I don't think Valve has much choice right now for the GPU, AMD proprietary drivers aren't good enough. I am disappointed about the CPU though, they could of had an AMD option at least. I Like that they have made this open and will be releasing the CAD design for others to reproduce the box themselves. I hope some beta testers get an AMD APU in one of these to see how it works.
Nvidia graphics cards is AMD's choice. They have had years to get their drivers up to scratch. Historically Nvidia tend to annoy companies they work with, so if AMD can double their driver performance in the next 6 months then they are still up with a chanceOriginally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
Intel isn't much of a surprise either. One motherboard can take i3, i5 and i7 making the test machines simpler more consistent.
There is absolutely nothing to stop you from making an all AMD machine for SteamOS. Nothing.
Personally I will be watching with interest what they recommend, and will probably use an AMD cpu and use it as an excuse to upgrade my 2GB GTX460 as it should be enough for a 1080p TV and gives me an excuse to buy something new for my PC.
If you want to use AMD graphics, then right now their performance is half what it is under Windows. Only AMD can fix that, but you can just buy a graphics card that is twice as fast as the Nvidia one you need
AMD's closed source drivers have also historically been incomplete, perpetually buggy, and not too infrequently, highly unstable, and at times lagged quite a bit behind new radeon card and linux kernel releases. So yeah, they only have themselves to blame. If they made their Linux drivers unsuck, I'd start buying AMD cards again.
There's nothing stopping it from working with AMD CPUs.
Unless it supports all the big players SteamOS is DOA. Moreover,Linux still needs more farting about with than Windows when it comes to gaming.Nvidia graphics cards is AMD's choice. They have had years to get their drivers up to scratch. Historically Nvidia tend to annoy companies they work with, so if AMD can double their driver performance in the next 6 months then they are still up with a chance
Intel isn't much of a surprise either. One motherboard can take i3, i5 and i7 making the test machines simpler more consistent.
There is absolutely nothing to stop you from making an all AMD machine for SteamOS. Nothing.
Personally I will be watching with interest what they recommend, and will probably use an AMD cpu and use it as an excuse to upgrade my 2GB GTX460 as it should be enough for a 1080p TV and gives me an excuse to buy something new for my PC.
If you want to use AMD graphics, then right now their performance is half what it is under Windows. Only AMD can fix that, but you can just buy a graphics card that is twice as fast as the Nvidia one you need
Only anti-MS people probably would be ditching Windows anytime soon for a standard gaming rig using SteamOS.
If Valve wants SteamOS to be more than just a miniscule part of the gaming market they need to go after both AMD and Intel for GPUs.
If they want to challenge Windows in an area where it has strength of perception,then they cannot sit on their arses expecting people to flood to them. They need to go on the attack wooing everyone. MS has the marketshare and gaming support NOW from all the major players. AMD was courted by MS,Sony and Nintendo for the current consoles and paid for their work,not the other way around.
Moreover,are people thinking MS is going to sit back and let Valve challenge Windows for gaming?? The XBox One?? Nope. MS has more free cash in hand than Intel and AMD combined.
Is Sony?? Is AMD even?? What about all the big games studios who have close links with MS and Sony,or who have vested interests in their consoles?? Or the games studios which AMD has helped out financially?
They could just put two fingers up at Valve and say screw you. Valve is a competitor to them in both games and software sales.If they don't want to include a company which historically has 35% to 50% of the discrete card market,with their APUs ships more gaming capable GPUs than Nvidia,and have all the current generation console wins,they are giving others even more ammunition. You could make a very valid argument,that for current game machines,AMD GPUs will be powering a significant proportion of all of them once you include consoles. That is big leverage in their favour.
All the SteamBox look like is a prebuilt PC without Windows and with less hardware choice,less games choice,less backwards compatability with games,more lock-ins,more potential issues and more faffing around. Its like the ******* son of a Windows gaming PC and a console with all the worst qualities distilled into one. Its not even cheap too. Geforce Titan?? Thats £700+ already there.
The fact that BOTH Windows 7 and Windows 8 costed less than £30 on pre-order means SteamOS might not be so attractive as people think. Even for a lot of PC companies,the volume licensing means than Windows is not a massive part of the cost of a midrange or high end gaming PC.
Considering you can still run all DX11 games on an ancient Vista install from over 6 and a half years ago,Windows is a tiny part of the cost of a Windows gaming PC,and works fine for gaming usage for years.
I should know since,I was using Vista SP2 until 2011.
I have known plenty of Linux fans,who have not bothered with using Linux for any gaming purposes(even with WINE and the like),since it is not worth the effort,even if it means dual booting with Linux for everything else.
The thing is are the same people even going to ditch their Debian or Ubuntu installs for SteamOS??
Also,why would anyone really want to be locked into an OS with such limited hardware choices?? Windows has none of these issues.
SteamOS will only cost you more in hardware in the longterm. This is why Windows gaming PCs are cheap. Choice,and not lack of it. Choice leads to competition and better bang for buck.
If I want no hardware choices,or a Hobson's choice,I would have bought a console,and I have no interested in buying an overpriced prebuilt desktop.
Moreover,for the type of market,Valve is targeting,most people would probably want to go lower cost,not higher cost!! How many PC gamers are using analogue controls,connected to full gaming PC,with a £140+ graphics card and a Core i5,under the TV??
That is the spec of my MAIN PC,ie,a Core i5 and a GTX660,not some secondary box. Guess what company has the best mix of higher performance IGPs,and budget APUs and GPUs under £100?? That would be AMD.
People will compare the SteamBox to consoles right of the bat,which are all well under £450 and will last for 5 to 10 years with no hardware updates. That is the majority market of people using analogue controllers on big TVs. Most PC gamers still stick with a keyboard and mouse.
Count me out of this OS for now.
Maybe,when Valve has bothered to engage everyone in a few years,I might be interested.
However,my Windows 7 and Windows 8 installs already would have been doing the job fine for years by then.
I am not spending pounds to save pennies.
Maybe,Valve with surprise me,but I am cynical about it ATM. So,I will have agree to disagree with you and a few others about SteamOS and the SteamBox.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 06-10-2013 at 01:52 AM.
Valve can't support AMD's drivers because AMD maintains AMD's drivers, and they've been doing a horrible job of it. Why would Valve want to officially support a hardware vendor who produces nothing but broken drivers? It would be a nightmare for both Valve and the end-user.
Unless it supports all the big players SteamOS is DOA. Moreover,Linux still needs more farting about with than Windows when it comes to gaming.
Only anti-MS people probably would be ditching Windows anytime soon for a standard gaming rig using SteamOS.
If Valve wants SteamOS to be more than just a miniscule part of the gaming market they need to go after both AMD and Intel for GPUs.
If they want to challenge Windows in an area where it has strength of perception,then they cannot sit on their arses expecting people to flood to them. They need to go on the attack wooing everyone. MS has the marketshare and gaming support NOW from all the major players. AMD was courted by MS,Sony and Nintendo for the current consoles and paid for their work,not the other way around.
Moreover,are people thinking MS is going to sit back and let Valve challenge Windows for gaming?? The XBox One?? Nope. MS has more free cash in hand than Intel and AMD combined.
Is Sony?? Is AMD even?? What about all the big games studios who have close links with MS and Sony,or who have vested interests in their consoles?? Or the games studios which AMD has helped out financially?
They could just put two fingers up at Valve and say screw you. Valve is a competitor to them in both games and software sales.If they don't want to include a company which historically has 35% to 50% of the discrete card market,with their APUs ships more gaming capable GPUs than Nvidia,and have all the current generation console wins,they are giving others even more ammunition. You could make a very valid argument,that for current game machines,AMD GPUs will be powering a significant proportion of all of them once you include consoles. That is big leverage in their favour.
All the SteamBox look like is a prebuilt PC without Windows and with less hardware choice,less games choice,less backwards compatability with games,more lock-ins,more potential issues and more faffing around. Its like the ******* son of a Windows gaming PC and a console with all the worst qualities distilled into one. Its not even cheap too. Geforce Titan?? Thats £700+ already there.
The fact that BOTH Windows 7 and Windows 8 costed less than £30 on pre-order means SteamOS might not be so attractive as people think. Even for a lot of PC companies,the volume licensing means than Windows is not a massive part of the cost of a midrange or high end gaming PC.
Considering you can still run all DX11 games on an ancient Vista install from over 6 and a half years ago,Windows is a tiny part of the cost of a Windows gaming PC,and works fine for gaming usage for years.
I should know since,I was using Vista SP2 until 2011.
I have known plenty of Linux fans,who have not bothered with using Linux for any gaming purposes(even with WINE and the like),since it is not worth the effort,even if it means dual booting with Linux for everything else.
The thing is are the same people even going to ditch their Debian or Ubuntu installs for SteamOS??
Also,why would anyone really want to be locked into an OS with such limited hardware choices?? Windows has none of these issues.
SteamOS will only cost you more in hardware in the longterm. This is why Windows gaming PCs are cheap. Choice,and not lack of it. Choice leads to competition and better bang for buck.
If I want no hardware choices,or a Hobson's choice,I would have bought a console,and I have no interested in buying an overpriced prebuilt desktop.
Moreover,for the type of market,Valve is targeting,most people would probably want to go lower cost,not higher cost!! How many PC gamers are using analogue controls,connected to full gaming PC,with a £140+ graphics card and a Core i5,under the TV??
That is the spec of my MAIN PC,ie,a Core i5 and a GTX660,not some secondary box. Guess what company has the best mix of higher performance IGPs,and budget APUs and GPUs under £100?? That would be AMD.
People will compare the SteamBox to consoles right of the bat,which are all well under £450 and will last for 5 to 10 years with no hardware updates. That is the majority market of people using analogue controllers on big TVs. Most PC gamers still stick with a keyboard and mouse.
Count me out of this OS for now.
Maybe,when Valve has bothered to engage everyone in a few years,I might be interested.
However,my Windows 7 and Windows 8 installs already would have been doing the job fine for years by then.
I am not spending pounds to save pennies.
Maybe,Valve with surprise me,but I am cynical about it ATM. So,I will have agree to disagree with you and a few others about SteamOS and the SteamBox.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 06-10-2013 at 01:52 AM.
Well Cat, as one of those people that dual boot Linux for work and Windows for gaming, I would like to dual boot my current Linux for work and SteamOS for gaming.
Is this because I object to paying for Windows? No, I have paid for Linux desktop distributions in the past because I believe in rewarding good work. It isn't about cost. I don't know *anyone* who runs RedHat in data centers (where it is utterly dominant) because of up front cost, they do it for remote supportability, performance and stability. RedHat support contracts are in no way cheap.
As for supporting DX11 on Vista, sorry but that is sad. DX10 was originally developed on XP, but wasn't released on there for political reasons. Microsoft do that sort of thing.
Every person I know who wants to run Linux for gaming purposes,either is doing it since its is "free" or since MS is the big evil corporation thing. This is not about commercial Linux distros which are supported(which is why they cost money),and is about gaming. Not even Linux for media purposes,on your RP or even phones and the like. Just gaming.
SteamOS will most likely be limited to Valve to provide games for(I don't see them wanting Desura to get in the way either) and it only means they have an OS they can have more control over games supply with. Is Valve really going to even allow alternatives to Steam on SteamOS?? The answer is in the name!!
Its all about control.
Since Valve is kindly "giving away" SteamOS and are not doing ad supported things,they only way they are making money from this,is trying to push more people to use Steam to buy games and any paid services that they might start introducing. Having their own OS,ties into this very well in their attempts.
Do people seriously think Valve is here,to be a knight in shining armour,to save us gamers?? No,they are just another corporation trying to make more money.
How many big companies with vested interests in the MS and Sony consoles and Windows are going to start looking at giving their games out of the box Linux compatability?? Is Valve going to pay them,or expect to sit on their arses,expecting companies to flock to them just because they are Valve??
Like I said before MS and Sony have vested interests(even other hardware and software companies too),and have spent billions on the consoles and the Windows market. They don't care so much about Valve on windows as they have a vested interest in that platform and Valve only sells games like any other shop.
OTH,Steam is not the cheapest place to get games always anyway,even if it has a nice layout. How many times,have I bought games even cheaper than the Steam sales,throughout the year??
I have even bought boxed copies of games,cheaper than what Steam sells them for. People are blinded by their love of Valve so much,that they ended up spending more money then they ever really need to. Even the Steam sales,are overhyped to a massive degree.
Its the same about Google and Apple. Just like with MS I have criticised Apple several times. However,Google itself is not without doing dodgy crap,but people give them a pass.
With Windows, Steam has multiple competitors,and sources for game keys. It means prices are decent.
Why would I want an OS,which is limited to certain hardware only potentially locked into one way of buying games?
As,a Windows PC gamer,what advantages does SteamOS give me in terms of choosing hardware,cost and the way I want games to be bought or delivered to me??
Just as political as when GN was complaining about Windows this year. It was him campaigning for his latest money earner,ie, SteamOS.
You know very well that I mentioned Vista because people whinge about the "windows" tax and how much it costs. It was not a perfect OS,but by SP2 it was fine,especially with someone who just wants to use it for gaming.
Yet,someone with Vista has DX11 support even now. That means 6 years and 9 months and trying to call people sad for saying that is,well, sad. I was running Vista for years fine,since I could not be arsed doing an upgrade to Windows 7(even though I had a cheap license) and I was running DX11 games like Crysis2.
People who got Windows 7 on pre-order,have had a decent gaming OS for 4 years for as low as £25. It is supported until 2019 FFS. Even if you bought it at £70,is it so massively expensive?? Windows 7 is the next XP and will probably be the base minimum for Windows games for the next 4 to 5 years.
If Valve does allow competitors to deliver content to SteamOS and makes sure that a much wider range of hardware works well with their OS I might feel differently though.
Anyway,thats me done for talking about ValveOS.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 06-10-2013 at 04:16 PM.
I tend to trust Valve's approach because their reasoning is more nuanced than just making money like any other corporation. The very structure of the organisation defies the norm so thinking of them with the same motivations as normal businesses is unlikely to be accurate. What the employees of Valve do is up to them so there isn't a top down directive to get something done which tends to remove the motive of money when decisions are made. It is evident in their history and this obtuse way of making decisions sets them apart from other companies and makes insights into their motives based on what is considered normal business practice by others often wrong.
I agree that SteamOS is dead on arrival if it doesn't support AMD hardware but I don't see how you can come to that conclusion... They are expecting beta testers to experiment with the hardware, why would you expect, and encourage, that without supporting other hardware? It is more likely that Intel and nVidia were willing to provide Valve with the hardware so that is why the beta units use them rather than it being a choice Valve made because they are not going to support other hardware. If Valve are going to make this successful, which lets face it their track record suggests that they will get it right, why would they get something as fundamental as hardware support so wrong? Maybe I'm blinded by love for Valve but I can't find justification for thinking that SteamOS won't support AMD hardware. There are other reasons, that are more probable, that explain the choice of hardware for the beta units. Not supporting AMD is as likely an explanation for the beta unit's hardware as volcano eruptions being the cause of climate change is.
SteamOS is nonetheless interesting, time will tell which insights were more accurate but from a consumer point of view it is going to be beneficial for us to have another operating system to choose from when we plan a gaming rig.
Well I don't recognise that sort of person. People I know run Linux for stability and performance, things that gaming would benefit from.
The financial cost of Windows is moot, as I already bought it. In fact I have a license for Win8 spare from when they were selling them cheap.
On the other hand, if I download SteamOS I will need to buy a new blank hard drive to try it out on, so that is more expense. Oh well.
Do I consider Microsoft to be evil? No, I don't. I don't have any love for Valve either though.
Now I will admit that at the time I shelled out £280 for Windows 7 licenses (there are 4 people in my family) I did resent it. It wasn't the cost, because if Windows was good then it would be worth it. But I know that I am paying for mysterious crashes and odd problems with no proper tools for diagnosis that just wouldn't happen if it was written by people who knew what they were doing. And there is the rub. I can't stand incompetence, and that is what I see in Windows in abundance. Worse still, I think Microsoft have peaked. I am not sure if XP or Win7 is their peak, but an awful lot of people seem to think they have jumped the shark with Win8 and so far I think they might be right.
My latest annoyance with Windows? I recently found an old Windows disc image with Civ 2 on it. Now Civ 5 is good, but I fancied playing 2 again. It won't run. Apparently Win16 games don't work on Win7 home. I still have a hankering for old school Civ, so now I have to go in the loft because in one of our boxes from moving house will be Civ Call to Power for Linux, and I know that will just plain work without the faff of having to install XP in a virtual machine.
So sign me up for the low latency, high reliability alternative please. Just for playing games on, I am already covered by Fedora for work.
Oh and Cat, if Microsoft does start cutting off competitors from delivering content, will you feel differently about Windows?
Its quite amusing your have all these issues,as most of my mates do use a mixture of Windows and Linux(including those who do have quite a lot of software experience even with running stuff under Linux due to work),so I am not sure what all these Windows 7 crashes you are getting,come from. It has been the most stable version of Windows I have ever used,and don't think any of my mate has ever mentioned any BSODs and crashes,apart from the ones overclocking their CPUs or GPUs,and the overclock has been unstable.
Anyway,I suppose as with anything YMMV.
Moreover,your complaining about Windows gaming abilities,is weird considering how poor desktop Linux distros are for gaming. Even Vista for all its problems. But no,Windows is MEH for gaming. How about you list all the games which run poorer on Linux?? Or the ones which just don't plain work without faffing about with?? How about something newer,ie,like the ones from the last 7 years?? Even Id software,which supported native Linux versions of their games for a long time,has started to wane in their support.
MS cannot cut off competitors due to their size(competition regulators in the US and EU would fine them to the hilt and they tried that with IE),and the fact large devs still have a sway anyway. Look at content delivery for games,movies,etc?? Dozens of companies worldwide run applications on Windows,and these include those competing with MS themselves. Also,remember I was the one going on about Windows 8 and the connection between MUI and the app store for months on here,and how I cannot stand MUI. Even then,Windows 8 works fine with normal(non-MUI) desktop software.
Linux has less than 2% marketshare in the desktop market,and Windows 89% to 91% dependent on who you get the stats from. Even if SteamOS were to eclipse Ubuntu,Fedora and Debian,it would still be well under 4% of the entire desktop market. So,if Windows has issues with games,with such a massive installed user base,how do you expect one Linux distro do all of a sudden appear with less than 4% marketshare in desktops,and magically run 100% of games perfectly well??
Are most devs(not all),who have a massive pre-installed Windows,and console user base,going to spend more money on desktop Linux as a platform,beyond tick box support?? Again,if they are already spending billions of pounds on the other platforms,how is spending much less going to magically run 100% of games better??
OS X has over 7% marketshare in the desktop market,and Apple has made even their base systems have better than average IGPs or GPUs. They even have a very restricted range of hardware too unlike bog standard Windows. Yet,even OS X is not that massively targeted for gaming.
There is more chance,that Android will be the branch of Linux which takes on Windows successfully in the consumer space,not SteamOS or any desktop Linux distro. That is primarily down to the mobile market itself and MS being too slow to respond to it.
Even the PS4 OS(based heavily on FreeBSD),will probably be a larger percentage of dedicated gaming machines than SteamOS(it works fine on AMD hardware too,so it seems Sony does not have issues there,but its a totally closed system anyway,not advertised as open).
This means,smaller companies like Valve should be forced anyway to make sure,they don't have artifical lockins,in supposedly open systems,since they can probably get away for a few years doing such things otherwise. They are small fry ATM,when compared to MS,Apple and Google,so everyone will go after the bigger companies as there is money to be made and they have deep pockets.
However,by looking at the name SteamOS it just indicates intent. Its not ValveOS,meaning they pretty much want Steam to be the main focus of the OS. They want to lock out competitors and control prices on the platform in their favour,and they can do it. They don't charge upfront for the OS or use ad revenue,so the only way they can make money is via content control.
They cannot do this on Windows ATM,however much people want to spin it. Its impossible.
As usual people's love/admiration/fuzzy feelings(call it what you want) of Valve means and dislike of MS, means they will never say anything bad against them,and have their head in the sand going"la!la!la!la!". Its right in front of their own faces,and they choose to ignore the obvious. If you berate MS for crappy behaviour,you need to do the same for other companies too. Valve is in the market to make money,so do people really think they don't want to do the same??
Its all a PR shroud,and they have jumped on the MS is evil/rubbish/someother reason bandwagon which is clever marketing.
No since MS is the big evil corporation of course,they can never do anything good. Its quite funny though,that for all my criticisms of MS over the years,I can at least admit the times when they have actually done something OK or are just a better choice ATM.
Things could change,in the next year,so we will see.
Edit!!
I feel we are going in circles here anyway,so we will just need to agree to disagree.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 07-10-2013 at 08:36 AM.
Sign me up as one of the "S & P" folks - my main machine (as in the one I do most work on) is a Dell laptop with Ubuntu. Main gaming machine is Windows7 of reasonable spec (it's the one that I've given details of). In the last year I've had ONE crash of my Linux system, whereas I get a BSOD every other day that I'm gaming on that Windows box. And it's usually different causes - e.g. it was dxgmms1.sys yesterday, the previous day it was an "intr" error.
Both companies I do business with, so not evil imho (Oracle, and to a lesser extent Apple, on the other hand...)
AGREE TOTALLY. There's an old saying that the best tool is the one that you don't have to give any thought to. Windows I have to think about, whereas my Linux box "just works".
That said, I placed a new Windows8 install with my very elderly father recently, and apart from the issue with shutting it down (which lasted until I pointed out the shortcut that some kind soul on Hexus gave me), he's getting on fine with. Which makes me wonder if the "problems" with Windows8 are that I'm too set in my ways ... sigh.
Ditto (although RHEL/Ubuntu for me). I'd be happy with my XBox, IF there was some way to keep it hardware current. I just press the power button, wait 10 seconds, and it's good to go. Downside being the occasional lockup and - of course - the inevitable Microsoft "I've added a patch so you don't get to do anything else until I reboot". Windows on the other hand - despite being SSD-resident for it's OS - is still dog-slow (am now considering an XP style reformat and reinstall), and then there's the seeming need to multiple reboot anytime any software is updated. My Linux box - on the other hand - only gets a reboot when there's a new kernel, and it's optional - I'm allowed to go do a days work with that "old" OS image if it's not convenient to reboot at that time.
Valve have said that SteamOS WILL be open source, in which case it's going to be hellishly difficult for them to stop folks adding whatever other features that they feel necessary. What I'm looking for is that "upgradable console" and it really pains me when folks sneer at this NEW system because it's not got the support of Windows - the positioning is surely against PS4 and Xbone and how much software support have they got at this present moment?
And Cat, you still useVista
Last edited by crossy; 08-10-2013 at 10:43 AM.
Career status: still enjoying my new career in DevOps, but it's keeping me busy...
Let's stop pretending that Windows doesn't have its issues with running games too.
Hotline Miami won't run if your print driver is incompatible.
The Walking Dead won't run if you have a 360 pad plugged in.
That might more to do with your SSD,or some other component,ie, a hardware level problem. Are you still running a Vertex2? The Vertex2 and Vertex3 had BSOD issues. IIRC,some Samsung HDDs had problems with the the SB850 and SB950 on AMD motherboards. I know the F3 definitely had an issue with the SB850 and SB950.
I infact had a weird issue with the APU system I won,where it would appear to give some weird BSOD-like error when booting sometimes. I found it was the SSD and the motherboard not playing together,ie,it was down to the SandForce controller. Used it in my socket 1155 based system and so far,so good.
To put it in context I have had not ONE Windows 7 BSOD(or even Windows 8 on another box) in years of usage with my main computer,let alone daily BSOD problems. Neither has any of my mates,unless they were overclocking(which lead to freezes more often than not) and testing stability.
I said I used it until 2011,when I built a new system??And Cat, you still use
Out of interest,have any of you used SP2 Vista(+Platform Update for Windows Vista)?? I and another mate(who is actually more partial to Linux anyway)did ,and we CBA to reformat and re-install our old Vista systems for quite a while as they was primarily used for gaming(prefered using the laptop for general stuff TBH). I was also on a 2MB ****ty connection for a reasonable amount of time,so TBH,it I did not see the point until I bought a new system.
Windows 7 is better though and I was running Beta versions before it launched.
Anyway,I switched off all the crap I didn't need anyway at the very beginning and only installed Vista a good 6 months after it came out as a dual boot to XP. Ended up not bothering with the XP partition after a year. Windows 7 is similar to Vista SP2+ Platform Update for Windows Vista under the box at least from what I gather.
Some reasons why Vista initially had issues:
1.)Too low min system specs and Vista UI acceleration
This was to placate OEMs so they could sell XP machines as Vista capable. This meant not enough RAM and crappy Intel IGPs(at the time) which for the most part were barely capable of UI acceleration. Metro really relied more on having hardware for the UI than XP did.
Vista needed much more hardware than XP to run on,but OEMs were pushing stuff just about doable with later service packs of XP.
By the time Win7 came out,guess what?? The low spec systems were much higher spec.
XP had the same complaints at launch too. People have short memories.
2.)Out of box auto optimisation
Vista was not that great with this,especially with lower spec systems.
Win7 was far better. Things like indexing could cause major performance drops on lower spec systems,but even then that is somewhat down to the hardware specs too.
Also,Win7 had better handling of how stuff was managed in the main system memory and better SSD support(by far).
3.)Drivers and the new Vista OS level security model
Vista introduced big changes to how these were handled,and many companies just CBA to rewrite the old XP ones for Vista properly. This caused a **** ton of issues. Nvidia was one of the companies which had major issues,funnily enough.
By the time Win7 came out,this was not the case anymore. Even by SP2 drivers had improved quite a bit.
After SP2,came the Platform Update for Windows Vista,which introduced components which Win7 already had.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 08-10-2013 at 06:32 PM.
crossy (09-10-2013)
I agree with CAT on Windows Vista, I got it 6 or so months after it was released on a system above recommended spec and it worked very well. Having waited until the driver issues subsided, that had little to do with Microsoft, I found my experience with Vista to be very good. Once the service packs were delivered the OS was one of the best I have experienced at the time, Windows 7 was great as well but it was basically Vista with some of the kinks worked out and none of the teething issues from 3rd party drivers.
People have strange memories, they tend to place too much emphasis on their initial experience and then fail to re-evaluate the product afterwards. Their initial reaction, which was justified then, is maintained after it can no longer be justified. XP is weird in that it had horrible initial reaction, I remember disliking it, but then gained cult like status later when it was well established. Perhaps those extra years of it being the best Microsoft had to offer forced people to shed their initial reactions in favour of new evaluations of the product. I'd much prefer a 5 or 8 year product cycle with Windows myself and perhaps XP is an example of that sort of life cycle working, if only Microsoft stuck with Vista it might not have the same reputation today as it does. If Windows 8 was the successor to Vista I imagine people would view Vista as well as they did XP by the time Vista came along. Instead of a product cycle being perceived by consumers as bad one release and good another, all releases would initially be viewed as poor and then as improvements are made and people begin to see the benefits over the old software they'll be more favourable towards it.
Anyway, at the moment we have little choice for an OS that provides good gaming capability. We either get used to Windows, which lets face it is pretty good, or we don't play our favourite games. I'd like to be able to choose something other than Windows which is why I've been trying Ubuntu the last few years, turns out Windows is still the better OS for me but I hope Ubuntu and perhaps SteamOS become viable alternatives. Now that we have engines like Unity being able to easily code a game once and release it on all available platforms and will have such similar hardware in consoles and computers that the complexity of supporting both is becoming less difficult, I hope gaming can emerge from its current divided state into a more open market where people can play any game on any system they like. For this reason I welcome SteamOS whether it suits me personally or not because it can help give us a gaming market that is better for all gamers, not just ones who use Steam.
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