Windows XP SP3?

[miniMUNCH]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Microsoft isn't even supporting XP enough to roll out a DX10, and if you buy their BS about it not being possible ... lol. Microsoft is getting a lot uglier with their tactics regarding new OS/product releases. I remember being told that USB 2.0 wasn't possible on anything except Win2k or XP with the service pack installed, and then lo and behold, MSI released Win9x USB 2.0 drivers for my old MSI 845 GE-Max mainboard, which I was running a NW 2.4@3.2Ghz on at the time w/98SE. Worked like a charm, totally proving Microsoft wrong on the whole issue. It wasn't that it wasn't possible, they just wanted to try to force more people to upgrade. Same here. WinXP is simply too good for many people to even consider upgrading from, unless of course you FORCE them to by making integral windows components Vista-only. Nasty stuff, really.

It's not possible. Quit ranting and FUDing and go educate yourself. You look like a tard spouting that crap.

Thank you... saved me the trouble of having to say it.

I'll say this... people piss and moan about MS's support.

What about Apple's...Apple answer to security flaws or troublesome bugs in 10.3 or 10.4...spend $80 to upgrade to 10.5. I actually had an Mac genius tell me that, "no that bug [that was causing kernel panics] is not going to be fixed in 10.3... but it is fixed in 10.4, just upgrade." WTF.

MS, like Apple, develop new features for new OS's so they can make money. There is no money to be made in back-porting vista features to XP. That time is better spent making vista better.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: miniMUNCH

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Microsoft isn't even supporting XP enough to roll out a DX10, and if you buy their BS about it not being possible ... lol. Microsoft is getting a lot uglier with their tactics regarding new OS/product releases. I remember being told that USB 2.0 wasn't possible on anything except Win2k or XP with the service pack installed, and then lo and behold, MSI released Win9x USB 2.0 drivers for my old MSI 845 GE-Max mainboard, which I was running a NW 2.4@3.2Ghz on at the time w/98SE. Worked like a charm, totally proving Microsoft wrong on the whole issue. It wasn't that it wasn't possible, they just wanted to try to force more people to upgrade. Same here. WinXP is simply too good for many people to even consider upgrading from, unless of course you FORCE them to by making integral windows components Vista-only. Nasty stuff, really.

It's not possible. Quit ranting and FUDing and go educate yourself. You look like a tard spouting that crap.

Thank you... saved me the trouble of haveing to say it.

Haveing? You both look like tards for being rude. Making DX10 into a significant SP3 WinXP patch would NOT be rocket science for Microsoft to do. But for some reason, you seem to think that it would be the world's most complicated project.

 

[tcsenter]

Remember, this is the Microsoft which purposefully lost billions of dollars on the Xbox just to wedge into the gaming/home entertainment market of the living room.

Xbox was expanding into a new market, which in fact has been profitable. That's what companies do when they enter a new market, lose money hand over fist for a while, the loss is recouped over several years if the endeavor is successful.

How would Microsoft recoup the money it spent on backporting DX10 on XP? Backporting is technically inaccurate, making DX10 would require significantly more complexity than a mere backport. This is not just making DX10 run on XP, but equally is about making XP run DX10. Do you understand the difference?

 

[Nothinman]

Btw, I'm forwarding your insulting post to the mods, given that you made assumptions about me without even realizing that I RUN an IT company.

I just hope it's not a software development company...

Making DX10 into a significant SP3 WinXP patch would NOT be rocket science for Microsoft to do. But for some reason, you seem to think that it would be the world's most complicated project.

And you can accurage gauge the difficulty of the project how? How much access do you have to MS' source repositories?

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Btw, I'm forwarding your insulting post to the mods, given that you made assumptions about me without even realizing that I RUN an IT company.

I just hope it's not a software development company...

Making DX10 into a significant SP3 WinXP patch would NOT be rocket science for Microsoft to do. But for some reason, you seem to think that it would be the world's most complicated project.

And you can accurage gauge the difficulty of the project how? How much access do you have to MS' source repositories?

To be fair, I realize that it's not my specialty. I am judging purely from the perspective of an industry veteran who has seen a lot of developments that were quite impressive given their platforms. Do you think that DX10 on Vista would be impossible? Or so difficult that it would be unfeasible? If so, I respect your opinion. In exchange I would expect not to be blindly insulted by strangers who make assumptions purely because I disagree with their viewpoints.

Btw, thanks for making a pointed but not unnecessarily rude post on the issue. Good to see some class here. Cheers.

Fwiw, I run a Network/PC shop in Texas

 

[miniMUNCH]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: miniMUNCH

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Microsoft isn't even supporting XP enough to roll out a DX10, and if you buy their BS about it not being possible ... lol. Microsoft is getting a lot uglier with their tactics regarding new OS/product releases. I remember being told that USB 2.0 wasn't possible on anything except Win2k or XP with the service pack installed, and then lo and behold, MSI released Win9x USB 2.0 drivers for my old MSI 845 GE-Max mainboard, which I was running a NW 2.4@3.2Ghz on at the time w/98SE. Worked like a charm, totally proving Microsoft wrong on the whole issue. It wasn't that it wasn't possible, they just wanted to try to force more people to upgrade. Same here. WinXP is simply too good for many people to even consider upgrading from, unless of course you FORCE them to by making integral windows components Vista-only. Nasty stuff, really.

It's not possible. Quit ranting and FUDing and go educate yourself. You look like a tard spouting that crap.

Thank you... saved me the trouble of haveing to say it.

Haveing? You both look like tards for being rude. Making DX10 into a significant SP3 WinXP patch would NOT be rocket science for Microsoft to do. But for some reason, you seem to think that it would be the world's most complicated project.

Thank you so very, very much for spell checking my typing for me... weak sauce, bro. come on now...

No one said it would be rocket science, just a real pain the ass and completely not worth doing. You do realize that the new driver architecture is one of the biggest code change/additions in vista with reference to XP. I'd venture a guess that upwards of 30-40% of code change commits for XP --> Vista are the driver subsystem or are related to the driver subsystem. Anyone have some accurate stats on that, BTW?

Porting Aero to XP is easy, easy by comparison.

Also...the DX10 thing is not worth getting undies in a bunch over in the first place. DX9 delivers almost all of the graphical capability that DX10 offers... DX10 just makes things more efficient.

 

[Nothinman]

To be fair, I realize that it's not my specialty. I am judging purely from the perspective of an industry veteran who has seen a lot of developments that were quite impressive given their platforms. Do you think that DX10 on Vista would be impossible? Or so difficult that it would be unfeasible? If so, I respect your opinion. In exchange I would expect not to be blindly insulted by strangers who make assumptions purely because I disagree with their viewpoints.

Obviously it's not impossible but it's definitely not cost effective for MS. As I understand it Vista got it's video and audio subsytems pretty much completely rewritten so that large portions of the drivers could be moved to userspace for, at least, stability reasons. And DX10 relies on functionality in those new subsystems so porting it to XP would require completely rewriting XP's video subsystem and probably the audio subsystem too. Not only would this be an absolutely huge amount of development work for MS, they would have to spend a ton of time doing QA and regression testing since it destabilizes the whole source tree. And then you'd have the same driver issues on XP that you have on Vista now, I'm sure nVidia and Creative would love that.

And on top of that, low level video programming is some of the most difficult out there. Just take a look at the X.org source if you want, it's about the same size as that of the Linux kernel and that's on top of the video infrastructure for things like AGP and DRM that are already in the kernel.

Fwiw, I run a Network/PC shop in Texas

No offense but building, maintaining, networking etc PCs is worlds apart from developing software.

 

[miniMUNCH]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Fwiw, I run a Network/PC shop in Texas

No pulling out e-penis'... it could get ugly.

I apologize, for my part, for being rude... I should've stated my DX10 case with more civility.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

To be fair, I realize that it's not my specialty. I am judging purely from the perspective of an industry veteran who has seen a lot of developments that were quite impressive given their platforms. Do you think that DX10 on Vista would be impossible? Or so difficult that it would be unfeasible? If so, I respect your opinion. In exchange I would expect not to be blindly insulted by strangers who make assumptions purely because I disagree with their viewpoints.

Obviously it's not impossible but it's definitely not cost effective for MS. As I understand it Vista got it's video and audio subsytems pretty much completely rewritten so that large portions of the drivers could be moved to userspace for, at least, stability reasons. And DX10 relies on functionality in those new subsystems so porting it to XP would require completely rewriting XP's video subsystem and probably the audio subsystem too. Not only would this be an absolutely huge amount of development work for MS, they would have to spend a ton of time doing QA and regression testing since it destabilizes the whole source tree. And then you'd have the same driver issues on XP that you have on Vista now, I'm sure nVidia and Creative would love that.

And on top of that, low level video programming is some of the most difficult out there. Just take a look at the X.org source if you want, it's about the same size as that of the Linux kernel and that's on top of the video infrastructure for things like AGP and DRM that are already in the kernel.

Fwiw, I run a Network/PC shop in Texas

No offense but building, maintaining, networking etc PCs is worlds apart from developing software.

Good info, and as far as PC networking vs. software .. I know what you mean. I have little interest in software development, I took C++ a few years back and was bored to tears. I have a good fundamental understanding of the concepts, and can slap together stuff in Visual Basic, but I do not pretend to be an expert on the subject, and I'm grateful to uncondescending experts on that topic. Thanks for being classy and civil during this discussion. I work 60-70 hour weeks at my business, and have a 9-week old son (my first child!), so I get tired and grumpy, and take little kindness to being randomly insulted based on my opinions. You are a credit to the AT forums, and I've gotten a lot of great info and perspectives here. Of course every forum will have it's rude, arrogant trolls, and people who think that just because they don't share your opinion, that the other person must be stupid or worse.

I stand by my opinion that DX10 for XP should at least be attempted by Microsoft, given that new PCs were sold through the holidays, and it's unreasonable to force obsolescence on such recent customers. This is just my outside opinion on the subject, and shouldn't be taken personally by anyone. I credit Microsoft for being great in the past about supporting their existing OS stable for a very reasonable time. Examples abound.

Good talking with ya.

 

[miniMUNCH]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

To be fair, I realize that it's not my specialty. I am judging purely from the perspective of an industry veteran who has seen a lot of developments that were quite impressive given their platforms. Do you think that DX10 on Vista would be impossible? Or so difficult that it would be unfeasible? If so, I respect your opinion. In exchange I would expect not to be blindly insulted by strangers who make assumptions purely because I disagree with their viewpoints.

Obviously it's not impossible but it's definitely not cost effective for MS. As I understand it Vista got it's video and audio subsytems pretty much completely rewritten so that large portions of the drivers could be moved to userspace for, at least, stability reasons. And DX10 relies on functionality in those new subsystems so porting it to XP would require completely rewriting XP's video subsystem and probably the audio subsystem too. Not only would this be an absolutely huge amount of development work for MS, they would have to spend a ton of time doing QA and regression testing since it destabilizes the whole source tree. And then you'd have the same driver issues on XP that you have on Vista now, I'm sure nVidia and Creative would love that.

And on top of that, low level video programming is some of the most difficult out there. Just take a look at the X.org source if you want, it's about the same size as that of the Linux kernel and that's on top of the video infrastructure for things like AGP and DRM that are already in the kernel.

Fwiw, I run a Network/PC shop in Texas

No offense but building, maintaining, networking etc PCs is worlds apart from developing software.

Learn something new everyday... I did not know the X.org source was about the size of the kernel...is that with the drivers included in the kernel or without?

BTW, Nothinman... are you in Pittsburgh by any chance?

You are not kidding about the low level video programming from what my brother-in-law says. He's a computer/software engineer at Lucas Film and works on all kinds of "little" projects like using GPU acceleration to speed up in-house rendering.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: miniMUNCH

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Fwiw, I run a Network/PC shop in Texas

No pulling out e-penis'... it could get ugly.

I apologize, for my part, for being rude... I should've stated my DX10 case with more civility.

Hehe, no problem. I got a bit snippy myself, I sleep little these days with my business and my new baby, so I apologize if I was short with anyone. I understand your DX10 perspective, and although I look at it a little different, I won't pretend to be a development expert. I'm just an old tech with strong opinions

Beer!

:beer:

 

[Nothinman]

I stand by my opinion that DX10 for XP should at least be attempted by Microsoft, given that new PCs were sold through the holidays, and it's unreasonable to force obsolescence on such recent customers.

There is no such obsolescence, at least not for a few years. Game developers aren't going to limit their customer base by ignoring all of the current XP users so at best you'll see some games that support DX10 optionally just like we do now with the few AMD64 patches that have been released for games.

I credit Microsoft for being great in the past about supporting their existing OS stable for a very reasonable time. Examples abound.

Which should tell you that if they're not doing it this time there's probably some pretty big reasons.

Learn something new everyday... I did not know the X.org source was about the size of the kernel...is that with the drivers included in the kernel or without?

That's source size with nothing built, a built kernel is much smaller. For example, the Debian 2.6.18-3-amd64 kernel I'm using here has a 1.5M vmlinuz and 68M worth of modules and that's with just about everything possible built statically or as a module. So that's ~70M for the binaries vs ~340M for the extracted source code.

BTW, Nothinman... are you in Pittsburgh by any chance?

Sadly yes, why?

You are not kidding about the low level video programming from what my brother-in-law says. He's a computer/software engineer at Lucas Film and works on all kinds of "little" projects like using GPU acceleration to speed up in-house rendering.

And also because of the math required it's not something easily learned, you can either do it or you can't. A friend of mine used to write little programs and games in his free time and he actually wrote a first person ray tracer in QBasic. Most of the time I had very little problem following his programs and could help him debug them but when it came to the complex math for things like OpenGL I just skimmed over it because it meant nothing to me.

 

[miniMUNCH]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
[

BTW, Nothinman... are you in Pittsburgh by any chance?

Sadly yes, why?

Me too... but only for another year or so. With any luck I"ll be done at CMU by June 08 then it's back to the west coast.

If you don't like Pgh, why don't you move?

 

[Nothinman]

If you don't like Pgh, why don't you move?

Friends and family mostly. That and moving really sucks. =)

 

[CTho9305]

For what it's worth, I've heard from non-MS employees/fanboys who are familiar with DX10 and drivers that it really wouldn't be realistic to have DX10 in XP.

 

[Chadder007]

Originally posted by: fighterpilot

Originally posted by: Aluvus
Yes, they will. It is scheduled for the first half of 2008.

2008!?! WTF? I would think first half of 2007 makes much more sense, but what do I know?

I've tried nlite a few times, but I always get errors of some sort, and wanted to use nlite to save time, not spend more time installing and error checking. I reinstall once every nine to twelve months for each of my three PC's, so guess I will just go through the whole dance each time.

Or is there someplace that is consolidating the post-SP2 updates in a single file?

Yeah, its a bit rediculous when you have a new SP2 install of XP and then you have 80+ freaking updates waiting to be installed when you hook it up to the internet.

 

[BBowermaster]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
I stand by my opinion that DX10 for XP should at least be attempted by Microsoft, given that new PCs were sold through the holidays, and it's unreasonable to force obsolescence on such recent customers.

You know, you keep talking as if these customers would have any use for DX10. More than likely, if they bought their computer in the store, its integrated video or low end video. If they do upgrade it, there will still be a bottle neck somewhere. Even if they even buy a DX10 video card, it will be AT LEAST $300. Whats another $99-139 for a Vista Upgrade?

Basically, your creating a cause for a movement thats not there. It be like complaining that store bought computers should come with hard drives in raid configuration. Do you think the typical customer who buys a computer in store would understand a RAID array, what it does, and what they would do if a hard drive failed?

 

[Motorheader]

Originally posted by: Brentx

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: mechBgon

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Microsoft isn't even supporting XP enough to roll out a DX10

Regarding Vista's new features, you said there was "not a *single* one" you liked. I was going to ask if DX10 gaming really held no interest for you... looks like it does, though.

Yes, but it's totally arbitrary. It's like saying, after packaging Firefox 3 into a particular build of Linux, that it's a *feature*. There's no credible reason that DX10 should be Vista-only, other than to attempt to force more people to 'upgrade'. I don't game anymore anyway, I run my own business and have a 9 week old son to raise Half a game of solitaire here and there.

I *do* think Microsoft is being ridiculous w/DX10 situation, even if I don't game.

DX10 is a completely new software architecture for DirectX. It would be impossible to port to XP, or at least not a wise decision. It is based on the new WDDM, which depends on WDDM Video drivers to be released from manufacturers. The problem with backporting it is that DX10 and WDDM all depend on User mode drivers. Most of XP's drivers are running in Kernel mode, especially the video drivers, which is why it would not work. You would have to rewrite XP's entire Kernel to get it to work. It is just not feasible.

Yes DX10 was a risky move by Microsoft, but just wait until DX10 games start hitting the market. Then they won't be complaining.

Yeah, but what about those spreadsheets I work on daily and those documents I generate. How does DX10 help me there?

 

[Nothinman]

Yeah, but what about those spreadsheets I work on daily and those documents I generate. How does DX10 help me there?

You'll be able to use those GPGPUs to do calculations for you!!!