Win XP Upgrade slows Solitaire card speed-why?

[Deskstar]

My neighbor down the street recently upgraded his desktop from Win98 to WinXP, which he likes better. One difference that he noted is that in the game Solitaire, on successful completion of the game, the cascading cards are slower to fall in WinXP than in Win98. As the resident computer guru, I am embarrassed to say that I do not know why this occurs. I suggested more memory, so he is now up to 512mb of memory (PC133), but his Solitaire card still cascade slowly.

Any Solitaire and hardward / software experts out there have the answer to this one?

 

[Darkcirc]

Well, one ting is that WinXP's kernel is a little bit bigger, by a little I mean alot. This makes a huge difference on alot of machines, I've noticed that my cellery on a stick in my Sun (assume its a standard PC with a scsi subsystem for this example) is noticeably slower from win98 to win2k to XP, XP being the biggest offender, 2k second. This can affect the subtle things like cards falling. Even the type of SW AA he's using could, Anti Aliasing doesn't always stop at text, so it might be smoothing all of the cards. It could even be that the vidcard manufacturer has yet to build good XP drivers, or the diff between MS versus OEM drivers. My guess is that the computer is ailing over the kernel and mem requiements, keep in mind XP works like balls until it gets > 128 ram. Lemme know if you have any Q's
dc

 

[freazeOrBurN]

I don't meen to insult you all, but your all dumb.
News Flash: Cascadeing solitar cards is not a benchmark of speed.
the reason the cards fall slower is becuse unlike the win 3.0 version of solitar that is bundeled with all win95 derivitives, the version bundeled with win2k and winXP relies on a clock based time (ie. 1 card falls in 2 seconds) vs. clockspeed based time (ie. 1 card falls ever 1000 cycles). Iether the program was rewriten for nt, or the nt kernel gives time in seconds when a program asked for it vs. cycles like win95 night have.
again, adding ram becuase the cards didn't fall fast enough in solitar is the stupidest thing Ive heard in a long time. but hey its your money. and more ram can't hurt. but solitar seems like a funny reason to upgrade....

 

[Deskstar]

Now those are some great explanations. I will print them and give them to my neighbor. I would never have come up with any of them.

And, the memory upgrade was indicated because of his change to WinXP from Win98. We were all more curious than anything about the reason for the change in the Solitaire slow down; seeking a "cure" was not the intention I assure you. We were boldly going where no man has gone before.

Thank you both for the explanations.

 

[Darkcirc]

freazeOrBurN, its funny but I would imagine that cards would fall rather slowly on an XP system with 64 megs of ram and a slow proc, and quite a big faster on a machine with a fast proc and 64megs of ram. Point is I was covering all bases, obvious not meeting you exacting standards but still, I have no idea if the machine is a P2 300 or a P4 3.0, or if it has 64M or 64G. you'll notice that I mentioned some other things too. I HAVE EXPERIENCE THE RAM PROBLEM NOTED as well as other factors doing the same thing. And I'm sorry but solitair CAN be a banchmark, as it is IDENTICAL in 2k kernels, and to the common user it IS A MEASURE OF SPEED. I'm not gonna ask my dad to run dnetc or 3dmark to diagnose why his computer is slow. Nor do I ask him to quantify how much slower it is. when dealing with people who do not know how to use these tools other things much be used. I'm sure you can relate I would expect you experience is roughly 2 yrs, so you've been there recently. All things you should know about supporting the average user. Please pack up and head back to your playpen until you can learn to read before trying to flame.

 

[Smilin]

I'm guessing it runs slower because they either tied it to the time clock rather than the system clock or they left it tied to the system clock but just bumped down the speed some. The last time I ran that program under w2k the bouncing cards completely filled the screen in the blink of an eye. This isn't really the intended effect the programers had in mind, it's just a side effect of a very fast computer. Looks like someone at MS decided to take PC speeds into account on this particular build of solitaire.

I hope you guys aren't actually losing sleep over this. I'm going to have to agree with freezorburn:
" adding ram becuase the cards didn't fall fast enough in solitar is the stupidest thing Ive heard in a long time. but hey its your money. and more ram can't hurt. but solitar seems like a funny reason to upgrade.... "

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Originally posted by: Smilin

I hope you guys aren't actually losing sleep over this. I'm going to have to agree with freezorburn: " adding ram becuase the cards didn't fall fast enough in solitar is the stupidest thing Ive heard in a long time. but hey its your money. and more ram can't hurt. but solitar seems like a funny reason to upgrade.... "

:Q