Windows 7/vista gaming idea

[wrxdrunkie]

Hey guys I was just randomly thinking the other day, and came up with a random wild idea.

I also hear people talk about and notice that vista as well as any operating system, takes up system resources. And dedicated video gaming consoles tend to take better advantage of their resources.

Some people might not like this idea, hell it might not even be possible. But what if when you had vista or windows 7 up and running, you could "restart in game mode" essentially rebooting your computer with a small OS like what is on the 360, that is for gaming and maximizing your resources, this could be completly optional, but for the guys that waned minimal resource hogging this could be an option, would this even be possible? I can not imagine how well say, my 8800gts would perform if it was basicially running on an operating system the size of the 360's.

[Atech]

I'm on quad-core, my OS could eat a whole core usage and I would still beat the crap out of any console in regards to graphics IQ, sound quality and effects, physics and network lantency/effeciency.

DirectX gives the game a direct (pun intended) path (API) to hardware access.

What I rather prefer is that there where more games that maxed out the hardware...like Crysis.
Forcing NVIDIA/AMD to push out faster GPU's..and increasing the lead over console preformance even further than it is today.

[wrxdrunkie]

exactly my point, imagine if you had an os that used < 5% of your resources, games like crysis could be maxed out even more. So even kick ass computers would be more kick ass.

[aaronearles]

It's called dual booting, install XP on another partition and strip it down to the minimal services, replace explorer with blackbox. Or you can write a simple batch script to stop all of your services in windows and kill explorer and start a game menu, when the game closed it could ask if you want to play something else or return to normal mode, and restart all your services and explorer.

However, I think you would see very little gain either way.

[Atech]

exactly my point, imagine if you had an os that used < 5% of your resources, games like crysis could be maxed out even more. So even kick ass computers would be more kick ass.

My CPU load is >1%, i would gain more by OC than a lighter OS.

[wrxdrunkie]

So I am gathering from the knowledgable guys that this would have no possitive performance results? My ram usage is always > 35 % and I always read about vista getting "worse" performance compared to xp cause it's a resource hog , figured this was along those ideas.

[aaronearles]

How much ram do you have? Vista manages memory very well compared to XP, I think you'd be surprised how little impact it will have, as long as you have 2GB+.

[RangerXML]

So I am gathering from the knowledgable guys that this would have no possitive performance results? My ram usage is always > 35 % and I always read about vista getting "worse" performance compared to xp cause it's a resource hog , figured this was along those ideas.

Don't believe everything you read :p

You can do something similar with MSCONFIG (diagnostic or selective boot) and disabling Areo, but I do like the idea of sort of a program safe mode or dedicated mode. Would be really useful if you wanna squeeze everything you can out of a system for encoding (if it really makes a difference).

They have something similar for certain notebooks that can boot into a media player to safe battery life.

[wrxdrunkie]

currently I have 4gb using vista 64 bit.

[aaronearles]

They have something similar for certain notebooks that can boot into a media player to safe battery life.
I believe DELL, and most others' implementation of this feature is based on Linux - which does no good for gaming, but it is pretty cool.

[Klob]

You can do this now. I have a .bat file that will disable all non essential services and background apps and then when you reboot they start up again. I never use it though because I don't notice any performance increase. I'll have to do some benchmarks one of these days and see if there is any real benefit. It came with the game BoBII and it's easy to edit to customize it to your own PC.

[wrxdrunkie]

but all of this is assuming windows does no affect performance. Would an xbox 360 with an 8800gts, 4gb ram, and q6600 not outperform an exact pc running vista?

[450]

I believe DELL, and most others' implementation of this feature is based on Linux - which does no good for gaming, but it is pretty cool.

Not Linux, but actually XP embedded. Personally on my Dell I found it of very little use and waste of how ever many GB it took up.

[Vermillion]

Hey guys I was just randomly thinking the other day, and came up with a random wild idea.

I also hear people talk about and notice that vista as well as any operating system, takes up system resources. And dedicated video gaming consoles tend to take better advantage of their resources.

Some people might not like this idea, hell it might not even be possible. But what if when you had vista or windows 7 up and running, you could "restart in game mode" essentially rebooting your computer with a small OS like what is on the 360, that is for gaming and maximizing your resources, this could be completly optional, but for the guys that waned minimal resource hogging this could be an option, would this even be possible? I can not imagine how well say, my 8800gts would perform if it was basicially running on an operating system the size of the 360's.

My quad-core with 8GB of RAM laughs at anything I throw at it so a "lighter" OS wouldn't do much as I would most likely hit a GPU limitation before system resource limitation. Programmers need to make use of the multi-core systems far better then they currently are anyways.

[TheGamerZ]

The reason that the 360 performs so well (or any console for that matter), is that the programmers only have to program for one specific set of hardware, and they can spend all their time optimizing for that as opposed to the infinite combination of hardware in a home PC. It's not so much a lightweight OS's thing as it is an optimization thing.

[Atech]

So I am gathering from the knowledgable guys that this would have no possitive performance results? My ram usage is always > 35 % and I always read about vista getting "worse" performance compared to xp cause it's a resource hog , figured this was along those ideas.

And so what?
Unsused RAM is wasted RAM.
The RAM is Vista is not nessacarily hoggning CPU time, most is just cached stuff...for faster usage if needed.

[Atech]

You can do this now. I have a .bat file that will disable all non essential services and background apps and then when you reboot they start up again. I never use it though because I don't notice any performance increase. I'll have to do some benchmarks one of these days and see if there is any real benefit. It came with the game BoBII and it's easy to edit to customize it to your own PC.

Nifty:
http://www.blackviper.com/

[Atech]

The reason that the 360 performs so well (or any console for that matter), is that the programmers only have to program for one specific set of hardware, and they can spend all their time optimizing for that as opposed to the infinite combination of hardware in a home PC. It's not so much a lightweight OS's thing as it is an optimization thing.

But is it really worth it, compred to the PC path?:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1359809

[devil22]

The reason that the 360 performs so well (or any console for that matter), is that the programmers only have to program for one specific set of hardware, and they can spend all their time optimizing for that as opposed to the infinite combination of hardware in a home PC. It's not so much a lightweight OS's thing as it is an optimization thing.

TheGamer7 is right. Vista uses like 1% of my cpu with no programs running, it really can't be made much better unless you remove the APIs and use direct hardware access like the 360 does, but that would mean you could only use 1 video card, instead of having a choice of hundreds, etc. And Vista performs as well or better than XP, initial speed problems were caused by immature drivers and specific issues that have been fixed in hotfixes since before SP1 and in SP1. For the most part Vista is a mature, good (great imo) OS, and people should stop obsessing over fixing non-existant problems.

[Ranma_Sao]

This thread discusses kinda what you were hoping for:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=972555

http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1028481996&postcount=25

States my thoughts on such an idea. ;)

[TGA]

Nifty:
http://www.blackviper.com/

Wow, I don't think I have come across a link or reference to that site for some time on this forum.

What was the name he was referred to around here after we had countless posts about things in XP not working after following his services guide, Quack Viper?

I hope this isn't a sign that we will be repeating this all again but with Vista this time.

[Klob]

I never run AV and any other anti Malware progs while gaming so having one .bat file that stops them all at once can be handy but I never have those types of progs running as TSR anyway so don't need to use one. Here's what you put in a .bat file to stop them from running though.

This stops services

net stop "AVG7 Update Service" /Y

This stops apps

process -k QuickTimePlayer.exe

[Klob]

Nifty:
http://www.blackviper.com/

I was talking about a .bat file that stops services and background processes running temporarily and not permanently.

[ryan_975]

killing an idle process does absolutely nothing for performance. It's memory used is most likely paged to disk (or can be if need be), and it's not using any CPU time.

What kills system performance is "real time" antivirus/antispyware programs that monitor every file that passes through the system. So temporarily disabling those while gaming can increase performance.

[Met-AL]

Nifty:
http://www.blackviper.com/
ROFLMAO.

[Kil4Thril]

killing an idle process does absolutely nothing for performance. It's memory used is most likely paged to disk (or can be if need be), and it's not using any CPU time.

What kills system performance is "real time" antivirus/antispyware programs that monitor every file that passes through the system. So temporarily disabling those while gaming can increase performance.

Is there any way to automate that process? Say, if you open something from the "Games" folder, your A/V and such can be temporarily disabled, only to resume upon exit?
This almost seems like opening a virtual machine or sandbox simply for gaming that is exempt of the normal OS.

[Sovereign]

My quad-core with 8GB of RAM laughs at anything I throw at it so a "lighter" OS wouldn't do much as I would most likely hit a GPU limitation before system resource limitation. Programmers need to make use of the multi-core systems far better then they currently are anyways.

/\ What he said. My OS load is less than 5%, and in any case I have four 3.2GHz cores to utilize so I don't really think I'm short on resources. Use what's there rather than agitating for a change (not the OP, programmers and whatnot).

There was a time when multiple processors (be they multi-socket or multi-core) in a consumer system were considered an impossibility. Until everyone who writes software gets completely used to the fact that multiple cores in everyday Joe Blow systems are a reality (as are x64 capable CPUs by the way) we're not going to see full use of all our fancy hardware. It's like learning to drive stick having had an automatic your whole driving life (my driver's ed program did not have stick, I have yet to learn because there are no appropriate vehicles around). It's harder (so you can't say "Devs you suck!") and has a learning curve, but software will eventually catch up. Many professional applications were written for multi-core starting a long time before multiple CPUs moved into the consumer sphere anyway. Now that technological trickle-down is occuring, everyday apps that need extra power are going to have to go through the same process as the professional ones did.

[Met-AL]

Unless you have some old pile of shit PC that can't handle gaming, going through all this trouble is the same as spilling a dollar while bending over to pick up a dime.

Is there any way to automate that process? Say, if you open something from the "Games" folder, your A/V and such can be temporarily disabled, only to resume upon exit?

..use Kaspersky AV, it does that on it's own.

[DeaconFrost]

I'd be shocked, to say the least, if you could actually notice a difference in a game with AV running in the background or not. I can see if a scheduled system scan kicked off mid-game, that your load times could increase a bit, but overall, there shouldn't be any noticeable effect, especially on today's multi-core systems.

[Vermillion]

I'd be shocked, to say the least, if you could actually notice a difference in a game with AV running in the background or not. I can see if a scheduled system scan kicked off mid-game, that your load times could increase a bit, but overall, there shouldn't be any noticeable effect, especially on today's multi-core systems.

My system can do a full thorough AV scan while I'm gaming and I forget that it's running because I don't see a difference.

Unless you have an older system AV scanning just doesn't do much to performance anymore if you use the right AV software.

[criccio]

My system can do a full thorough AV scan while I'm gaming and I forget that it's running because I don't see a difference.

Unless you have an older system AV scanning just doesn't do much to performance anymore if you use the right AV software.

True, AntiVir scaned my whole drive last night during a FarCry2 session, and I didnt even notice.

This thread is useless with the power of current Quad Core machines.

[TGA]

True, AntiVir scaned my whole drive last night during a FarCry2 session, and I didnt even notice.

This thread is useless with the power of current Quad Core machines.

Such things were quite useless years ago when we went through the whole Quack Viper phase here at [H].

[JimmiG]

I agree this was a good idea eight years ago. But it seems hardware keeps evolving at a faster pace than software.

Nowadays our PCs are so powerful and have so much RAM that a few background tasks and servies don't affect the performance of the system much. For example, each 32-bit app can only use 2GB of memory which leaves another 2GB for background stuff - unless you want to run two games at once, there's no need to strip your system to bare minimums just to free up 20MB or even 256MB of RAM. Same with CPU power - only a few games max out all four cores on a modern quad-core rig, and even if they do, the game runs good enough even if one core is 10% busy with background stuff :)

[devman]

1990 is calling. It wants it's bootdisk idea back OP. :D

[Klob]

Unless you have an older system AV scanning just doesn't do much to performance anymore if you use the right AV software.

Not cpu performance but it does to disk I/O performance. There is a website I saw that shows how much different AV progs negate disk I/O performance and after seeing that I don't want any AV prog running resident. I manually scan files I download and occasionally manually scan the PC and that is all I want AV progs to do. Why buy a fast HDD if you are going to hobble it with an AV scanner running resident? My guess is that many of you in this OS forum are just not hardcore gamers so are not all that concerned about PC performance. If all I played on my PC was casual games then I would'nt care either but I have many games that need as much juice as you can give them and even then they are not as smooth running as I would like.

[DeaconFrost]

My guess is that many of you in this OS forum are just not hardcore gamers so are not all that concerned about PC performance.
My guess is that most people are smart enough to realize that it doesn't have any effect on gaming. I/O performance, for starters, has no effect on FPS. That alone tells you there's nothing to fear by running an AV scanner. Secondly, if we look to bigger issues, no one in their right mind, security speaking, would ever consider not having a real-time scanner.

Let's also take a look at how these scanners work. If you aren't downloading files, or introducing new files to your computer, nothing is really being scanned, in terms of system resources. If you've ever used Symantec Corporate, you can click in and see what it is scanning, and you'll see, as the computer gets busier, than scanner sits idle. When you start copying files down from a server, it will pick up and start scanning them. All you need to do is aply some simple logic and basic principles of how this stuff works to see what's really true. Besides, instead of talking down to use as "not being hardcore gamers", take a moment to realize that many of us used to be, and that's how we got hooked into this hobby/industry, but since many of us aren't kids anymore, we have much more important things going on in our lives to waste many many hours a day playing games. Trust me, I wish I had more time for games.

[Klob]

Disk I/O performance affects load times of new data and can cause stuttering. Game performance is not all about FPS so you are not as smart as you think you are. And you are not dealing with a kid here so drop the condescending tone.

[TGA]

Not cpu performance but it does to disk I/O performance. There is a website I saw that shows how much different AV progs negate disk I/O performance and after seeing that I don't want any AV prog running resident. I manually scan files I download and occasionally manually scan the PC and that is all I want AV progs to do. Why buy a fast HDD if you are going to hobble it with an AV scanner running resident? My guess is that many of you in this OS forum are just not hardcore gamers so are not all that concerned about PC performance. If all I played on my PC was casual games then I would'nt care either but I have many games that need as much juice as you can give them and even then they are not as smooth running as I would like.

No we are just Hard core PC users that choose to evaluate PC performance by our actual user experience rather then just rely on synthetic benchmarks to dictate what hardware we run or how we configure our PCs. And this should go with out saying since you are on [H]. Maybe you made a wrong turn? TomsHardware (http://www.tomshardware.com)is that way.

Now personally I have my AV set up to do active scans at a time when I am always in bed because I don't want to risk having my user experience impacted by the scan. Note I said that I don't want to risk it, it is quite possible I wouldn't even notice the scan going on but I have never bothered to test that when these things can be done while I am not using the PC.

Huge difference between setting up tasks that require no user interaction to run while a PC is idle over night and disabling the AV and or windows services to try and gain performance in computer games.

Anyway your guess is wrong but hey feel free to use your PC as you see fit. I will just be sure to avoid replying to any request you have for help when something wont work for you since I will just assume it is because your PC is setup for “hardcore gaming” and just can't handle anything else. :rolleyes:

[ScretHate]

What brand of tampon do you guys use?

Yeesh.

[DeaconFrost]

Game performance is not all about FPS
No? You might want to rethink that one. Once the levels and textures load, the HDDs do nothing.
And you are not dealing with a kid here so drop the condescending tone.
Does that bother you when someone else turns condescending? Good, I'm glad, because that's the tone you took in your post above. Don't be a hypocrit. Many of us are system admins that are going to be much more versed in real system performance than someone who's simply tweaking for gaming. Most of us also base our comments on actual, real usage, and not what some wesbite tells us to believe. I can show you websites that tell us aliens have landed and are running the world's governments....but that doesn't make it true.
What brand of tampon do you guys use?
The same brand you use when you get all riled up, spreading FUD about how horrible Vista is. ;)

[TGA]

What brand of tampon do you guys use?

Yeesh.

All you have to do is go back and look at the type of posts we were seeing here at [H] during the Quack Viper phase to know why some of us are so fast to nip something like this at the bud.

Suggesting to people that disabling services is going to improve the user experience can lead to pages full of posts related to the issues that it can cause.

Now suggesting people not run an AV setup to perform active scans could easily lead to an even larger nightmare. We already see people who manage to infect PC's even with an active virus scanner. As Deacon pointed out it will sit idle unless new files are being copied over. So any disk I/O performance Klob thinks he is gaining by not having his AV active is all in his head.

And all this because one person claims he didn't even notice his AV started an active scan of his hard drives while gaming. Clearly Klob thinks this user is full of it and thats fine he is entitled to his opinion.

It's his suggestion that any hardcore gamer is crazy for running an AV that is set to actively scan new files that we have a problem with. [H] is full of examples to would suggest most gamers are not the most knowledgeable computer users.

To make this simple fore everyone the point is this. Active scan has no impact on disk I/O unless new files are being added to the drive. Now if this is the same drive you run your game is running from your already taking an I/O hit just by adding new files to said drive. So if disk I/O is the concern then you wont be adding new files to the drive your game is running on in the fist place so again no point in having you AV not actively scan all new files.

That said I haven't had my AV find a virus on my PC in over 8 years now and I am sure I am not the only one. Now this would suggest I could probably get away with not even having an AV. But I keep it for piece of mind and it has no negative impact on my user experience so why not? However if I ever did decide to remove my AV the last thing I would do is go suggesting people do the same on a public forum. Much less suggest they do so to improve PC performance!

No one is telling Klob how to use his PC, we are just suggesting he reevaluate his reason for not letting his AV run actively.

[ryan_975]

All you have to do is go back and look at the type of posts we were seeing here at [H] during the Quack Viper phase to know why some of us are so fast to nip something like this at the bud.

Suggesting to people that disabling services is going to improve the user experience can lead to pages full of posts related to the issues that it can cause.

Now suggesting people not run an AV setup to perform active scans could easily lead to an even larger nightmare. We already see people who manage to infect PC's even with an active virus scanner. As Deacon pointed out it will sit idle unless new files are being copied over. So any disk I/O performance Klob thinks he is gaining by not having his AV active is all in his head.

And all this because one person claims he didn't even notice his AV started an active scan of his hard drives while gaming. Clearly Klob thinks this user is full of it and thats fine he is entitled to his opinion.

It's his suggestion that any hardcore gamer is crazy for running an AV that is set to actively scan new files that we have a problem with. [H] is full of examples to would suggest most gamers are not the most knowledgeable computer users.

To make this simple fore everyone the point is this. Active scan has no impact on disk I/O unless new files are being added to the drive. Now if this is the same drive you run your game is running from your already taking an I/O hit just by adding new files to said drive. So if disk I/O is the concern then you wont be adding new files to the drive your game is running on in the fist place so again no point in having you AV not actively scan all new files.

That said I haven't had my AV find a virus on my PC in over 8 years now and I am sure I am not the only one. Now this would suggest I could probably get away with not even having an AV. But I keep it for piece of mind and it has no negative impact on my user experience so why not? However if I ever did decide to remove my AV the last thing I would do is go suggesting people do the same on a public forum. Much less suggest they do so to improve PC performance!

No one is telling Klob how to use his PC, we are just suggesting he reevaluate his reason for not letting his AV run actively.

A lot of AV programs scan on both reads and writes to the hard drive. Not saying it would definitely cause issues, though it's mildly possible with games that load levels in a seamless fashion.

[Klob]

No one is telling Klob how to use his PC, we are just suggesting he reevaluate his reason for not letting his AV run actively.

No, I do not need to reevaluate anything. The consensus was in on this a long time ago and no gamer worth his salt runs an AV prog while gaming. I never told anyone to disable services either. I even said I don't do so. I simply showed how to disable services and processes *temporarily* if the OP cared to do so. Oh well, seeing as this is the OS forum and not a gaming forum I should have known better than to post where all the self proclaimed computer gurus post.

[Klob]

No we are just Hard core PC users that choose to evaluate PC performance by our actual user experience rather then just rely on synthetic benchmarks to dictate what hardware we run or how we configure our PCs. And this should go with out saying since you are on [H]. Maybe you made a wrong turn? TomsHardware (http://www.tomshardware.com)is that way.



Do you realize how pathetically arrogant you make yourself look? Considering you are so informed about PC performance while gaming then why do I never see any of you OS gurus post in the game forum? Because you are non gamers and know sweet fuck all about running an OS optimized for gaming purposes.

[Vermillion]

Do you realize how pathetically arrogant you make yourself look? Considering you are so informed about PC performance while gaming then why do I never see any of you OS gurus post in the game forum? Because you are non gamers and know sweet fuck all about running an OS optimized for gaming purposes.

ROFL

I just found that statement funny.

I'm a "non gamer" supposedly because I don't see any issues with disk performance when I run a full scan of my system. Gee could be the fact that all four of my hard drives are 32MB cache 7200RPM drives in two different RAID 0 setups. Sounds like I have plenty of I/0 to go around. Let's assume that I do actually see a small performance hit. That minimal hit in disk performance for loading a level adds what? Maybe 3 seconds load time max? God forbid my mouse hand can't shoot something for 3 extra seconds. It certainly won't hit my FPS at all once the thing is loaded and my load times would still be faster then a standard non-RAID 0 setup.

[DeaconFrost]

The consensus was in on this a long time ago
Exactly. A long time ago. This is an age of multi-core processors and multiple GB of memory. Those arguments "may" have been valid a few years ago, but aren't any long. Times change, technology changes, which means you need to keep up with the times.
no gamer worth his salt runs an AV prog while gaming.
Again, may have been true years ago...but it isn't any longer. You're kidding yourself if you think AV software is affecting your performance.
then why do I never see any of you OS gurus post in the game forum? Because you are non gamers and know sweet fuck all about running an OS optimized for gaming purposes.
You make me laugh...seriously, because the more you post, the less credible you become. By the way, I do post in the Gamer Section. If anyone is being pathetic and arrogant in here, it is you.

[BlindedByScience]

All right....enough is enough, guys. Drop the personal attacks....now. You can disagree and even argue about the facts all you want but if it gets personal a mod or admin will step in and action will be taken.

It's completely up to you.

[Klob]

OK, sorry for the personal attacks. Maybe HardOCP could do an article on this subject and test a few resource demanding games with and without AV progs and anti-spyware progs running in the background.
I'll continue to run my PC without resident protection no matter the outcome though as that is how I prefer to run it.

[GORANKAR]

OK, sorry for the personal attacks. Maybe HardOCP could do an article on this subject and test a few resource demanding games with and without AV progs and anti-spyware progs running in the background.
I'll continue to run my PC without resident protection no matter the outcome though as that is how I prefer to run it.


That is your choice, but on a modern system it is not getting you anything. Since I got my first dual core, 3 or so years ago, I have not bothered to disable my AV scanner, or Win Defender just because I was starting a game. Aside from full system scans I have never noticed a performance loss, or slow level load, or save point stutter because of it.

To each their own.

[DeaconFrost]

Maybe HardOCP could do an article on this subject and test a few resource demanding games with and without AV progs and anti-spyware progs running in the background.
If someone wants to take their time, then great, but honestly, it doesn't need to be done. It's been said quite a few times, but people on here do game on their systems...and yes some of them are hardcore gamers as well. It simply doesn't make a difference anymore. Systems are so much more powerful now than 4 years ago or so. Hardware has made leaps and bounds in that amount of time. Running AV processes in the background just simply doesn't have an impact on system performance anymore. When you add in the benefits, and most would say, necessity of an AV monitoring program, there's little to none to debate about it anymore. We aren't talking about Pentium III systems with 256 MB of memory anymore. Take a look at what PCs were like hardware wise, back 6 to 7 years ago when XP was released, when this line of thinking had some merit. Those computers are nothing compared to today's systems, especially considering you are talking about a gamer's PC.

The beauty of it, is you don't have to take my word for it. You can very easily try this out for yourself. You don't even have to spend one dime to get good AV protection.

[Ranma_Sao]

Do you realize how pathetically arrogant you make yourself look? Considering you are so informed about PC performance while gaming then why do I never see any of you OS gurus post in the game forum? Because you are non gamers and know sweet fuck all about running an OS optimized for gaming purposes.

What is an OS optomized for gaming? I believe I made my view on it, in the linked thread, but I'm always interested in learning. ;)

I actually do game quite a lot, with my AV running, my quad core seems bored, and I like to throw it a bone now and again. ;)

The reasons I don't like people disabling services, is due to the plethora of crashing bugs I had to diagnose due to API's just not being there. People have tested it, and found after boot time it's less then a 1% difference, which the difference is within the margin of error.

As to why I suggest to always run an AV while gaming, I'll link to my blog post on the subject:
http://blogs.technet.com/mmpc/archive/2008/09/03/helpful-suggestions-to-protect-you-from-game-password-stealers.aspx

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

[Klob]

That is your choice, but on a modern system it is not getting you anything. Since I got my first dual core, 3 or so years ago, I have not bothered to disable my AV scanner, or Win Defender just because I was starting a game. Aside from full system scans I have never noticed a performance loss, or slow level load, or save point stutter because of it.

To each their own.

Well, I find them an annoyance so choose not to use them in resident mode. The ones that have web protection slow down browser performance too. And I have Avast, Spybot, Spywareblaster, Malwarebytes, and noscript installed so it's not like I run around naked.
I've seen the benchmarks that show disk I/O performance hit caused by just about every AV prog and I don't want that on my PC even if I was using a 32core cpu.

[GORANKAR]

Well, I find them an annoyance so choose not to use them in resident mode. The ones that have web protection slow down browser performance too. And I have Avast, Spybot, Spywareblaster, Malwarebytes, and noscript installed so it's not like I run around naked.
I've seen the benchmarks that show disk I/O performance hit caused by just about every AV prog and I don't want that on my PC even if I was using a 32core cpu.

Again, that is your choice.
My choice is to leave it running.

It certainly does not make either of us any more, or less, a hard core gamer.

[-Dragon-]

What is an OS optomized for gaming?

Actually in a lot of ways Vista is, as far as running a disk defrag or AV scan during a gaming session, Vista has multiple priority levels for disk IO, and the built in Vista defrag and any properly written background AV scanner can flag their IO requests as background, meaning that the OS is free to put them on hold to let any user app have full access to the HD meaning that the HD IO path is always available to your game even while defrag or AV (or other services like indexing) are running.

[Klob]

A PC optimized for gaming is one where background apps and processes don't get in the way of your gaming session. I've seen lots of people post about issues with gaming caused by AV progs.

[number69]

Actually in a lot of ways Vista is, as far as running a disk defrag or AV scan during a gaming session, Vista has multiple priority levels for disk IO, and the built in Vista defrag and any properly written background AV scanner can flag their IO requests as background, meaning that the OS is free to put them on hold to let any user app have full access to the HD meaning that the HD IO path is always available to your game even while defrag or AV (or other services like indexing) are running.

You're explaining that to Ranma? My guess is that he knows how Vista works better than you.