Windows Server 2003 x86 Enterprise

[dclive]

Originally posted by: bwatson283
no sound support in server

Enable audio.

 

[htne]

How to convert your Windows 2003 Server into a Workstation

http://www.msfn.org/win2k3/

 

[Scotteq]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

So I don't believe that blaming nVidia for XP not recognizing more than 4GB is the proper approach. - They're clearly the cart to MSFT's horse in this case. I mean - Why would BillyG in Redmond give a rat's azz if developers at nVida couldn't follow a spec for a driver?? It's up to nVidia to make sure their stuff works. Or people wouldn't buy their cards. Microsoft would never change the OS to help a 3rd party.

That's the reasoning that they give when asked why XP32 can't use all 4G of physical memory in a machine so apparently they do give a rat's azz.

<shrug> Irregardless of what they may or may not have said, and in what context, I find if *VERY* hard to believe that Microsoft would change their OS because nVidia (supposedly) can't write drivers for it. Rather, MSFT would send the spec, and tell nV "write to this". And if nV couldn't do it, MSFT would give the phone number of a consultant who could do it for them. Said consultant would drag the project out, at a Thousand+ dollars a day, write the thing, and then move on to the next project.

So I'll repeat - It's not Microsoft's problem if someone else can't follow a specification. And it is incredulous to me that nVidia would be able to change Microsoft's product direction. Windows is *the* target platform for vast majority of nVidia's business, and therefore nVidia *will* do what it takes to make sure they run acceptably on it.

Regarding large addresses - The instant a non-compliant driver attempted a DMA operation, a very common shortcut in consumer apps/gear, BTW - It's Blue Screen City. On a business level, it's not so much a serious issue as it is a matter of "is it important enough for our IT staff to spend time screwing with it".

But expecting a consumer to do that is unreasonable. Just look at the stink over Vista drivers - MSFT published the specs, what, a year and a half before release?? A year *after* release, Creative release a driver that works.... kind of... Most people can start their email, type a letter, play a game, and surf the web. It's second nature to many people here... But imagine your mother trying to troubleshoot a driver issue. Just not gonna happen, if she's anything like my own.


To me it is a perfectly reasonable and proper business decision to NOT inflict these kinds of issues on a consumer level. Hence XP/Pro x32 SP2 and Vista x32 utilize PAE just for DEP purposes. I know many of you may disagree, but please remember that 90+% of the computer using public still think a driver is the person who operates a motor vehicle. And even today it is a rarity for anyone to use more than 2 sticks of RAM. Server versions of MSFT's operating systems *have* had PAE for some time. And for valid business reasons. So if you really needed it, it was there. You just had to buy NT/2003 to do it.

That was then. Now?? You just buy a 64 bit OS, consumer or not. A lot of people hate Vista. Passionately. But if a scrub like me can keep V64 running crash free, there's no reason anyone who has a (real or perceived) need for more than the 3~ish GB of space left over at the bottom of the 32 bit address pool can't do the same. And you'll pardon me if I state my perception of all of this PAE stuff is that the hue and cry comes mostly from people who don't want to give up XP, and are going through gyrations to get the goodies anyhow. You certainly never saw this topic in a consumer context prior to Vista's release.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Scotteq

Originally posted by: Nothinman

So I don't believe that blaming nVidia for XP not recognizing more than 4GB is the proper approach. - They're clearly the cart to MSFT's horse in this case. I mean - Why would BillyG in Redmond give a rat's azz if developers at nVida couldn't follow a spec for a driver?? It's up to nVidia to make sure their stuff works. Or people wouldn't buy their cards. Microsoft would never change the OS to help a 3rd party.

That's the reasoning that they give when asked why XP32 can't use all 4G of physical memory in a machine so apparently they do give a rat's azz.

<shrug> Irregardless of what they may or may not have said, and in what context, I find if *VERY* hard to believe that Microsoft would change their OS because nVidia (supposedly) can't write drivers for it. Rather, MSFT would send the spec, and tell nV "write to this". And if nV couldn't do it, MSFT would give the phone number of a consultant who could do it for them. Said consultant would drag the project out, at a Thousand+ dollars a day, write the thing, and then move on to the next project.

So I'll repeat - It's not Microsoft's problem if someone else can't follow a specification. And it is incredulous to me that nVidia would be able to change Microsoft's product direction. Windows is *the* target platform for vast majority of nVidia's business, and therefore nVidia *will* do what it takes to make sure they run acceptably on it.

Regarding large addresses - The instant a non-compliant driver attempted a DMA operation, a very common shortcut in consumer apps/gear, BTW - It's Blue Screen City. On a business level, it's not so much a serious issue as it is a matter of "is it important enough for our IT staff to spend time screwing with it".

But expecting a consumer to do that is unreasonable. Just look at the stink over Vista drivers - MSFT published the specs, what, a year and a half before release?? A year *after* release, Creative release a driver that works.... kind of... Most people can start their email, type a letter, play a game, and surf the web. It's second nature to many people here... But imagine your mother trying to troubleshoot a driver issue. Just not gonna happen, if she's anything like my own.


To me it is a perfectly reasonable and proper business decision to NOT inflict these kinds of issues on a consumer level. Hence XP/Pro x32 SP2 and Vista x32 utilize PAE just for DEP purposes. I know many of you may disagree, but please remember that 90+% of the computer using public still think a driver is the person who operates a motor vehicle. And even today it is a rarity for anyone to use more than 2 sticks of RAM. Server versions of MSFT's operating systems *have* had PAE for some time. And for valid business reasons. So if you really needed it, it was there. You just had to buy NT/2003 to do it.

That was then. Now?? You just buy a 64 bit OS, consumer or not. A lot of people hate Vista. Passionately. But if a scrub like me can keep V64 running crash free, there's no reason anyone who has a (real or perceived) need for more than the 3~ish GB of space left over at the bottom of the 32 bit address pool can't do the same. And you'll pardon me if I state my perception of all of this PAE stuff is that the hue and cry comes mostly from people who don't want to give up XP, and are going through gyrations to get the goodies anyhow. You certainly never saw this topic in a consumer context prior to Vista's release.

Although I agree with you on many points I did want to emphasize that Microsoft frequently alters the OS in response to vendor or consumer requests. Microsoft customers that have premier support contracts have a process available that sends request to development for review. A large business impact with no viable workaround will often get a code rewrite for you.

A great (consumer) example of this is:

940105 Virtual address space usage in Windows game development
http://support.microsoft.com/d...x?scid=kb;EN-US;940105

Basically there was nothing wrong with the WDM in Vista but people were using it incorrectly (mapping video memory into the processes private memory space) and exhausting the 2GB of user space. The 2GB will always be a problem on MSs 32bit OSs but people were hitting this problem long before they should have. The app developers should have corrected this but they weren't. So 940105 was released. It's pretty common.

 

[Nothinman]

I find if *VERY* hard to believe that Microsoft would change their OS because nVidia (supposedly) can't write drivers for it.

I don't. It's the path of least resistance and cuts down on MS support calls because there's no doubt that other vendors would have similar problems. If 32-bit machines with 4G of memory were more prevalent then maybe MS would put up a fight but they're not so there's no very little reason to care.

So I'll repeat - It's not Microsoft's problem if someone else can't follow a specification. And it is incredulous to me that nVidia would be able to change Microsoft's product direction. Windows is *the* target platform for vast majority of nVidia's business, and therefore nVidia *will* do what it takes to make sure they run acceptably on it.

While that looks good on paper MS still gets most of the blame from users when a STOP error occurs even if it's a driver problem so it's not like nVidia loses much if any mind and marketshare because of the problem even if it's their fault.

And you'll pardon me if I state my perception of all of this PAE stuff is that the hue and cry comes mostly from people who don't want to give up XP, and are going through gyrations to get the goodies anyhow. You certainly never saw this topic in a consumer context prior to Vista's release.

Or those with hardware that has no 64-bit drivers or apps that won't run on Vista. Vista is only involved because of it's timing with 64-bit hardware becoming so common and is largely an irrelevant point. If AMD64 became popular when XP was released you'd be seeing the same crap except with 2000/XP or if it happened later Vista/Longhorn.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Since I'm technet, everything is free :-D

My thinking is that XP 64bit is unsupported now but 32 is.
The vast majority of XP 32bit drivers will work on server 2003 32bit.
Vista x64 is nice but the performance hit for games sucks.
Since I have 8GB of ram, XP x86 is stupid...4GB being ignored.
If Server 2003 Ent sees all my ram, then I would like to use it since I would get XP 32-bit performance and STILL have all 8GB available.

Would all 8GB be used or will only apps that are 8GB aware make use of it?
Example: adobe cs3 will use 2GB ram, Crysis another 2GB, Maya another 2GB or will it be that they only see 4GB and only weird database type apps will see the other 4 GB?

 

[Nothinman]

Would all 8GB be used or will only apps that are 8GB aware make use of it?
Example: adobe cs3 will use 2GB ram, Crysis another 2GB, Maya another 2GB or will it be that they only see 4GB and only weird database type apps will see the other 4 GB?

Both. They'll be able to see that there's 8G in the system but each process will only be able to allocate 2G or 3G.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: gersson
Since I'm technet, everything is free :-D

My thinking is that XP 64bit is unsupported now but 32 is.
The vast majority of XP 32bit drivers will work on server 2003 32bit.
Vista x64 is nice but the performance hit for games sucks.
Since I have 8GB of ram, XP x86 is stupid...4GB being ignored.
If Server 2003 Ent sees all my ram, then I would like to use it since I would get XP 32-bit performance and STILL have all 8GB available.

Would all 8GB be used or will only apps that are 8GB aware make use of it?
Example: adobe cs3 will use 2GB ram, Crysis another 2GB, Maya another 2GB or will it be that they only see 4GB and only weird database type apps will see the other 4 GB?

Huh whut? I haven't seen a performance hit in the last year of using Vista x64...

Of course then again I don't care if I'm getting 60fps or 600fps either...

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Both. They'll be able to see that there's 8G in the system but each process will only be able to allocate 2G or 3G.

Sounds good to me.
I have to figure out how to get my RAID drivers to work, though... Damn thing keeps giving an error at install time.

Sunny D: just one recent example:
http://www.tweakguides.com/AC_7.html

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: SunnyD

Originally posted by: gersson
Since I'm technet, everything is free :-D

My thinking is that XP 64bit is unsupported now but 32 is.
The vast majority of XP 32bit drivers will work on server 2003 32bit.
Vista x64 is nice but the performance hit for games sucks.
Since I have 8GB of ram, XP x86 is stupid...4GB being ignored.
If Server 2003 Ent sees all my ram, then I would like to use it since I would get XP 32-bit performance and STILL have all 8GB available.

Would all 8GB be used or will only apps that are 8GB aware make use of it?
Example: adobe cs3 will use 2GB ram, Crysis another 2GB, Maya another 2GB or will it be that they only see 4GB and only weird database type apps will see the other 4 GB?

Huh whut? I haven't seen a performance hit in the last year of using Vista x64...

Of course then again I don't care if I'm getting 60fps or 600fps either...

32bit app on a 64bit box will get thunked. The overhead may or may not be noticable but it is there.