vista for gaming

Prefetching is actually very useful. Cacheing my ram when I don't need it and allowing me to acess when I need it and overall everything runs faster.

 

ive seen that vista runs older games worse than xp but does that mean it runs newer games better than xp

 

XP uses hogs up less RAM, and you'll very unlikely have random "crashes" in newer RAM intensive games like Supreme Commander and Company of Heroes.

On a 2GB system, those two game can sometime get so intense that under Vista (where it's guessed to have around an extra ~500MB or so of overhead), the game can and will crash due to insufficient RAM, whereas 2GB is fine for both games under XP.

I have a 2GB XP Pro and I can run both game fine, but a friend with an Inspiron 1520 with 2GB running Vista sometimes run into troubles with the above mentioned games.

3GB is really mandatory if you're trying to play "new" games on Vista.

 

I don't know about Company of Heroes, but i AM sure that Supreme Commander is just too badly designed (it had problems even with 4GB - since it couldn't actually use them).

My personal experience with Vista:
- i installed it about 6 months ago, with dual boot (was afraid i will get into compatibility problems since i have chosen 64 bit Vista)
- in 6 months i have never booted in XP again... a few days ago i deleted that operating system (i mean XP).
- never had problems with any game i have played (even tried Jagged Alliance 2, Fallout 1 and 2 and other games made before 2000, just for fun - they worked all, they even registered in the Game Directory).
- had the occasional nvidia drivers related crashes (had some in XP before so no biggie, actually Vista catches them from to time, unlike XP which just restarted/crashed)
- voice recognition integrated in the OS : COOL, now i use it more and more instead of the wireless mouse when watching movies

In conclusion: Vista is great (i do have 2 GB RAM, using less with Vista is asking for a spankin') i don't think you can blame the OS for driver support, is after all 3rd party (nvidia, ati, creative, etc...)

 

Triple_Dude, are you sure about that? This might be the answer i am looking for because i am suffer from having crash during CoH on my Vista Home Premium x86.

Do you think there's a possibility a hotfix or any digital update will solve the problem or i need to get 3GB ram in order to get rid of the problem?

 

Not true at all. I have 2 gigs of ram and at idle i usually have 500-600 being used and 1k thats cached. After any intense game (I have supreme commander) my ram usage drastically goes down to a little under 200 to a maximum of 400 and I never experience crashes with sup com or any game for that matter.

Vistas ram usage is definitely exaggerated. I have bioshock, sup com, and company of heroes and they run great. Your friends issues are probably related to something else.

 

It depends on what resolutions you are playing at.

I game on 1600x1200 or 1920x1200 (depending on the game). In XP, I am totally fine when I had 2GB of ram. But when I game in Vista, I checked during a game (take BF2142 for example) and I had 85% of it being used up.

Then I switched over to the ol' 64-bit bandwagon, got more memory, and vol-la! No more BSOD's or lagging due to HDD caching.

Mike.

 

I play sup com and company of heroes at 1680 x 1050.

 

Yeah, but with what kind of video card?

Anyways, it's a mere fact that you'll get a marginal performance boost with more than 2GB of ram.

Mike.

 

8600 ddr2. No I was just saying his stament about needing more than 2 gigs of ram just so games wont crash on vista is false.

 

if u guys had a choice today which os would u get
vista or xp

 

Xp! I was using Vista two days ago i coulnt crank up the settings in UT3 at high resolutions. It was around 35-40 fps and dropping to 20s at times then i switched back to xp and i get 40-50fps and drops down to 30 at times! Thus i came to the conclusion tht using Vista isnt my ballgame

 

Have you actually played on the largest maps for both games with max player count (CoH and Supreme Commander)? Try it and tell us what happens... 'cause my friend is eager to "fix" his problem, if it isn't related to RAM.

Obviously, on smaller scale maps, you won't have memory overflow (duh), but it can happen on the larger maps. Especially when loads of units are pumped out by everyone.

And I'm simply stating what me and my friend has observed. It is NOT a fact.

I'm not a developer for either game, so I can't say.

All I'm reporting is what happened to my friend's Vista with 2GB of RAM. I'm pretty sure there are other threads (on this forum, even) that reports more or less the same thing.

Don't make generalizations. I simply stated what happens with Supreme Commander and Company of Heroes. Not all "game s", like you seem to be pinning me for stating .

 

I was just responding to that sentence mainly since that was a generalization you made.

 

Have you actually tried what I described? Playing Supreme Commander with max players and every player is pumping out loads of units?

You can't refute my statement until you can prove it false with some evidence of your own. I've already presented my evidence, and that's my friends' Vista with 2GB crashing when there's too much units, while my XP didn't (We were in the same game).

 

Sigh I already said sup com in all types of games runs fine.

I find it funny you say I make a generalization when in fact you are the one that said for gaming in vista you need 3 gb and when I call you on it you mention a specific example of only one game. Like I have said I play bishock, orange box, coh, sup com..etc and they run fine while you bluntly state that for vista you need 3 gb to game properly.

Wheres your evidence for making that statement? Giving one game and one person as an example does not really constitute proper evidence. I don't have 3 gigs of ram and I am using vista and my games run great so your conclusion in your first statement is false.

 

All of the memory issues with games like Supreme Commander exist in both XP and Vista, although you will almost never see the error actually occur in XP.

It has to do with the 2Gb limit imposed upon all programs run in 32-bit Windows (be it Vista or XP). Anandtech did a fantastic 3-part article on this very issue.

What was happening: Vista virtualizes every running program/process in order to compartmentalize errors and malware, allow for greater compatibility, and thus protect the operating system. XP does not do this.

As a result of virtualizing entire running games, like Supreme Commander, massive amounts of virtual memory were required. Fine, this didn't cause a problem, Vista could allocate quite a bit of memory (just like XP) up to 2Gb. But for some reason, in Vista, the virtual memory required for games was much higher than in XP.

Eventually Microsoft traced the issue to the virtualization of the video memory. They released a patch that clears up the problem, bringing Vista memory usage in games very much in line with XP usage patterns. I think the patch was included in an auto-update, but either way it is available from their website if you notice your games crash at late moments in the match or map with many units and events occurring at once.

You will never be able to tell if your game hits the 2Gb virtual memory limit in windows unless you are running a program like process explorer from sysinternals that can show the amount of virtual ram a program is utilizing. The task manager only shows physical memory usage.

This issue will become even more pronounced as more advanced games (that use more memory) arrive on the scene. Even if you switch over to 64-bit Windows, the issue will only be fixed if the program is compiled in 64-bit. 32-bit games running in 64-bit Windows are still only allocated 2Gb of virtual memory as a compatibility method (to allow the 32-bit program to run in a 64-bit environment conditions in the 32-bit OS must be replicated).

 

I'm in no mood to argue with you, but here's a tip:
Next time, read. I stated from experience that it occurs only to CoH and Supreme Commander. Not Bioshock. Not CoD. Not joe-blow-game that you happen to play.

Also, notice the "quote unquote" on the word "new"? That implied that I was referring to the two games I mentioned in the post I posted.

@ StormEffect: Okay, thanks for the info (and proof that crashes do occur under Vista due to RAM issues--or at least it used to; unlike what Forerunner is blatantly stating without proof). I'll tell my friend to update his Vista with the newest patches .