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Topic: Vista Impressions (Read 137 times) |
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Conor Knoxx
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Last On: 05/20/10
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well... perhaps a thread discussing the in's and out's of Microsoft's newest child, "Vista" as it pertains and effects NWN's one and two?
Personal Experience:
(and let me qualify this a bit, by noting that I run a small computer store for a living) - Brought Vista Premium home to install on my system this weekend. Basic install, drivers, updates, etc. - without a hitch. It looks pretty, and does have some very nice features.
Note 1) Its hungry. Have lots of CPU power, and gobs of ram if you want to do this. Eating up 4-500mb of ram for the O/S and anti-virus, etc (before starting a single "program" seems about the norm. If you want to run NWN-2 along with Vista, I'd suggest running 2GB of memory.
Note 2) Graphics performance (for comparison, I use a 630mb nVidia 8800 - pretty much a top-tier card) Everything seemed ok here, and no reason it shouldn't be... however, I could swear in my games it just wasn't quite as bright/crisp/detail. I can't even explain why, and I'll call it a subjective opinion, it was also VERY subtle... but again, don't make the upgrade looking for an "improvement" there - at best you'll get the same.
Note 3) - and this is was the killer, "revert back to XP" factor for me. Sound issues, and specifically, Sound Blaster Live. An awesome sound card, IMHO. Vista totally changed the way sound "works" in games, and the short version is that "EAX hardware support" is gone. Many games depend on EAX instructions for high quality, 3D sound effects. Vista kills it, completely. Now.. I have an Audigy 2 card, and apparently if I want to throw that perfectly good card in the garbage, and get a Sound Blaster X-Fi based card, there is 3rd party "patch" to emulate EAX (with a small hit on performance) to make "some" games work again (NWN-2 and WoW are on the list) Crazy.
Further, and it is a "known problem" on the bioware boards, NWN-1, running Vista, with an sound blaster audio card, simply won't run. Crashes on start up, completely unplayable. Hard to believe. I found this to be true as well, and after struggling / looking for a workaround a while, I gave up and went back to good old XP.
Thats my experience so far. For "future games" it may be the cats err.. meow, but for existing and older titles... buyer beware!
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Dane Bramage
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One could always dual boot... but what's the point, right?
Apparently, they (meaning Micro$oft) doesn't care about "legacy" game.
pah... a pox on them... a pox I say.
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Lazybones
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I am planning on building a Vista rig this summer with 4gb of RAM, an 8800gfx/768, and an X-fi card. I am going back and forth on the dual boot option, since my copy of XP is fixed to my old Dell machine and I'd have to buy a new license.
I know that everyone's still working on Vista drivers... I wonder if this is something that can be fixed in time?
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Gulfwulf
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I'm sure better drivers will start appearing as people start buying Vista. From what I hear, sales of Vista are going slow, so manufactures may be using this time to tweak their drivers.
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Mulu
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I was actually toying with the idea of getting a "permanent" NWN box with a high speed single chip. Since NWN doesn't take advantage of multiple cores or the highest gfx, what would be the ultimate NWN1 box?
Way back when I kept a Wing Commander 3 box, a 486 DX4 100 with DOS 6.0, to run all my favorite DOS games on.
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GM_ODA
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Last On: 02/08/12
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Ground home to me just today was how bad Microsoft trains us. As a coder, it amazes me, how quickly folks reach for the reset button. In the more recenty OS' from MS, the computer is sooo helpful, it reaches for the reset button for you! The reset button does NOTHING to solve the 'why' of 'why my computer stopped' addressing only the 'stopped' portion, leaving you free to plough right into that same condition that made the system crashy in the first place.
I _long_ worked with MSW systems, hell, I too had a tricked out DOOM / Wing Commander box having used PCs and worked on them since the early 1980's. I worked with other systems too, but mainly MS systems (gotta go where the money is and most folks had poorly operating MS systems so repairing them was an OK gig). Did a lot of head shaking in the back room over how folks got their systems in such condition in the first place but that is another POST.
Anyway, I have to say that, while I have watched MS build progressively worse OS over the years, I've resisted all temptation to upgrade my own machines since W98SE since, in my opinion, all MS has done since DOS is bring out 'late beta' editions full of security and bug issues. Never actually clearing up the problems, they scrap the thing and build a whole new beast, rife with all new bugs and security issues, (ready?) then repeat. Since W98 we have had ME, 2000, XP, and now Vista. Obviously, 2.5 years is _not_ enough time for MS to get the real juice out of an OS, but appearantly it is _just_ enough time for MS to get the real juice out of the public's collective wallets.
Now the OS they give us is so bloated, that just to play a DVD it has to DECODE, ENCODE, DECODE then DISPLAY. This OS is designed to help big business and to impede the customer in actual lawful tasks. If you GAVE me the hardware to run VISTA, I would be obliged to thank you, and install a better, cleaner, faster OS (like several of them) and certanly not VISTA (nor xp for that matter) but likely a LINUX/w98 dual boot.
Oh, and do NOT let them tell you there is not much software for LINUX. It is true there is not much software on the shelf in the comptuter store for LINUX, but that is because they don't use that distribution structure much, look online, there is plenty to do anything you might want to do with your computer.
GM_ODA
P.S. the LINUX desktop is FINE, jump in (with a BOOTABLE CD-ROM/DVD OS)!
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Lazybones
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GM_ODA, while I share some of your complaints about Windows OSes, the fact remains--if you want to be a computer gamer, you need XP. There just isn't enough coverage of major titles by other OSes. In a year or two, the same thing will likely be said about Vista, at least if you want to play the latest titles.
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Yoshosedai
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I at least had to purchase a new computer a month or so ago. The only options i had for ready install was Vista. My only major grief not being a coder/programmer is the issue of the backdated games. I managed to find a way to run NWN reasonably well thanks to some message boards and the same for the BG games but ones i used to have like Fable no such luck.
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Anders Soth
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I've just had exactly the same problem with my new laptop, NWN will allow me to configure it etc but when I start the game the screen goes blank and nothing happens. I'd be grateful if you could direct me to the work-arounds you found.
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Yoshosedai
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actually all i did was g enter a search sting into google that resembled "NWN Windows Vista Compatibilty issues Blank Screen" or some similair combination. Basically the ebst advice i found was on the Bioware boards but i dont have the link anymore. one thing i do remember having to do is go into the NWN customize screen and put in my graphics card details as if it were underpowered; less fine textures that sort of thing. Hope this works for you sorry for the vagueness.
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| « Last Edit: on: May 5, 2007, 4:39PM » |
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