Windows Vista Rules.

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: EricMartello
Don't argue with Nothinman, this guy is a genius. Not only can he read Wikipedia and execute multiple simulatneous searches on Google, but he has single handedly uncovered the truth about the defraggging conspiracy.

Do you Defrag? The joke's on you!

He's also keeping us all in check about the inherent uselessness of any computing > 32-bit. When he gets hired by AMD and Intel (yes, two jobs at the same time), he will push for core reductions to 4 and 8 bits, because anything above that is pretty much useless.

Nothinman is waging war on many fronts. You should all support him, because he knows and none of you know...the only thing that surpasses his post count is is IQ, which is so high that he need PaE to access all of it at once.

For what its worth, defrag is not the issue most make it out to be, but it does have an effect, which is quite well documented. *Buying* a commericial defrag app for anything but a corporate server is pretty much a waste, since the included free one will do 99% of the job.

And I personally can't think of any benefit towards going 64-bit at this point, but I'd rather see it eventually than not.

 

[EricMartello]

It's just natural progression...aside from being able to address more memory simultaneously with hardware, 64-bit computing allows for twice as much floating point precision, which means game AI could get very intricate among other things. It's also twice the amount of information being processed at any given time. I will probably go with 64-bit Vista when I finally do make the switch.

I defrag regularly, and I use O&O V8.

 

[Nothinman]

It's just natural progression...aside from being able to address more memory simultaneously with hardware, 64-bit computing allows for twice as much floating point precision, which means game AI could get very intricate among other things

It's a natural progression but the things that needed the additional VM have been running on 64-bit systems for years already. I'm sure games will take advantage of it in the future but that's about it and that won't be for a while since game developers will still have to maintain compatibility with 32-bit systems for at least a few years. And with MMX, SIMD, etc floating point precision has already been way above 32-bit so that's non-issue.

It's also twice the amount of information being processed at any given time.

That's not true at all. And most apps require more memory, and some run slower because of it, in 64-bit mode because of the larger pointers.

 

[gsellis]

Defrag is mostly useless for general users. I started needing it when I started video editing. I push and pull huge chunks of intermixed blocks onto drives and defrag is needed to reorder for playback in the editor. Defrag is seriously oversold otherwise.

Nothinman, for the record, the only reason OS/2 did Windows apps better than Win 3.11 was the truly seperate VM. It was slow to start the first time (my setups never loaded it by default) and it had its quirks. But there were things that did not work. Getting networking to work on 2.x was a huge b*tch. I got stuff working that IBM could not (support at Madge Networks helped). It took Warp 3 to get IPX/IP/NetBeui working in a consolidated stack with an IBM installer.

The one big benefit of Vista is not an app. The fact that the video has been moved back out of the kernel and runs a user context is one. The rest comes in VM for memory space, better management of the GPU and advanced color space (which I think now exceeds anything OSX supports). Now if monitors will just catch up (seen engineering samples at WinHEC - now where are they?).

As for the rest, OSs are not a religion. We have a new one. I do wish the tools for hardware management in Linux would get "windowed". My latest experience with Xubuntu leave me commandline tired. But at least my driver did not expire and the new one blue screened (thanks Creative for the wonderful experience ).

 

[EricMartello]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

It's just natural progression...aside from being able to address more memory simultaneously with hardware, 64-bit computing allows for twice as much floating point precision, which means game AI could get very intricate among other things

It's a natural progression but the things that needed the additional VM have been running on 64-bit systems for years already. I'm sure games will take advantage of it in the future but that's about it and that won't be for a while since game developers will still have to maintain compatibility with 32-bit systems for at least a few years. And with MMX, SIMD, etc floating point precision has already been way above 32-bit so that's non-issue.

Yes, servers running 64-bit OSes have been around for a while now, but it will probably be a lot sooner than you think that games will utilize the full potential offered by a 64-bit OS and hardware combo. Gaming is really what pushes innovation in consumer-grade PCs.

The CPU extensions like MMX and 3DNow! did not necessarily increase the CPUs ability to process higher precision values, precision is limited by the core, and since most cores have a dedicated FP unit, that would be the second limiting factor. Keep in mind that the program has to be compiled specifically to utilize these CPU extensions, they are not part of the official x86 spec. The 64-bit CPU offers a much more precise BASELINE for floating point ops within the core itself, without having to employ CPU core-specific features.

It's also twice the amount of information being processed at any given time.

That's not true at all. And most apps require more memory, and some run slower because of it, in 64-bit mode because of the larger pointers.

It stands to reason that when you are processing more data it will take more time, which is why CPUs get faster...but what you are talking about is more like bad coding than a flaw of 64-bit computing. Most OSes offer programming calls with "automatic" memory management, which relieves that duty from the developer. For all but the most cunning developers, THAT is the way to go...and in case you are wondering, a pointer really doesn't require any major resources because it is just that - a pointer - it contains no data; it just points to the data.

 

[Nothinman]

Yes, servers running 64-bit OSes have been around for a while now, but it will probably be a lot sooner than you think that games will utilize the full potential offered by a 64-bit OS and hardware combo. Gaming is really what pushes innovation in consumer-grade PCs.

Gaming definitely pushes GPU, CPU and memory requirements but it's just too bad there's nothing pushing the game developers to innovate some fun games. A crap game with 32G worth of hi-res textures is still a crap game.

The CPU extensions like MMX and 3DNow! did not necessarily increase the CPUs ability to process higher precision values, precision is limited by the core, and since most cores have a dedicated FP unit, that would be the second limiting factor. Keep in mind that the program has to be compiled specifically to utilize these CPU extensions, they are not part of the official x86 spec. The 64-bit CPU offers a much more precise BASELINE for floating point ops within the core itself, without having to employ CPU core-specific features.

MMX, SSE, etc are seperate from normal FPU operations, in fact MMX reuses the FPU registers so you have to be careful about mixing those operations.

It stands to reason that when you are processing more data it will take more time, which is why CPUs get faster...but what you are talking about is more like bad coding than a flaw of 64-bit computing. Most OSes offer programming calls with "automatic" memory management, which relieves that duty from the developer. For all but the most cunning developers, THAT is the way to go...and in case you are wondering, a pointer really doesn't require any major resources because it is just that - a pointer - it contains no data; it just points to the data.

I know what a pointer is and pointers do contain data, the address of the real data to which they point. And the fact that 64-bit pointers take twice as much memory as 32-bit pointers can't be avoided by using higher level languages, you just don't get to see the pointers.

 

[pctwo]

I have to say thanks to BD. His is he first article on Vista that makes me want to upgrade (not now though). All the mainstream press talks about is aero and security and search (ho hum).

I tried Vista during the public beta and it was painfully slow. Search was agonizing. The UAC was annoying, useless, and repetitive. Media center brought my X2 3800+ w/ 2gigs to its knees. aera was mixed for me. While it was better looking than the default ugly Lunar UI on XP, I don't know if all the visual improvements are more cosmetic and functional. Ex: the semi-transparent window title bar and frame is sort of cool, but the main reason it's useful to see what's behind it is because they've made it so much bigger! And the semi-transparency makes it harder to read the window caption at a glance. Similarly, you can't see at a glance which window has the focuus. On XP, it's immediately obvious. It still seems a bit overdone compared to the mac's elegance.

But an improved VM manager, that's something I can get behind.

Incidentally, is it possible to excludes drives/folders/files from the indexer? I don't want an innocuous search for, say, "girl on girl action" to turn up something inappropriate.

 

[EricMartello]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Yes, servers running 64-bit OSes have been around for a while now, but it will probably be a lot sooner than you think that games will utilize the full potential offered by a 64-bit OS and hardware combo. Gaming is really what pushes innovation in consumer-grade PCs.

Gaming definitely pushes GPU, CPU and memory requirements but it's just too bad there's nothing pushing the game developers to innovate some fun games. A crap game with 32G worth of hi-res textures is still a crap game.

Yeah, can't say they're aren't a lot of crappy games out there...but there are also a good deal of quality games, depending on what you're interested in. Myself, I'm currently paying Blizzard to suck my life away with WoW.

MMX, SSE, etc are seperate from normal FPU operations, in fact MMX reuses the FPU registers so you have to be careful about mixing those operations.

I'm pretty sure that the core extensions do get their own set of registers, because if they were just some sort of emulation there would be no need to compile a program to use them. The original goal of those extensions was more to speed up FP and other media calculations, since prior to their introduction, CPUs really only did integer processing with shoddy FPU performance.

I know what a pointer is and pointers do contain data, the address of the real data to which they point. And the fact that 64-bit pointers take twice as much memory as 32-bit pointers can't be avoided by using higher level languages, you just don't get to see the pointers.

You can have 5 pointers:

p1
p2
p3
p4
p5

All pointing to the data in 1 variable:

v1

The actual memory occupied will be equal to that of v1 only, since the pointers are merely signposts and do not store data, just memory address.

The purpose of pointers is to allow other objects within the program to access or share the data of a variable, without having to create an instance of that variable in the memory - thus saving memory and hopefully preventing leaks.

At the same time, poor coding can result in instability because of this "sharing". I am referring to how they work in C++...and I doubt they would be much different in other programming languages.

 

[Doom Machine]

cripes, theres lots of great games, just depends on the person

 

[Nothinman]

I'm pretty sure that the core extensions do get their own set of registers, because if they were just some sort of emulation there would be no need to compile a program to use them. The original goal of those extensions was more to speed up FP and other media calculations, since prior to their introduction, CPUs really only did integer processing with shoddy FPU performance.

According to this[1] at least MMX shares registers the normal FP registers.

The actual memory occupied will be equal to that of v1 only, since the pointers are merely signposts and do not store data, just memory address.

No, those 5 pointers also take up 8 bytes each on a 64-bit system so the total memory usage will be 40 bytes + the size of the data in v1. On a 32-bit system they'd be 4 bytes so the total memory usage would be 20 bytes + v1.

[1] http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/10/30/268

 

[LIVAN]

I been using it for about a week too, I would agree pretty much 100%.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: pctwo
Ex: the semi-transparent window title bar and frame is sort of cool, but the main reason it's useful to see what's behind it is because they've made it so much bigger! And the semi-transparency makes it harder to read the window caption at a glance. Similarly, you can't see at a glance which window has the focuus. On XP, it's immediately obvious. It still seems a bit overdone compared to the mac's elegance.

The default settings are a little much, but you can always tweak the transparency and font color/size to your liking.

Incidentally, is it possible to excludes drives/folders/files from the indexer? I don't want an innocuous search for, say, "girl on girl action" to turn up something inappropriate.

Yep, its fairly easy to do so. But indexing only speeds up searches. If someone really wants to find your girl on girl action shots, they can always use the old fashioned style.

And somewhat back on topic, tom's hardware analyzed superfetch and readyboost, and found it to provide a boost, even with 2gb of memory and an unremarkable USB stick.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/31/...sta-superfetch-and-readyboostanalyzed/

 

[EricMartello]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

The actual memory occupied will be equal to that of v1 only, since the pointers are merely signposts and do not store data, just memory address.

No, those 5 pointers also take up 8 bytes each on a 64-bit system so the total memory usage will be 40 bytes + the size of the data in v1. On a 32-bit system they'd be 4 bytes so the total memory usage would be 20 bytes + v1.

[1] http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/10/30/268

You're talking about the actual data occupied by the address itself, which is laughable in the context you are presenting it. You are suggesting that the additional 20 bytes required somehow delivers a critical performance hit, despite the leverage gained by having access to more memory, higher data throughput capacity and a larger number of simultaneous operations per cycle?

That is pretty low-level nitpicking...I guess if you are writing a virus, it would matter. Like I said, this isn't an argument against 64-bit computing, it's an argument against crappy coding practices...which is really pushing this guy's thread waaaaaay off topic.

Coming back to 64-bit Vista...will it provide any benefits now over the 32-bit version? Probably not, and if you rely on 32-bit apps then it may be even slower - BUT dual-core CPUs have been around for a while and even now developers are just beginning to utilize them to their full potential. I would rather jump up to 64-bit Vista from the start, because then I won't have to move onto it later. It won't be long before 64-bit OS is all the rage...and with quad-core chips from AMD right around the corner, there's no reason not to upgrade to 64-bit.

 

[Nothinman]

You're talking about the actual data occupied by the address itself, which is laughable in the context you are presenting it. You are suggesting that the additional 20 bytes required somehow delivers a critical performance hit, despite the leverage gained by having access to more memory, higher data throughput capacity and a larger number of simultaneous operations per cycle?

I never said anything about a "critical performance hit", all I said originally was "most apps require more memory, and some run slower because of it" which is true. And that 20 extra bytes is only for 5 pointers, any app of decent size will have a lot more than 5 pointers.

That is pretty low-level nitpicking...I guess if you are writing a virus, it would matter. Like I said, this isn't an argument against 64-bit computing, it's an argument against crappy coding practices...which is really pushing this guy's thread waaaaaay off topic.

It has nothing to do with coding practices, no matter how good or bad you are your app will need pointers and a 64-bit process' pointers will be twice the size of a 32-bit process' pointers.

BUT dual-core CPUs have been around for a while and even now developers are just beginning to utilize them to their full potential.

SMP machines have been available for decades and developers still don't know how to effectively paralellize their apps. Dual core machines are much more popular than multiple socket machines so SMP is more pervasive but I have no doubts that most developers will leave their apps just as serial as ever because in 9/10 cases it just doesn't matter enough to go through the huge amount of work required to multi-thread something.

It won't be long before 64-bit OS is all the rage...and with quad-core chips from AMD right around the corner, there's no reason not to upgrade to 64-bit.

The amount of cores is orthognal to whether you run a 64-bit OS or not, you can run your quad core CPU in 32-bit mode and still get all 4 cores working for you.

 

[EricMartello]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
I never said anything about a "critical performance hit", all I said originally was "most apps require more memory, and some run slower because of it" which is true. And that 20 extra bytes is only for 5 pointers, any app of decent size will have a lot more than 5 pointers.

Yeah, you implied it. So 64-bit is twice as much as 32-bit and 32-bit is twice as much as 16-bit, so what point are you trying to make? Stave off progress because new technology puts higher demands on last generation technology? You originally stated this as being a "compelling reason not to switch to 64-bit". Tell me, who is being compelled by your argument here? Certainly not me, and I'd be willing to bet not many other people would be compelled by your reasoning.

It has nothing to do with coding practices, no matter how good or bad you are your app will need pointers and a 64-bit process' pointers will be twice the size of a 32-bit process' pointers.

Using pointers is not a requirement, it's an optimization. Once again, your stating of the obvious about 64 being double of 32 is utterly irrelevant.

SMP machines have been available for decades and developers still don't know how to effectively paralellize their apps. Dual core machines are much more popular than multiple socket machines so SMP is more pervasive but I have no doubts that most developers will leave their apps just as serial as ever because in 9/10 cases it just doesn't matter enough to go through the huge amount of work required to multi-thread something.

You know this comment is so dumb that...you know what, you obviously don't know much about programming, beyond what you can search for on google, so just stop talking about it...

The amount of cores is orthognal to whether you run a 64-bit OS or not, you can run your quad core CPU in 32-bit mode and still get all 4 cores working for you.

The point is that CPUs are getting exponentially more capable, and 64-bit computing is an improvement and not a handicap.

 

[idiotekniQues]

according to anandtech, vista needs over 2gb to be truly efficient:

"We opened 104 images in Adobe Photoshop CS3 from our recent trip to Las Vegas for CES 2007; with all 104 images opened and loaded, we then timed how long it would take for Microsoft Word to start. In Windows XP, despite some swapping, Microsoft Word 2007 started in just under 8 seconds. On our Vista test bed, starting Word took almost 20 seconds due to constant paging to disk. The only difference? Vista's heightened memory requirements took a stressful situation that worked reasonably well under XP and made it far more painful with the same amount of memory.

We then upgraded the Vista machine to 3GB and ran the test again; thanks to faster application load times and intelligent prefetching, Word started in 1.31 seconds. If you thought that 2GB was the sweet spot for Windows XP, chances are 3GB will be the new minimum for you under Vista."

by the time i get vista ill have 2 more 1gb sticks but oi vay!

i use photoshop extensively and multitask when i use it, this type of performance will not cut it unless it can be fixed via software updates due to code not working well in vista with ps

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues
according to anandtech, vista needs over 2gb to be truly efficient:

"We opened 104 images in Adobe Photoshop CS3 from our recent trip to Las Vegas for CES 2007; with all 104 images opened and loaded, we then timed how long it would take for Microsoft Word to start. In Windows XP, despite some swapping, Microsoft Word 2007 started in just under 8 seconds. On our Vista test bed, starting Word took almost 20 seconds due to constant paging to disk. The only difference? Vista's heightened memory requirements took a stressful situation that worked reasonably well under XP and made it far more painful with the same amount of memory.

We then upgraded the Vista machine to 3GB and ran the test again; thanks to faster application load times and intelligent prefetching, Word started in 1.31 seconds. If you thought that 2GB was the sweet spot for Windows XP, chances are 3GB will be the new minimum for you under Vista."

by the time i get vista ill have 2 more 1gb sticks but oi vay!

i use photoshop extensively and multitask when i use it, this type of performance will not cut it unless it can be fixed via software updates due to code not working well in vista with ps

I'd say that means Vista will need more than 2 GB to efficiently open 104 images in Photoshop CS.
I doubt a whole lot of people do that regularly.

We have a database box that was upgraded from 32 to 64 GB of memory the other day, that doesn't mean Solaris needs 64 GB of RAM to run efficiently, it just means the Oracle database on said box eats a bunch of memory.

 

[Tom]

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues
according to anandtech, vista needs over 2gb to be truly efficient:

"We opened 104 images in Adobe Photoshop CS3 from our recent trip to Las Vegas for CES 2007; with all 104 images opened and loaded, we then timed how long it would take for Microsoft Word to start. In Windows XP, despite some swapping, Microsoft Word 2007 started in just under 8 seconds. On our Vista test bed, starting Word took almost 20 seconds due to constant paging to disk. The only difference? Vista's heightened memory requirements took a stressful situation that worked reasonably well under XP and made it far more painful with the same amount of memory.

We then upgraded the Vista machine to 3GB and ran the test again; thanks to faster application load times and intelligent prefetching, Word started in 1.31 seconds. If you thought that 2GB was the sweet spot for Windows XP, chances are 3GB will be the new minimum for you under Vista."

by the time i get vista ill have 2 more 1gb sticks but oi vay!

i use photoshop extensively and multitask when i use it, this type of performance will not cut it unless it can be fixed via software updates due to code not working well in vista with ps

I wonder if they tried this test with a 1 or 2 gig Readyboost drive, and if it made much difference ? Those are a lot cheaper than another gig of ram, right now anyway.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

I personally am not going to upgrade for another year or so. Probably not until SP1 comes out. I've never been an early adopter of any technology, and given the reports of Vista thus far I'm not going to start

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: EricMartello

Originally posted by: Nothinman
I never said anything about a "critical performance hit", all I said originally was "most apps require more memory, and some run slower because of it" which is true. And that 20 extra bytes is only for 5 pointers, any app of decent size will have a lot more than 5 pointers.

Yeah, you implied it. So 64-bit is twice as much as 32-bit and 32-bit is twice as much as 16-bit, so what point are you trying to make? Stave off progress because new technology puts higher demands on last generation technology? You originally stated this as being a "compelling reason not to switch to 64-bit". Tell me, who is being compelled by your argument here? Certainly not me, and I'd be willing to bet not many other people would be compelled by your reasoning.

It has nothing to do with coding practices, no matter how good or bad you are your app will need pointers and a 64-bit process' pointers will be twice the size of a 32-bit process' pointers.

Using pointers is not a requirement, it's an optimization. Once again, your stating of the obvious about 64 being double of 32 is utterly irrelevant.

SMP machines have been available for decades and developers still don't know how to effectively paralellize their apps. Dual core machines are much more popular than multiple socket machines so SMP is more pervasive but I have no doubts that most developers will leave their apps just as serial as ever because in 9/10 cases it just doesn't matter enough to go through the huge amount of work required to multi-thread something.

You know this comment is so dumb that...you know what, you obviously don't know much about programming, beyond what you can search for on google, so just stop talking about it...

The amount of cores is orthognal to whether you run a 64-bit OS or not, you can run your quad core CPU in 32-bit mode and still get all 4 cores working for you.

The point is that CPUs are getting exponentially more capable, and 64-bit computing is an improvement and not a handicap.

lol....before you make some of these statements, you might ask around....Nothinman is a respected member of AT forums. His post count isn't from Neffing in OT all day, it's from technical posts, and valid opinions. You don't have to agree with him, but to call him a n00b who searches google is going to get you flamed.

 

[Nothinman]

Yeah, you implied it. So 64-bit is twice as much as 32-bit and 32-bit is twice as much as 16-bit, so what point are you trying to make? Stave off progress because new technology puts higher demands on last generation technology? You originally stated this as being a "compelling reason not to switch to 64-bit". Tell me, who is being compelled by your argument here? Certainly not me, and I'd be willing to bet not many other people would be compelled by your reasoning.

There was obvious immediate benefits when going from 16-bit to 32-bit software, the same can't be said of 32-bit to 64-bit. The only software that's been running into the 32-bit VM limitations is extreme niche software like high end databases, 3D renderers, etc and those already have ports to other 64-bit arches. For Linux users the only reason not to install a 64-bit distro is lack of flash and IMO that's a good thing anyway. But on Windows most of your software is closed and can only be recompiled by the developer so you'll still be using virtually all 32-bit software anyway so you should be looking for compelling reasons to switch, not vice versa.

Using pointers is not a requirement, it's an optimization. Once again, your stating of the obvious about 64 being double of 32 is utterly irrelevant.

Unless all of your data is kept on the stack and you don't use any strings, arrays, etc then pointers will be a requirement even if it's hidden behind a language interface so that you don't see it.

You know this comment is so dumb that...you know what, you obviously don't know much about programming, beyond what you can search for on google, so just stop talking about it...

And I take if you've done a ton of multithreaded programming so it just comes as second nature to you, right?

The point is that CPUs are getting exponentially more capable, and 64-bit computing is an improvement and not a handicap.

No, 64-bit computing isn't a handicap but 64-bit Windows is.

 

[idiotekniQues]

i do

i shoot raw and convert to jpeg, and i do more than 100 photographs at a pop easily, and i am just an amateur photog as evidenced by the gallery in my sig!

plus, id like to see more testing with other applications with 2 gigs of ram for multitasking.

i like to do my photoshop stuff, open up some music with rhapsody, take breathers with internet browsing and i also open word to jot down ideas or type documents etc etc etc.

id like to see general multi-tasking benchies with 2 gigs of ram with vista. hopefully we can get a nice comprehensive review of such things soon.

 

[pctwo]

oops sorry posted in wrong thread. I don't see delete option. mod please delete

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues
i do

That's why I said most

 

[idiotekniQues]

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues
i do

That's why I said most

of course, but substitute a lot of photographs for something else.

also, considering the ridiculous megapixel races out there, even little compact cameras are 10mp and any user coming back from a weekend getaway will easily have 100 shots to go through or what not.

and if not that, there are a lot of people that multitask with video/graphics/photo's etc that would fall into a similar category.

more testing is needed, but anandtechs preliminary statement says that 2gb is not enough, when i bet a lot of us power users thought that our 2gb investment was going to be vista proof.

i stand by my statement that while it may not affect everybody, it is much more than a niche market