I tell you what - with the delay until March of '08 I think you can pretty much write off DX10 now.  While Crysis can still make a big splash and draw some interest but one game is not going to convert a substantial enough group of people to vista in order to make it a big enough chunk of the market for developers to target.  Vista needed to make big inroads this year in order to bring us real development next year an beyond, with the problems, the delays to AoC, and the SP1 delays it is unlikely vista and DX10 will get anywhere near a relevant share of the market before Vista's lifecycle is up in 2009/2010.

Originally posted by AgtSmith

I tell you what - with the delay until March of '08 I think you can pretty much write off DX10 now.  While Crysis can still make a big splash and draw some interest one game is not going to convert a substantial enough group of people to vista in order to make it a big enough chunk of the market for developers to target.  Vista needed to make big inroads this year in order to bring us real development next year an beyond, with the problems, the delays to AoC, and the SP1 delays it is unlikely vista and DX10 will get anywhere near a relevant share of the market before Vista's lifecycle is up in 2009/2010.

maybe this time you can actually play the game before the gfx engine is already long out of date ...

AgtSmith Seriously your only on this thread to bash Vista, Give it up man.  Vista isn't the Anti-Christ.  Why don't you go support womens rights to choose or something constructive.   Maybe you don't like Vista,  but vista is the next platform.   IT will pass XP in Home PC's Market share.  It's already shipped over 60 million Units.   Vista is built for the next generation of PC's  PC's that are more powerful and more entertaining.   Sure XP might be faster on Single Core Processors.  Vista will be almost unnoticably slower then XP on a top of the line PC built 6 months from now.  Sure you may get an extra few points in a benchmark, but who gives?  Vista is more secure,  and easier to use.  Maybe not easier for you because your afraid of change, but for your average person the learning curve is much smaller for Vista.   This thread ISN'T about Vista.   It's about DX10.  DX10 is BETTER then DX9  LOOK AT IT AND SEE.   EVERY DX progression has been more resource intesive then the last.   WOW THIS ISN'T ANYTHNG NEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's been like that for almost a decade.  I don't see anyone still CLINGING to DX7 or DX5  why?  Because they're fosils.

You can flame Vista all you want.  You can't change the tides.

Originally posted by FE|Tachyon

AgtSmith Seriously your only on this thread to bash Vista, Give it up man.  Vista isn't the Anti-Christ.  Why don't you go support womens rights to choose or something constructive.   Maybe you don't like Vista,  but vista is the next platform.   IT will pass XP in Home PC's Market share.  It's already shipped over 60 million Units.   Vista is built for the next generation of PC's  PC's that are more powerful and more entertaining.   Sure XP might be faster on Single Core Processors.  Vista will be almost unnoticably slower then XP on a top of the line PC built 6 months from now.  Sure you may get an extra few points in a benchmark, but who gives?  Vista is more secure,  and easier to use.  Maybe not easier for you because your afraid of change, but for your average person the learning curve is much smaller for Vista.   This thread ISN'T about Vista.   It's about DX10.  DX10 is BETTER then DX9  LOOK AT IT AND SEE.   EVERY DX progression has been more resource intesive then the last.   WOW THIS ISN'T ANYTHNG NEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's been like that for almost a decade.  I don't see anyone still CLINGING to DX7 or DX5  why?  Because they're fosils.

 

You can flame Vista all you want.  You can't change the tides.

In what way is it more secure? I'd cracked a hole in Vista on the day I got it doing just about the same things I'd do to XP. As for your argument about Vista doing this and Vista doing that, most of it could have been implemented in XP. Vista is badly made and badly designed and your argument that people don't cling to DX7 doesn't stand up as DX10 offers very little over DX9, other than giving MS a stranglehold over the PC gaming market.

MS HAS reached its peak and IS slowly loosing it's grip, just like any empire.

Originally posted by FE|Tachyon

AgtSmith Seriously your only on this thread to bash Vista, Give it up man.  Vista isn't the Anti-Christ.  Why don't you go support womens rights to choose or something constructive.   Maybe you don't like Vista,  but vista is the next platform.   IT will pass XP in Home PC's Market share.  It's already shipped over 60 million Units.   Vista is built for the next generation of PC's  PC's that are more powerful and more entertaining.   Sure XP might be faster on Single Core Processors.  Vista will be almost unnoticably slower then XP on a top of the line PC built 6 months from now.  Sure you may get an extra few points in a benchmark, but who gives?  Vista is more secure,  and easier to use.  Maybe not easier for you because your afraid of change, but for your average person the learning curve is much smaller for Vista.   This thread ISN'T about Vista.   It's about DX10.  DX10 is BETTER then DX9  LOOK AT IT AND SEE.   EVERY DX progression has been more resource intesive then the last.   WOW THIS ISN'T ANYTHNG NEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's been like that for almost a decade.  I don't see anyone still CLINGING to DX7 or DX5  why?  Because they're fosils.

 

You can flame Vista all you want.  You can't change the tides. 

Vista is no more secure than XP other than being an unknown and any good security professional (such as myself) will tell you that security by obscurity is not security.  As for the comment about XP being faster on single core processor - WTF?  Are you just parroting more you have read elsewhere?  XP and Vista handle multiple core processors the same way, in fact - much of the Vista kernal is the same as XP excepting the virtualization and account restriction changes as well as DRM additions. 

I will go along with you on the fact that Vista is better for the average novice in so far as it has a more accessible interface, in fact I am using it for my clients and have been all year (mostly).  But that comes at a steep price for the rest of us, the extra user friendly stuff is so pervasive in fact that in many cases you cannot get around it so you are stuck hoping the automagik wizards and such work or you are SOL.

As for your assertion that in 6 months it will be faster than XP you are basing this on what?  Fairy dust and good thoughts?  SP1 will have some fixes and I am sure that will help but it is uncertain at this point if it will be out this year even.  As for changing the tides - you are correct - I cannot change the tide and neither can MS as the tide is that Vista offers not much of anything and is not a very good performer.   And as far as DX10 VS DX9 I think it is entirely foolish to say DX10 is better - in reality it is not.  it runs far slower and offers (to date) minor improvements yielding a net negative.  Additionally, since the hardware needed to really get all that DX10 promise is not even out, and since that hardware will be too far beyond consoles we are unlikely to see anyone really tax DX10 which would put them out of the console market (unless they want to do parallel development which nobody will do).  And lastly, Vista itself is getting such terrible adoption that there is not going to be enough PCs with Vista and the nonexistant hardware you refer to for developers to make games for them, unless they want to go miserably broke.

Mark my words, just like with Millenium MS screwed up on this one and that much is becoming seriously clear to anyone objectively looking at the situation.  And I say this as an MS partner, a MS tech and system builder.  Vista is Millenium II.  Besides all of that, so long as DX10 is tied to Vista then it is as bad for gaming as Vista is, and Vista is terrbile for gaming as demonstrated by every single site showing severe performace hits in Vista for not only DX9 vs DX9 but also with DX10.

Originally posted by DownMonkey

Originally posted by FE|Tachyon

AgtSmith Seriously your only on this thread to bash Vista, Give it up man.  Vista isn't the Anti-Christ.  Why don't you go support womens rights to choose or something constructive.   Maybe you don't like Vista,  but vista is the next platform.   IT will pass XP in Home PC's Market share.  It's already shipped over 60 million Units.   Vista is built for the next generation of PC's  PC's that are more powerful and more entertaining.   Sure XP might be faster on Single Core Processors.  Vista will be almost unnoticably slower then XP on a top of the line PC built 6 months from now.  Sure you may get an extra few points in a benchmark, but who gives?  Vista is more secure,  and easier to use.  Maybe not easier for you because your afraid of change, but for your average person the learning curve is much smaller for Vista.   This thread ISN'T about Vista.   It's about DX10.  DX10 is BETTER then DX9  LOOK AT IT AND SEE.   EVERY DX progression has been more resource intesive then the last.   WOW THIS ISN'T ANYTHNG NEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's been like that for almost a decade.  I don't see anyone still CLINGING to DX7 or DX5  why?  Because they're fosils.

 

You can flame Vista all you want.  You can't change the tides.

In what way is it more secure? I'd cracked a hole in Vista on the day I got it doing just about the same things I'd do to XP. As for your argument about Vista doing this and Vista doing that, most of it could have been implemented in XP. Vista is badly made and badly designed and your argument that people don't cling to DX7 doesn't stand up as DX10 offers very little over DX9, other than giving MS a stranglehold over the PC gaming market.

MS HAS reached its peak and IS slowly loosing it's grip, just like any empire.

Your full of it.  Theres a dozen articles and even more experts in the field that would say that vista is more secure.  Weather its because its new or whatever as of right now Vista is harder to get control of then XP and OSX.  As far as DX10 not offering more then DX9  What the hell ever,  Your insane.    Look at far graphics have come,  they're already pretty damn sharp, how crisp can they get?  Its about max'd out as far as that goes,  DX10 offers a lot of new effects.  DX9 added a lot more detail, but we're not going to be able to see much more detail now.  Its about topped out as far as detail goes.    IF you go back a page or two and look at the links compairing some DX9 vs 10 pictures and you can tell me that DX10 does look much better your just a liar.  DX10 can render water so well it looks like a picture.    In 2 years all graphics cards made will be DX10 or later, and anyone not coding DX10 will be left on the shelf.   I don't care how much you say  it wont.  You've yet to have any information to prove otherwise.   YOu can say DX10 Doesn't offer any significan benifit, but  I can prove otherwise.  Saying something doesn't make it true.   Show me the money.   Give me quotes,  show me articles.  IF you can't then shut it.

AgtSmith.    Your misunderstanding me (as usual)   My point is,  When PC's are Quad or Oct Core, running DDR3 with bus speeds of 1600+mhz  the speed gained by XP over Vista becomes what we call TRIVAL.    Sure it may be a few percent faster +/- 3-4%.    People will give up those few percentage points to have the much easier interconnectivity of their new products that is made so easy with Vista.   With Vista sharing a Printer over a network, NOT a network printer,  just sharing 1 pc's printer over the wireless network, takes 2 minutes to do.   Vista is easier,  and has a lot of features that everyday users want.   It may not replace XP in the buisness place,  for a long time if ever.  How long did it take people to get off Windows 2kPro?   I didn' t leave W2kPro for prolly 2 years to get XP.  At some point proformance takes a back seat to Luxuary.    Not everyone needs to flex their benchmark scores in front of each other specialy when they wouldn't notice the proformance gain UNLESS they had a benchmark to tell them it was faster.

Excuse me Tachyon but I happen to hold a PhD in Robotics and Computational Intelligence please don't spout rubbish that you read online from random websites as fact if all you're going to do is just read them back without any understanding and then get yourself all worked up over it.

I asked you "In what way is it more secure?" I didn't say it wasn't, I said I could crack a hole in Vista and you didn't give me an answer you spouted bad grammar at me. I asked because I knew the reply I'd get, you spouted 2nd hand information at me. Microsoft has only just managed to make a operation system hold up in security to the 7 year old operation system you used as an example. That same operating system also gets a major update this year.

The original reason why DX10 was Vista only was virtualized video memory, this all went very wrong and MS had to back peddle, and made the main reason DX10 couldn't be run on XP and option. The move from DX8 to DX9 was massive because of precision arithmetic and program shaders, the move from DX9 to DX10 is mostly simple individual improvements such as DX9 being processor limited off the top of my head. Yes DX10 games look very nice but waving pictures at me does nothing when I understand the reasons that DX10 looks better than DX9 thanks Tachyon, the facts over DX10 fall short of the MS hype over DX10. DX9 could do a LOT of these fancy effects that you talk about, such as photo-like water but it would do them a much slower FPS. DX10 offers performance improvements and THAT is the difference. It doesn't do anything extra that DX9 couldn't do, it just does it with a better FPS.

*EDIT* There was zero reason to be hostile simply because I don't agree with you.

I disagree saying the performance issue is trivial.  Same for same, whether today's DDR2 or tomorrow's DDR3 XP has a significant performance advantage over Vista.  perhaps that is the nature of software advances but the key to it all is getting something incredibly needed and great to make up for that performance drop.  Vista comes with the performance drop, with interoperability issues, and with bugs and flakiness as its downsides and while it has upsides those upsides are of the minor improvement type and do not on balance make up for the shortcomings.  Will SP1 sort this out - perhaps.  but will it sort it out soon enough to make Vista relevant enough to get game developers making real DX10 goodies for us, I doubt it.

Yes, I theory and in practice Vista is more secure - but the gain is of minor real world benefit.  As an IT professional and one with a ISS  Information Systems Security) degree and certifications I can tell you that XP SP2 is pretty bulletproof with even modest administration.  Is it perfect, no.  Is in impenetrable, of course not.  But is it quite easy to lock down sufficiently for the role it fills, yes.  Vista's improvements in security really only help the idiots out there who are completely defenseless and clueless and while that is not an unimportant improvement it is a high price for the bigs, performance flakes, loss of interoperability, and the steep hardware/resource consumption when in the end Vista really just doesn't do anything that XP cannot do better (with the exception of DX10 which as I have pointed out is unlikely to ever be realized due to vistas low deployment and the fact that PCs cannot go far past consoles anyways).

Originally posted by DownMonkey

The original reason why DX10 was Vista only was virtualized video memory, this all went very wrong and MS had to back peddle, and made the main reason DX10 couldn't be run on XP and option. The move from DX8 to DX9 was massive because of precision arithmetic and program shaders, the move from DX9 to DX10 is mostly simple individual improvements such as DX9 being processor limited off the top of my head. Yes DX10 games look very nice but waving pictures at me does nothing when I understand the reasons that DX10 looks better than DX9 thanks Tachyon, the facts over DX10 fall short of the MS hype over DX10. DX9 could do a LOT of these fancy effects that you talk about, such as photo-like water but it would do them a much slower FPS. DX10 offers performance improvements and THAT is the difference. It doesn't do anything extra that DX9 couldn't do, it just does it with a better FPS.

This is very true - I pointed out the video memory vitualization earlier - that was a big beinifit of DX10 that got lost because the s-for-brains at NVIDIA couldn't get it working right.  I started going South on DX10 at that point.  I see you are a Linux guy (I dabble with x64 Ubunutu using it to run a 6 virtual machine lab as well as having tried it as a MythTV/MythWeb box although, oddly, in the end I opted for Vista Media Center as my PVR simply because it worked so seamlessly with the home network).  Just like Linux (at least some distros) the real problem with Vista is not Vista itself (of course it has issues but I suspect SP1 will correct the real big ones) but the fact that XP SP2 is really just so good at the role of 'desktop' and so prevalent in the market that its flaws are outweighed by its near universal deployment.

Originally posted by AgtSmith

I disagree saying the performance issue is trivial.  Same for same, whether today's DDR2 or tomorrow's DDR3 XP has a significant performance advantage over Vista.  perhaps that is the nature of software advances but the key to it all is getting something incredibly needed and great to make up for that performance drop.  Vista comes with the performance drop, with interoperability issues, and with bugs and flakiness as its downsides and while it has upsides those upsides are of the minor improvement type and do not on balance make up for the shortcomings.  Will SP1 sort this out - perhaps.  but will it sort it out soon enough to make Vista relevant enough to get game developers making real DX10 goodies for us, I doubt it.

 

Yes, I theory and in practice Vista is more secure - but the gain is of minor real world benefit.  As an IT professional and one with a ISS  Information Systems Security) degree and certifications I can tell you that XP SP2 is pretty bulletproof with even modest administration.  Is it perfect, no.  Is in impenetrable, of course not.  But is it quite easy to lock down sufficiently for the role it fills, yes.  Vista's improvements in security really only help the idiots out there who are completely defenseless and clueless and while that is not an unimportant improvement it is a high price for the bigs, performance flakes, loss of interoperability, and the steep hardware/resource consumption when in the end Vista really just doesn't do anything that XP cannot do better (with the exception of DX10 which as I have pointed out is unlikely to ever be realized due to vistas low deployment and the fact that PCs cannot go far past consoles anyways).

 

 

Originally posted by DownMonkey

The original reason why DX10 was Vista only was virtualized video memory, this all went very wrong and MS had to back peddle, and made the main reason DX10 couldn't be run on XP and option. The move from DX8 to DX9 was massive because of precision arithmetic and program shaders, the move from DX9 to DX10 is mostly simple individual improvements such as DX9 being processor limited off the top of my head. Yes DX10 games look very nice but waving pictures at me does nothing when I understand the reasons that DX10 looks better than DX9 thanks Tachyon, the facts over DX10 fall short of the MS hype over DX10. DX9 could do a LOT of these fancy effects that you talk about, such as photo-like water but it would do them a much slower FPS. DX10 offers performance improvements and THAT is the difference. It doesn't do anything extra that DX9 couldn't do, it just does it with a better FPS.

 

This is very true - I pointed out the video memory vitualization earlier - that was a big beinifit of DX10 that got lost because the s-for-brains at NVIDIA couldn't get it working right.  I started going South on DX10 at that point.  I see you are a Linux guy (I dabble with x64 Ubunutu using it to run a 6 virtual machine lab as well as having tried it as a MythTV/MythWeb box although, oddly, in the end I opted for Vista Media Center as my PVR simply because it worked so seamlessly with the home network).  Just like Linux (at least some distros) the real problem with Vista is not Vista itself (of course it has issues but I suspect SP1 will correct the real big ones) but the fact that XP SP2 is really just so good at the role of 'desktop' and so prevalent in the market that its flaws are outweighed by its near universal deployment.

I see no reason for anyone to switch to vista.   (insert scarcasm)

I say that the proformance loss is trival that you gain from a top end machine on XP vs Vista, and you disagree.  Next you say that the gain from Vista to XP is trival, and I disagree.   Well atleast I'm not bashing XP, and using it on my own machines. (I've never bashed XP, its certainly a solid OS)

I have a dozen PCs here, and more that are virtual - each has a special purpose but only one is my 'desktop' and in that role, especially for gaming - Vista is abhorrent.  it is unreliable, flaky, and all around unstable.  As for same performance on top hardware you must be on crack.  this desktop, my main rig, is about the best hardware you can get and Vista performs in games at about 25% less than XP and that is 32bit and 64 bit 9which has the full 4G of RAM avail to it).  25% is significant, and out of games the performance hits are similar with even basic file operations being miserably slow in Vista.  So I have Vista Media Center on a rig that I use only as a PC - I would have installed XP media center on it but I wanted to try the Vista media center out and it is really no better or worse other than the steeper hardware requirements of Vista.  Since the box is dedicated as a PVR and I had the hardware the performance hits are irrelevant as it is only used for that purpose.  Linux running MythTV is really the best solution for a dedicated PVR and I will eventually roll it back out in that role.

On the issue of performance, again, you say it is my opinion and yours differs as if this is documented fact, denial=able by only someone completely ignoring reality.  EVERY review site, every hardware site, every gaming site of reputation (not some paid to market crap site) shows the same performance hits and bugs and issue I have described here an elsewhere in this thread.  Even MS has acknowledged these issues in knowledge base articles and is 'promising' to address them in SP1.  So how is it that you are the one human on the planet who doesn't see the cold, hard reality that performance in Vista is not very good compared to XP especially in games?

What is your bias?  Are you just trolling or some kind of viral marketing plant from MS?  I am not saying Vista will always suck, or that it is completely without nice features - but in terms of gaming (and this is the big thing) it sucks.  In terms of gaming it has already gone to long with the performance issues for developers to buy into DX10 so even if SP1 squares up the major performance issues and the performance hit does become trivial it will be too late.  Any game started even this year is not going to be out until late 2009 or possibly 2010 which is beyond Vista's life-cycle (Windows 7 in 2009/2010).  And with the current adoption rate anything out before that time is unlikely to get 'real' DX10 because Vista is so poorly deployed that unless a developer was doing parallel development they would go broke as hell trying to make money selling a DX10 game.  So - what does this leave - it leaves gimmick DX10 games like Lost planet and a bunch of DX9 games that have DX10 features that give minor improvements if anything.  Additionally, consoles are not upgrading so games cannot exceed what they can do so this mythical hardware you mention that will make the never to come 'real' DX10 titles run so fast that the 25% vista performance hit won't matter won't materialize either because developers need to sell to consoles to make money meaning they won't be designing for that hardware even if it comes.  What does this leave/mean?  It means that games will always run far better on XP than Vista (so long as we are still 32bit) - even with new GPUs the only difference with XP will be some minor DX 10 elements but they will be minor because of the reasons outlined previously).  And same for same XP runs games faster - period.

The only reason previous DX versions succeeded without issue is because they where completely backwards compatible and each new generation of card did not have the deployment issues that Vista brings to the mix.  If, for instance, someone had to buy a different version of XP to use DX9 over DX10 and that version was on as few PCs as Vista is (and the word on it was causing severe backlash about getting that version) then DX9 would have never likely been adopted and developed for.  Just consider how long it took game developers to stick games on DVDs instead of CDs simply because they couldn't afford to lose a few sales due to those few gamers who didn't have a DVD drive.  Add in to this mix the fact that consoles are stuck where they are now for some time and developers are really not going to go past that point, especially not for a DX version with such limited deployment as Vista has and will have.  Look at the Steam hardware surveys - while Steam is one of the fastest growing distribution platforms it shows the absolute vacuum that exists in terms of the capability to run DX10.  And Vista is not gaining any share with the general public and even less with gamers.

Consider this tidbit:

Here, then, is an interesting perspective from a high-ranking game developer, who is currently working on a highly-anticipated DX10 game, but who wished to remain nameless, for obvious reasons.

"It's funny," he whispered, "I recently had the whole "why not DX10" discussion with Nvidia and MS. But basically, if the API is not changing a lot, providing optional support for 10.1 is trivial, just a few lines of code in how you initialise the DX objects.

I believe from other readings that the DEV in question is part of the Crysis team but that is unconfirmed.  So 10% of gamers have DX10 cards and Vista or XP - based off the 4x XP VS Vista referance tht means, roughly, that less than 3% of gamers have Vista and a DX10 card.  Apple and Linux have better market share and why don't games get made for them?  Simple - not enough deployment to warrant the development costs or even to warrant minor revisions for interoperability.

First thing, Sales will go down. Alot.... But many people will buy vista to play the game also. So if you only bought basic home edition then thats 170$ in microsofts pockets. Ok now microsoft is paying the producers of the game to make it vista only. So in the end it won't hurt anything but probably boost sales of microsoft vista. So it'll look like less sales but in the end there make it from the money microsoft will give them for being there lil slaves.

You got no choice now baby! Vista or Bust! WOO! WOO! Get ready for some $300 PAIN!!!!!

Again, AoC is NOT Vista only, that would be suicide.  AoC will run in XP and Vista.

Originally posted by AgtSmith

Again, AoC is NOT Vista only, that would be suicide.  AoC will run in XP and Vista.

Well I just went out and got Vista ultimate!!! I cant wait to install the #1 ALL DAY EVERY DAY OS on planet Earth! My XP craped out again yesterday, and I refuse to fix it again..xp is old and ugly and I got all vista ready hardware SLI 16x supreme setup...get READY for DX 10 baby! Oh and its the signature edition too! I got Bill Gates Signed version which has some extra functional performance features added by the MAN himself!!! WOO!! WOO!!!

PAY THE MAN! its only $280 for the upgrade to Windows Vista Ultimate Signature edition! Plus I will be beating down on the x360  crowd in Cross Platform OWNAGE!!! 

Originally posted by Horkathane

PAY THE MAN! its only $280 for the upgrade to Windows Vista Ultimate Signature edition! Plus I will be beating down on the x360  crowd in Cross Platform OWNAGE!!! 

What games are cross platform?  As I understood it the only game that was going to be cross platform was Unreal for the PS3 and PC and that's not confirmed.

Shadowrun for the 360 is cross platform.. ppl on vista and 360 can play together.

Originally posted by gamerman98

Shadowrun for the 360 is cross platform.. ppl on vista and 360 can play together.

That can't be fun on the 360 without a mouse/keyboard.

Also if you check the games for windows site Marvel Univers Online MMO is coming out and Cryptic is doing the development!

http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/Games/Pages/MarvelUniverseOnline.aspx

That will be cross platform WOO! Plus with Cryptic already being the Mother of Superhero MMO making its gonna be pretty ALL DAY EVERY DAY WOO!