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Shades · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005 2:50 am Post subject: Vista Hardware Requirements

www.apcstart.com/teche...y.php?id=6

Better start saving now.
Bill wants us to fork out even more dosh to run Vista.
+256Mb Graphic cards.
+2Gb DDR3 RAM
SATA2 drives.

Yeesh, think I'll hold off on my rebuild.

Shadow_Bshwackr · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005 5:26 am Post subject: Re: Vista Hardware Requirements

Super-phat video cards mandatory

Here's what he said, more-or-less verbatim (we left out boring bits).

"Video is probably the most critical hardware item for Vista. Things have changed very significantly.

"There's a completely new driver model in Vista called the Longhorn Display Driver Model Ã¢â‚¬â€œ LDDM. There has been an explosion in the capabilities of graphics chips Ã¢â‚¬â€œ they're almost universally 3D vector graphics now Ã¢â‚¬â€œ and the driver model today we have is bitmap.

In Longhorn we are switching from drawing bitmap graphics Ã¢â‚¬â€œ dots - to vector graphics Ã¢â‚¬â€œ lines and shapes. Rather than painting these bits on the screen, we are now asking the GPU to paint a circle. That means you can scale pictures up and down to an infinite degree and they won't go furry on you.

"One of the things you'll notice about Vista beta 1 is that it runs dramatically quicker than Windows XP. The reason is the GPU is now doing a lot of work that the CPU used to have to do. There are a couple of gotchas though. The GPU needs a very high speed bi-directional bus to communicate with main memory. That has not been the case in the past, and what it means is that AGP will not be optimal.

"The reason is that one of the things the LDDM can do is allow a video card to back stuff off into the PC's main memory if it has a particularly intensive task and needs the video RAM to work in. That's an intensely bi-directional type of communication.

"The GPU will need a plenty of room to operate in Vista. The more memory you put on a video card the better really. We want the least dumping back to main memory because that's slower than graphics. If you have 128MB that's good, if you have 256MB that's better, but I expect that video card memory will go up a lot when Longhorn is released.

Better graphics has always been a favorite of gamers such as us, but if the main machine is using the graphics card to process huge blocks of info, that would make me wonder how it's going to effect the gaming world. Are we going to see new graphics cards with huge amounts of memory? I would think you would have to. Wink

XcalibeR · ***Power User*** Offline Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 358

- Shadow_Bshwackr

Better graphics has always been a favorite of gamers such as us, but if the main machine is using the graphics card to process huge blocks of info, that would make me wonder how it's going to effect the gaming world. Are we going to see new graphics cards with huge amounts of memory? I would think you would have to.

I was thinking that same thing. Microsoft is saying that Vista (that sounds so gay, I'm gonna continue to refer to it as Longhorn, much more robust sounding Laughing

) is supposed to be a gamer's dream OS. Of course, there is always the propaganda that goes along with the launch of any software.

I guess you have to take into account that by the time Longhorn is released, a gig of video memory will be standard, along with 2 or 4 gigs of system memory.

Shades · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005 12:11 pm Post subject: Re: Vista Hardware Requirements

Graphics memory will be sourced much more from the onboard card memory in Vista.
Both nVidia and ATi have already announced 512Mb cards due for release although nVidia have just cancelled the release of theirs (G70) for the moment as ATi aren't ready with theirs yet and nVidia want to capitalise on the 6 and 7 series cards they still have while they're still able to.
I believe there is a 512Mb 7800 card due out shortly as well.
I would wait until Vista comes out though as there will be much more tongue-wobblingly good stuff on the market by then.
Laughing

[edit: CAD users and designers have been able to use 512Mb cards for ages (remember the Wildcat cards), but they weren't designed for gamers.

Shades · Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 3:20 pm Post subject: Re: Vista Hardware Requirements

Just when you thought it already sounded bad enough.
LOL

www.theinquirer.net/?article=26096

Shadow_Bshwackr · Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2005 6:06 am Post subject: Re: Vista Hardware Requirements

Sounds like MS is trying different approaches to secure their OS has enough options to satisfy everyone. Too bad they didn't decide to 'throw in the towel' and join in with some open Linux software.

Other than gaming and multimedia options, Windows is really loosing ground to the free alternatives out there and I know this new price structure is a weak attempt at trying to eliminate that.

And lets face it, we're all gamers here and since the largest and best MS OS is going to be the most expensive, I can see the majority will not upgrade due to the cost factors until someone has a way to circumvent the registration process or their favorite game(s) or hardware won't run on their current OS. And at that, one has to wonder if the expense will be worth the cost in the final analysis... Wink

Thanks for keeping us up to speed Shades...:chug:

Shades · Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2005 6:09 am Post subject: Re: Vista Hardware Requirements

Welcome m8.
Can't wait for the next revelation.
LOL

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