Windows 7/vista gaming idea

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wrxdrunkie

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 23, 2007
Messages
461
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
wrxdrunkie said:
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.
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My CPU load is >1%, i would gain more by OC than a lighter OS.
 
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.
 
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+.
 
wrxdrunkie said:
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.
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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.
 
They have something similar for certain notebooks that can boot into a media player to safe battery life.
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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.
 
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.
 
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?
 
aaronearles said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
wrxdrunkie said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
 
wrxdrunkie said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
Klob said:
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.
Click to expand...

Nifty:
http://www.blackviper.com/
 
TheGamerZ said:
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.
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But is it really worth it, compred to the PC path?:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1359809
 
TheGamerZ said:
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.
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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.
 
Atech said:
Nifty:
http://www.blackviper.com/
Click to expand...

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.
 
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
 
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.
 
ryan_975 said:
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.
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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.
 
Vermillion said:
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.
Click to expand...

/\ 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.
 
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.

Kil4Thril said:
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?
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..use Kaspersky AV, it does that on it's own.
 
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.
 
DeaconFrost said:
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.
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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.
 
Vermillion said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
criccio said:
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.
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Such things were quite useless years ago when we went through the whole Quack Viper phase here at [H].
 
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 :)
 
Vermillion said:
Unless you have an older system AV scanning just doesn't do much to performance anymore if you use the right AV software.
Click to expand...

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.
 
Klob said:
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.
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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.
 
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.
 
Klob said:
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.
Click to expand...

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 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:
 
Klob said:
Game performance is not all about FPS
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No? You might want to rethink that one. Once the levels and textures load, the HDDs do nothing.
Klob said:
And you are not dealing with a kid here so drop the condescending tone.
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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.
ScretHate said:
What brand of tampon do you guys use?
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The same brand you use when you get all riled up, spreading FUD about how horrible Vista is. ;)
 
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