My New Computer!

[Anduril]

I will probably be getting a new PC soon and was wondering if anyone had any idea how 64 bit Vista worked with DDo? Supposedly is supposed to have pretty graphics, and I like shiney objects.

[Coldin]

I don't think 64 bit will give you any prettier graphics in DDO than a 32 bit computer. Plus, with 64 bit you run into many more driver problems. I'm sure though there's someone who has a bit more knowledge about it than me.

I will say that Vista 32 hogs a lot more resources than XP, so that's something to consider when building your new computer. And really graphics mostly depend on the hardware and drivers than the operating system.

[Jules]

I will probably be getting a new PC soon and was wondering if anyone had any idea how 64 bit Vista worked with DDo? Supposedly is supposed to have pretty graphics, and I like shiney objects.

I still don't think Vista is ready for primetime. If you can get xp do it - if you can install it youself go for it - just get the xp drivers for your integrated hardware and run that.

This is my professional opinion.

Jules

[Coldin]

Yeah, go xp if you can. But if Vista is the only option, it's not terrible. With Vista you just have to be more up to date with drivers (especially video drivers) and know that performance will be slightly lower than with xp. That being said, Vista does give you access to DX 10, but since that's barely utilized yet in today's games, it's not that big of a plus.

[Eldamir]

The only reason that I went with Vista-64 on my new system was to take advantage of the full 8gb of memory that I installed -- unfortunately, Vista uses ~2.5gb of that at idle :(

The only graphics advantage you'll get from using Vista (either -32 or -64) is access to DirectX 10, and since DDO is a DirectX 9.0 title, you lose out on that benefit. For other, newer, games that support DX10 (i.e. Crysis, HellGate), you'll need Vista to fully appreciate their graphics.

[Coldin]

But DDO is supposed to be incorporating some DX 10 stuff soon. I think for shadows or something silly like that.

Btw, while I've heard that Crysis and the like look better in DX 10, I've also heard that they run much better in DX 9, and that the graphical difference is marginal at best.

[Master of None]

I've been using 64-bit Vista for about 9 months, and have had no problems with DDO. That said, I'm not a huge fan of Vista in many respects. As others have said, I'm sure you could get comparable results in DDO from a similar xp machine. On the other hand, if you want to check out Age of Conan, I believe Vista should make a significant difference.

Anyway, Vista works fine with DDO. Whether you want to go that route is another question.

[Eldamir]

Honestly, I can't really compare my Crysis experiences ..

My DX9 experience was on an Opteron 170 and 8800GT (2GB RAM) running XP Pro
My DX10 experience is on a Q6600 and 8800GT (8GB RAM) running Vista-64 ultimate.

As Coldin mentioned, Vista has more driver issues than XP, but with SP1 it's stable enough - I stopped having stability issues once that was applied.

[Xaearth]

Ack... Vista... :eek:

My older brother's been working in the computer systems/database design and networking industry for a while at a small, localized company that contracts out to building networks for larger companies both locally and out of state.
I mean, he occasionally picks up contracts from major IT companies, not to mention his contract with the federal government to maintain their network and database at a local base.

He and his entire company (while small) all advise their customers to stay away from Vista. It's a massive resources hog. Of course, a couple of his coworkers have Vista on their top of the line home gaming pc... But last I heard (been almost a year so may have changed), the copy of Vista they're using wasn't available to the general public. (Being a company in the industry has its perks :D)

[Eldamir]

They were using the same version that you and I can get .. it just comes on neat maroon discs with a Technet subscription. When I was stationed in Germany, we got a full set of MS garbage every 3 months that way.

Also - if they're using those copies for their home PCs, they are violating the terms of the MSDN Technet subscription.

/derail off

[Xaearth]

They were using the same version that you and I can get .. it just comes on neat maroon discs with a Technet subscription. When I was stationed in Germany, we got a full set of MS garbage every 3 months that way.

Also - if they're using those copies for their home PCs, they are violating the terms of the MSDN Technet subscription.

/derail off

Nah... I'm thinking what they were talking about (I wasn't exactly a part of the conversation :D) was they got the 64-bit version before it was released to the public. And... technically their home pcs are used for office work as well (being a small company, they don't really have a lot of office space in the main office, so many of them use their home pcs to work when they aren't being contracted out), so they get away with it :p.

[Eldamir]

ok that works :)

[lostinjapan]

I will probably be getting a new PC soon and was wondering if anyone had any idea how 64 bit Vista worked with DDo? Supposedly is supposed to have pretty graphics, and I like shiney objects.

It's not the Vista that gives you prettier graphics, it's the DirectX 10.

However...DirectX 10 only works with certain video cards (but supports Vista and XP). Check here (http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/Hardware/Pages/VideoCards.aspx) for an updated list of supported cards.

Also, DirectX 10 has only been implemented for certain games. Check here (http://www.gamesforwindows.com/EN-US/ABOUTGFW/Pages/directx10-a.aspx) for an updated list of supported games.

As for how well it works with DDO, I have 64 bit Vista running on my laptop and have never had trouble running DDO since I purchased the laptop in November.

[Anduril]

I'm not really a computer guy, so I may just be confused, but being 64 bit over 32 does not let it process things faster?

Edit: Just to clarify I realize the CPU does the real processing, but I was under the impression that 64 bit would help it to process more stuff per cycle and thus be faster.

[Coldin]

Well, sorta yes, it does. But really only if the programs are made to utilize 64 bit processing. Since relatively few are, even if you do have a 64 bit operating system, everything will still be running at 32 bit.

That's the way I understand it anyway.

[Mirta]

I don't believe I've heard anything about DDO making full use of 64-bit architectures or multi-core processors. That being said, I'd stick to Windows XP 32-bit, unless you want to use more than 4GB of memory. If you have more I'd be inclined to point you to 64-bit XP, but make sure all your drivers are available for the operating system first.

As for video performance: DDO uses DX9. No use for Vista's compatibility with DX10. The performance of your graphics will rely on three things: your video card, your processor, and your RAM. One of these will always be the bottleneck. Even if you have the most uber of processors, if you don't have the fast RAM and video card you're not going anywhere. Same applies to the others. If you spend 600 bucks on the latest graphics card make sure your processor can handle it, or you'll be just as bad off as having a cheaper card.

Of course, as a Sun representative I'm obliged to point you towards Sun Solaris as an operating system... NOT!

[Coldin]

To add to Mirta's comments, while the processor, ram, and video card can all be bottlenecks, most likely your main one is going to be the video card. 2 Gigs of Ram, and your average dual core processor can handle pretty much anything, and at that point, it's more a matter of how much your graphics card can handle.

Once you do get to a certain power of graphics card, you will probably have to upgrade your ram and processors, but I don't think you're really going to be looking at that kind of power anyway. Mainly because that will probably start costing you over $2,000.

Of course, if you buy a $50 processor, and the cheapest 512 RAM, then even a $500 won't be helping you much.

[Eldamir]

i spent about $800 for a quad-core, 8gb of ram, 8800gt, a 250gb hard disk (pulled the data drive from my old one for the second), 2 sata optical drives, motherboard and case with psu a couple of months ago.

Of course, I'm still waiting for my 3 rebates to show up ... but that's a different story :)

[Coldin]

What about a monitor Eld?

[Eldamir]

nah .. no monitor .. i like my 20" lcd enough to not replace it and it was more like $850 now that i added it up again :D

[Mirta]

Oh now you can't go and get a computer like that without getting a big screen LCD as a monitor. Like a 52" or something... XD

That's a decent computer. The graphics card is more than enough to run DDO at its highest settings even though it is considered midrange nowadays. Hope you got some decent cooling too, because if you bought it as a package instead of self-assembly I'd bet you'll be running hot without even knowing it, which can cause the life of your components to shorten.

[Eldamir]

I assemble all of my computers from scratch .. my case is a CoolerMaster CM-690 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119137) with all the non-stock fan slots full of SilentX 120mm fans ..

I was able to overclock it to 3.0GHz with simple changes and with those fans, my load temperatures never top 50c (idles around 30c with normal DDO gaming putting it around 40c) - with the added benefit of not being able to hear the computer over the fishtank that's in my computer room :D

edit: the reason that I didn't upgrade to a mamoth monitor was because I was building off of a bonus check and would have caught hell if I had exceeded the budget for something that I already have one of ;)

[Vic]

i spent about $800 for a quad-core, 8gb of ram, 8800gt, a 250gb hard disk (pulled the data drive from my old one for the second), 2 sata optical drives, motherboard and case with psu a couple of months ago.
All the cool kids are doing Raid. You wanna be cool, don't cha, Eld?

Seriously though, once you've done all you want to do the big three components, hard drive speed/array is the next nice addition in my mind. Especially in a load-screen happy game like DDO.

Addt'l: Ooooh and look at all those extra HDD slots with a (120mm?) fan over them, just screaming "Please buy us some friends and setup a Raid5!"

[Mirta]

I feel like showing off so here's a pic of my rig.

Main setup:
E6600 2.4GHz
6GB RAM
7950GTOC @ 599/1600MHz
1.75TB HDD Storage

Not as up-to-date as yours, but still gets the job done. It's all nice and pretty as I do cable management as part of my job, but it's loud as hell cuz I also believe in cooling over comfort. 133CFM 120mm case fan and dual Zalman coolers on the CPU and GPU.

In the pic below: Monitor on top, computer bottom middle, external bay addon bottom left, UPS bottom right. Kinda dark cuz I turned off flash to avoid the screen reflection.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v98/Mortyrshell/img_0152.jpg

[Eldamir]

All the cool kids are doing Raid. You wanna be cool, don't cha, Eld?

Seriously though, once you've done all you want to do the big three components, hard drive speed/array is the next nice addition in my mind. Especially in a load-screen happy game like DDO.

Addt'l: Ooooh and look at all those extra HDD slots with a (120mm?) fan over them, just screaming "Please buy us some friends and setup a Raid5!"

I seriously thought about adding a 3rd drive and going RAID -- there's certainly plenty of room inside the case for it -- but the board only has 4 SATA ports (downside to going with the cheaper Gigabyte board) so I would have to buy a SATA RAID card in addition to a drive. Also, after seeing 20-second (or less) load times from the time I click 'Thelanis' to character selection, I decided that was acceptable enough to me -- it takes longer for the game to populate my inventory, guild, friends, etc. from the servers after I load in than to start the game.

oh, and all those slots are for 140mm fans :) I just went with 120's because they're much more available and I was able to get some high-flow, low-dB fans (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835191012) at a horrible price.

[Steele]

Sweet system there Mirta!