The Death of PC Gaming

[Immortal_Hero]

Well I am seriously considering getting out of PC gaming and into PS3. I figure I need to buy hardware yearly to keep up with PC gaming and a PS3 will last several years w/o upgrading. The whole DX10 Vista thing kinda turns me off but I will wait and see what really happens.

BTW Company of Heroes requires Windows XP but that is the only game I have encountered that does.

 

[Immortal_Hero]

Some how I double posted, a mod can delete this one.

 

[maddog39]

Hahaha, there goes damn microsoft AGAIN with there dominating the computer industry once again and ruining everything (as usual). I probably wont even upgrade to Vista, because, where exactly am I going to get that kind of money for those kinds of upgrades? Also, since this costs sooo much now, game developers might as well just stop making games, because no one can buy them now and or be able to use them. However, I guess this could be a good thing because it could trigger the use of OpenGL rather than DX. Windows has just become old fanshioned bloatware, who needs it anyway? Linu/Mac FTW!

I also support OpenGL games myself, huge fan of older games like Wolfenstein: ET and the such, I find really nothing wrong with the engine.

 

[aaronjb]

Hahaha, there goes damn microsoft AGAIN with there dominating the computer industry once again and ruining everything (as usual). I probably wont even upgrade to Vista, because, where exactly am I going to get that kind of money for those kinds of upgrades? Also, since this costs sooo much now, game developers might as well just stop making games, because no one can buy them now and or be able to use them. However, I guess this could be a good thing because it could trigger the use of OpenGL rather than DX. Windows has just become old fanshioned bloatware, who needs it anyway? Linu/Mac FTW!

I hope you're being sarcastic...

 

[Bad Maniac]

If only Linux played games... *dreams of a fluffy nice future*

 

[greenmaji]

I hope you're being sarcastic...

I don't know, could there be an OpenGL 3.0+ in the works?

More options for game developers couldn't be a bad thing, seeing as OpenGL could work on all platforms.

*edit*
another quick note: developers might see that gamers are sticking to XP for a while and code OpenGL for that reason alone.

 

[Krogen]

Offtopic question. Is UT2007 going to use both OpenGL and DirectX (like previous ones)?

 

[Xtreme Barton]

Offtopic question. Is UT2007 going to use both OpenGL and DirectX (like previous ones)?

im about 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% sure they will

 

[DumbstixLars]

BF2 can't run on anything other than XP and I believe BF2142 won't either.

Not true, I have BF2 running on 2K right now.

If only Linux played games... *dreams of a fluffy nice future*

Werd...

 

[Fx-53]

I find all the "i need to upgrade every six months/year to be able to play the games" bilge hillarious.


Im going on three years wiht this rig, and the graphics card in it, until recently, was a 9200. You migh tneed it to play on ultra high res setting but guess what im still chuggin along.


That being said, if this "vista EULA" crap keeps going...all i can tell ms is remember when xp came out and was hacker proof.....there were cracks in the armor, what, 24 hours after launch? it may have been sooner.

BTW, ive never bothered to activate windows.......

 

[stratcatprowlin]

I find all the "i need to upgrade every six months/year to be able to play the games" bilge hillarious.


Im going on three years wiht this rig, and the graphics card in it, until recently, was a 9200. You migh tneed it to play on ultra high res setting but guess what im still chuggin along.

Well see,thats my whole beef with pc gaming.When I buy a game I want full details and smooth framerates.A 3 year old graphics card will never give that to me with the newest games.

 

[aaronjb]

I don't know, could there be an OpenGL 3.0+ in the works?

The best part about OpenGL is that it's ... open. OpenGL 3.0 is surely a long ways off, but the current 2.1 spec, combined with the shading languages, offers all the functionality of the current DirectX iteration.

*edit*
another quick note: developers might see that gamers are sticking to XP for a while and code OpenGL for that reason alone.

Just remember that developers use DirectX over OpenGL for mostly valid reasons. First, hardware vendors generally have better-performing DirectX drivers. Second, keep in mind that DirectX is an entire multimedia framework, from sound to graphics to input handling. It's often a wise choice to use DirectX over OpenGL, becase OpenGL is only a rendering platform (analogous to Direct3D in DirectX). For instance, ID uses OpenGL for rendering, but turns to SDL for sound and input handling on Linux. It's why OpenGL games can be easier to port from Win32 to Linux. A developer could use OpenGL for rendering and DirectX components for input handling and audio.

So, OpenGL may be a great rendering platform, but you've got to turn to other libraries or to custom solutions for other game features.

 

[InThrees]

I'm no Microsoft apologist, but PC gaming isn't dead. I've been reading this same thing since the early 90s.

Please show me a source for that "40% slower" figure. Yes, Creative's beta Vista drivers suck, but there will be full support once Vista ships.

The original article is fear-mongering and FUD. I want facts, sources and real information, not opinions based on conjecture. Rhetoric has no place in a serious technical discussion.

How about "Vista has a ~700mb to ~900mb memory footprint (between physical and swap) to show you a desktop." (with aero enabled.)

How about right next to me, I have a FreeBSD machine with 256mb of physical ram running samba with several shares (fileserver), Apache with PHP (webserver) and boinc-seti crunching data for SETI 24/7. It would be 128mb of physical memory, but 256mb was the smallest dimm I had.

XP is no paragon of efficient coding, but on my desktop I run uTorrent pretty much 24/7, SETI 24/7, and game with those apps running with my 1gb of physical memory.

Vista + uTorrent + SETI would require more than 1gb of physical ram, and those are apps that I treat as background services.

Microsoft is pushing too much hardware requirement for absolutely no real gain.

Microsoft is trying to treat an OS as content instead of a deliverer of content.

Microsoft is categorizing EVERY SINGLE HOME PC IN THE WORLD AT THIS MOMENT, AS CONFIGURED AT THIS MOMENT, as technically obsolete.

If you're ok with that, then I suppose you have bought into the 'pc as console' with the attendant short lifecycle and useage options defined by microsoft.

Me, I realized that my pc lets me browse the web, lets me send and recieve email, lets me watch tv shows and funny video clips available on the web, lets me edit pictures, lets me help the SETI project...

And for gaming I'll buy a console when I decide my PC is no longer adequate.

And it won't be an XBox or 360. I'm done. Microsoft has done far too much dictating and not nearly enough listening. They've tried to change the face of computing, and they've succeeded. Good luck, I'm not buying in - and I know I'm not alone.

 

[aaronjb]

How about "Vista has a ~700mb to ~900mb memory footprint (between physical and swap) to show you a desktop." (with aero enabled.)

I am not seeing this on my RC2 (x86-64) machine. I'm getting ~400 at the desktop. Still, that's horrible; however, my FC6 installation doesn't fare much better in terms of swap/memory usage.

I can understand that these numbers are ridiculous, but does this "40% slower" figure come from analysis? For instance, what programs run forty percent slower on Vista than on XP?

I'm just playing devil's advocate here. It's important that arguments against Windows are based in fact and not rhetoric.

How about right next to me, I have a FreeBSD machine with 256mb of physical ram running samba with several shares (fileserver), Apache with PHP (webserver) and boinc-seti crunching data for SETI 24/7. It would be 128mb of physical memory, but 256mb was the smallest dimm I had.

Are you using this machine as a desktop as well?

Microsoft is pushing too much hardware requirement for absolutely no real gain.

Microsoft is trying to treat an OS as content instead of a deliverer of content.

Microsoft is categorizing EVERY SINGLE HOME PC IN THE WORLD AT THIS MOMENT, AS CONFIGURED AT THIS MOMENT, as technically obsolete.

I agree wholeheartedly with the first statement, and agree somewhat with the last statement, but am confused by the middle statement. The OS is not content, but a platform for content. Microsoft wants continued control of this platform, and their decision to force the majority of users to upgrade their computers in order to run Vista baffles me. MS treats the OS as a tool unto itself, rather than a tool to enable other applications to run.

But, I think you're engaging in a bit of hyperbole here. That certainly doesn't help to sell your viewpoint.

 

[speed bump]

I was looking for the reason I couldn't log in to AA after spending the last 5 days trying to DL 2.7 and saw this.

It seems with AA vista is actually faster than XP home. Of course this is RC2 which wasn't what they were using when they did the comparision that this article was based upon.

http://forum.americasarmy.com/viewtopic.php?t=219624

 

[brakezone]

As far as the linux memory footprint, if you run something like DSL, you may only use 20 or so MB of ram. On my slackware system, which I Play world of warcraft on, it uses about 100mb before starting wow. Once i'm running wow it uses about 1GB; however, much of that is just used as a buffer.

The key here is that i'm using the fluxbox window manager which is far more efficient than KDE or gnome.

I have a laptop that I run slackware on that only has 64mb on it and only uses 20 or so megabytes at idle.

Lately, I think that linux is so much more on target with what an OS should be. Windows Xp was decent.

On the other hand, Perhaps computers will quickly become so powerful that the vista overhead will become negligable.

I would much rather see support for opengl than microsofts propriatey direct X.

 

[InThrees]

Brakezone: The WoW client is incredibly bloated. 900mb seems about right or even low for how much memory (physical and swap combined) it allocates.

aaronjb:

I am not seeing this on my RC2 (x86-64) machine. I'm getting ~400 at the desktop. Still, that's horrible; however, my FC6 installation doesn't fare much better in terms of swap/memory usage.

You're checking physical memory used AND swap file used? With Aero?

I can understand that these numbers are ridiculous, but does this "40% slower" figure come from analysis? For instance, what programs run forty percent slower on Vista than on XP?

I'm just playing devil's advocate here. It's important that arguments against Windows are based in fact and not rhetoric.

I personally never used the '40%' figure. Actually, I never commented on 'slower' at all, but what I've read from people who have installed it is a 10% to 15% or so reduction in 'speed'. Perhaps this will be fixed or better in the final release, as drivers improve etc.

Are you using this machine as a desktop as well?

The BSD server - no. No gui. Still, there are perfectly useable (and pretty) gui frontends with plenty of utility that I could use, if I so chose.

I am running Kubuntu on my laptop, which has 384mb of physical ram. I don't know what the memory footprint on it is, but I bet it beats the snot out of Vista.

I agree wholeheartedly with the first statement, and agree somewhat with the last statement, but am confused by the middle statement. The OS is not content, but a platform for content. Microsoft wants continued control of this platform, and their decision to force the majority of users to upgrade their computers in order to run Vista baffles me. MS treats the OS as a tool unto itself, rather than a tool to enable other applications to run.

I mean Microsoft has stopped viewing an operating system as an underlying software system that simply allows a user to do stuff. When I think 'good operating system', the first word that comes to mind is 'efficient', because it applies to so much. The OS should itself work efficiently, and use as little as possible of available system resources, leaving them free for actual user-run programs and content. The OS should also efficiently accomplish tasks the user wants done - open this program, copy this file, etc.

Microsoft got so caught up in making Vista pretty instead of asking "Will this work on my neighbor's computer?"

I don't equate "thrashing swap files" with "it works." I'm not against an operating system like Vista... what I don't agree with is an operating system like Vista *now*. I think the vast vast majority of computers aren't ready for it, won't run it well, and that it's pointless to add a DX10 card to those machines that can't run Vista well when they can run current software perfectly adequately.

Microsoft has increased the 'generational gap' to a gulf, and it's retarded.

 

[greenmaji]

Microsoft has increased the 'generational gap' to a gulf, and it's retarded.

Was this not the case with the release of Windows95? IIRC it was.

 

[Bad Maniac]

Was this not the case with the release of Windows95? IIRC it was.

Yes this is very much comparable to that, and end users and developers, especially game developers, stuck to DOS for years after 95. I bet we'll see the same pattern here. people will stay with XP until grandma has a quad core, 2 gigs of RAM and a 256MB DX10 card, either that or until MS stops supporting XP and someone releases a total showstopper virus for it.

But that said, hacking/virii coding on Vista is likely to be so much fun that the malware/virus crowd will more or less abandon XP, making it a perfectly stable and secure OS even without further updates.

Now if someone manages to get DX10 on XP, we're all set. (DX9.0L has been rumored more than once...)

 

[Audioaficionado]

Now if someone manages to get DX10 on XP, we're all set. (DX9.0L has been rumored more than once...)

DX9.0L is for Vista only and is what allows Aero to run on DX9 cards. It won't run Aero on DX8 cards but will run Vista.