SideNote: Concerning W2K vs 98 in gaming... I got some quest

[JimmyK 0]

I havent used 9x since 1996, so I have nothing to compare it with. But Iv read a couple of reviews and articles saying that win98 is yielding about 10-15 percent higher framerates compared to win2k. They had a number of games benchmarks to prove it as well on equivalent systems.

 

What Im wondering is:

 

Is this because of drivers? but man 10-15 percent is alot if u ask me.......

 

is win2k is bogged down with system operations running in the background?

 

because I remmeber Nt 4.0 would run all glide and opengl games FASTER then 9x but now with win2k that doesnt seem to be true anymore

 

Those fellas out there with a dual boot and single processor systems could u give us some input? is win98 faster in games? if yes is it d3d? opengl? or both?

 

Thats about it for now

[MousePad 0]

Yah, I have a triple-boot machine, 98/NT4/Win2k 2194, and I've noticed that Win98 was a little faster in a few d3d games than Win2k. I attributed it to immature drivers for Win2k.. Other games, though, in Glide and OpenGL, outstrip Win98 by a long shot. Most of the time win2k runs faster than NT, too, which is A Good Thing.

 

So I'm betting that it's mostly the drivers need to be optimized for the new OS. Once that happens, we'll probably see Win2k running everything faster.

 

Just gotta wait..

 

- MousePad

 

You can run, but you'll just die tired.

[YuppieScum 0]

I expect the reson to be two-fold:

 

1. The drivers are comparatively immature - IHVs use the walk-before-you-run development model - get them working, then make them fast.

2. The OS only came out of beta yesterday! This means that the articles were based on pre-release code, probably RC2. Even in terms of boot speed, I've found that 2195 out-performs RC2 and RC3.

 

In short, don't sweat it. This situation won't last, and may even be irrelevant now anyway.

 

Also remember, Win9x doesn't know about the second CPU under your hood

[JimmyK 0]

Yeah that makes sense to me as well but benchs liek this bother me a lot.. considering 640x480 is close and then thehigher the resolution the slower the win2k box.

 

<IMG src= "http://www.ewatch.com.au/reviews/Graph3.gif">

 

<IMG src= "http://www.ewatch.com.au/reviews/Graph4.gif">

 

btw the whole review is at: http://www.ewatch.com.au/Review1.asp

 

 

 

[This message has been edited by JimmyK (edited 16 December 1999).]

[MousePad 0]

One, you can't always trust reviews.

 

Two, they admitted they were using RC2, and the highest drivers you get for that are 3.56. 3.64 run really well for me, faster than 98.

 

You just have to give it time. Like the man said, we just left beta for the OS, and non-beta optimized drivers have yet to be seen.

And just think when SMP-capable drivers come out.

 

- MousePad

 

Violence. If it bleeds, you can kill it.

[JimmyK 0]

yeah man can u imagine games that are fully take advantage of SMP omg that would OWN...

does anybody know whats gonna be the first fully SMP game?

[MousePad 0]

Games that take full advantage of SMP..

 

Mmmm. Sweet. Probably appear on Linux before they appear on Win2k, tho.. :|

 

I thought that Quake3 already had full SMP support.. I know starsiege and tribes have it.. Oooh. Dual Athlon 1Ghz chips and a GeForce DDR.. Running Quake3 or whatever is next, in full SMP mode.

 

Now that the OS has come out of beta, does anyone know if the big companies are actually going to start releasing drivers for us to use?

 

- Mousepad

 

 

 

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Violence. If it bleeds, you can kill it.

[JimmyK 0]

q3a has MINIMAL smp support usually 10-15 percent icnrease in RARE/SEVERE occasions it goes up to 30-45 percent increase.

 

tribes has SMP support?????? I think ur mistaken bro, I jstu ran tibes and checked cpu usage it was at 50 percent...

[Seldzar 0]

As far as I know Motocross Madness 2 will support SMP but I don't know the extent of the support. I'm hoping it will be great =)

[MousePad 0]

Allright, Tribes may not have SMP support. I read somewhere that StarSiege does, and since Tribes uses the same engine, I figured it did, too. *shrug* Sorry.

 

- Mousepad

 

 

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Just once, I'd like to see an elementary particle physicist use *ZOT* when referring to accelerator operations. Is that too much to ask?

[antrant 0]

I have the G400 and win2k, and two prosessors. When I use only one (r_smp 0) then the mousecursor has a 1 sec control lag, but when I enable both prosessors the control lag dissapear...

 

The g400 drivers are very beta, but it is very interesting

[peaje 0]

Well i dont know about most of other companies but Microsoft should built all their games with SMP support.

 

Windows 2000 is on the way.. and most of us will like to use some SMP on our games.

 

Microsoft with Windows 2000 should consider this. That if they consider Win 2000 as a gameing plattaform too.

[Seldzar 0]

Peaje, do you understand how this works?. MS doesn't make games, they are a publisher. They outsource the game project to a developer(Rainbow Studios = mxmadness 1 & 2) and then publish the game under their name. They do NOT decide if the game will use smp or not. MS has done their part, the OS is SMP enabled. It's up to developers to add smp support to the game and 3d card companies to add smp support in thier drivers. Did MS add smp support to q3? NO that was John Carmack and ID software. NOT MS. It's jsut a matter of understanding who is responsible for what. As far as i can see MS has done thier homeowrk with win2k, the OS is solid and compatable and fully functional. We now have to wait for everyone else to put their **** out. Come February we will see a crap load of drivers patches and fixes to ensure a smooth fast win2k =)

[Syncope 0]

MS's next step should be to make an OS that automatically multi-threads, instead of the application having to be SMP-enabled. I believe the BeOS does this, and others as well, and the performance gain for SMP machines is supposed to be great. Then it'd really make sense to have a multi-CPU box.

 

Right now I run NT4, dual-333, but it's more for geek reasons than necessity.

[YuppieScum 0]

BeOS doesn't "auto-multithread". The threading model is completely pervasive throughout the OS and drivers, and the OS itself was designed with this in mind, which is why it handles SMP better.

 

You can't have the OS take a single-threaded app and multi-thread it. It can't happen.

[MousePad 0]

It can't happen, yet. We still have to develop truly adaptive software routines.

 

hmm. That's a scary thought. A Windows that evolves.

 

- MousePad.

 

[This message has been edited by MousePad (edited 17 December 1999).]

[DrSchmoe 0]

Hey Seldzar,

 

MS might program all their games. I think Ensemble and many of the other companies are wholly owned subsidiaries... But I could be wrong

 

Just like EA owns most of the companies it publishes for (e.g. Westwood)

 

 

Argh!! Those graphical smileys are peeving me off. I miss ASCII.

 

 

[This message has been edited by DrSchmoe (edited 17 December 1999).]

[Seldzar 0]

Sh*t man, if that's so then damn. That's crazy but yet even if they are owned subsidiaries that does not necessarily that MS them selves is directly telling them how to code their games, they are still looked at as separate pieces just under one common big ass company =)

[Matt Lee 0]

For the most part, Microsoft does not make games. They are just a publisher. Asheron's Call, Age of Empires are good examples of this.

 

However, Allegiance, Microsoft's first in-house game, is due out next February. Check it out, I worked on it

http://www.microsoft.com/games/allegiance

 

[This message has been edited by Matt Lee (edited 18 December 1999).]

[MousePad 0]

Hmm, do I sense a minor amount of product pimping here?