quality of the affinity it assigns to an application, but unless XP was fundamentally broken, the difference with todays anything will be minimal. Until we get many more cores that is (and they figure out what to do with SMT and CMT),

Perhaps I am missing something? Please correct me if I am.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Going hand in hand with the multicore push has been the evolution of desktop Windows to support these new chips. Today's dominant flavors -- Windows XP, Windows Vista, and soon Windows 7 -- all support Symmetrical Multiprocessing (SMP) out of the box, a trait they inherited thanks to their Windows NT (New Technology) lineage. However, experience has shown that multiprocessing across discrete CPUs is not the same thing as multiprocessing across integrated cores within the same CPU.
As a result, current-generation software products incorporate additional optimizations to allow them to perform at their best in the low-latency, shared-cache world of multicore. This includes Windows Vista, which shipped at the beginning of the multicore transition, and Windows 7, of course, but not Windows XP.
http://www.infoworld.com/t/platforms/generation-gap-windows-multicore-273?page=0,0&source=fssr
I underlined it to make it easier
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
And when is a octo core with smt coming? Before 2012?

To say the XP perf is the same as W7 on multi cored cpus just isnt so, as the OS' dont use the same approach of MT, which gamer is saying.
XP uses the same approach as single threading here, and thats my point.
Read up on it, and again, Id point out Ive already mentioned the DRM issues which is the primary reason W& and Vista both are slower at all, IF youve read the thread amongst others explaining all this
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom