Is everyone aware of this Vista SNAFU?

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Snowdog

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Apparently Vista chews up an extra chunk of you memory allocation space that XP doesn't for the memory in your video card. The more video memory you have the more it eats your address space. Typically you only have 2GB of user space per application. When you cross the limit you crash. So not only is Vista Slower for games, you will much more likely crash especially if you have big Video memory like on a 8800 GTX.

Who knows when Microsoft will fix this one as there is speculation it is mapped this way for the latest wonderful DRM protection Vista offers. Yippee.

Nice Graphs here, but read the whole article and maybe the first one. It is quite informative. If I didn't already plan to avoid Vista, this one would seal the deal for me.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3044&p=2

"At 2.16GB with our 8800GTX on Vista versus 1.30GB on XP, the increase in address space usage is now over 40% of the default and had we not modified our memory allocations Company of Heroes would have crashed."
 
For most games, Vista unloads the aero interface when the game is running to take the load off the vid card. When you quit the game, if you had any open windows behind it, you'd notice that they'd been switched to basic and then the aero interface is reloaded once the game is no longer running.
 
Snowdog said:
Apparently Vista chews up an extra chunk of you memory allocation space that XP doesn't for the memory in your video card. The more video memory you have the more it eats your address space. Typically you only have 2GB of user space per application. When you cross the limit you crash. So not only is Vista Slower for games, you will much more likely crash especially if you have big Video memory like on a 8800 GTX.

Who knows when Microsoft will fix this one as there is speculation it is mapped this way for the latest wonderful DRM protection Vista offers. Yippee.

Nice Graphs here, but read the whole article and maybe the first one. It is quite informative. If I didn't already plan to avoid Vista, this one would seal the deal for me.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3044&p=2

"At 2.16GB with our 8800GTX on Vista versus 1.30GB on XP, the increase in address space usage is now over 40% of the default and had we not modified our memory allocations Company of Heroes would have crashed."
Click to expand...


FYI: GPU memory has always been mapped into the address space. Why do you think you can only get 2.7-3.5GB of 4GB when you running a 32bit OS? Vista just shows this mapping.
 
This issue is hardware related and due to the fact that PCI-E based video cards need to map local RAM in the system so the operating system can work with it properly. If things didn't work this way, if you had 2GB of RAM and you added a 768MB video card it could theoretically look at those you have 2.75GB of address memory space and as such it would cause headaches that I simply am not about to try and explain. :)

In other words: things are working as they should be and this has absolutely nothing to do with Vista at all. The same issue would happen with any OS running on the same hardware: it's only going to see as much as the hardware allows for use that's non-mapped from the video card.
 
Did anyone actually read the article?

The extra address space is only eaten up under Vista.
They only had the crashes at limit under Vista.
 
Snowdog said:
Did anyone actually read the article?

The extra address space is only eaten up under Vista.
They only had the crashes at limit under Vista.
Click to expand...

Yes I read the article. And I say again, GPU"s have always eaten up address space, Vista for whatever reason just shows you that it's being allocated.
 
ryan_975 said:
Yes I read the article. And I say again, GPU"s have always eaten up address space, Vista for whatever reason just shows you that it's being allocated.
Click to expand...

If it was just the case of visibility, games wouldn't crash when they crossed the "imaginary barrier" in Vista like they do.

There is a real difference here. They couldn't get the games to crash in XP at all because they couldn't get the memory usage that high.

"Appropriately, the difference in address space usage was the reason that Supreme Commander would not crash under XP like it would under Vista. Address space usage peaked at 2.1GB, which while in excess of the default 2GB barrier is below the 2.6GB mark where it crashed under Vista. Even a slight reduction in address space usage here would have kept the game from hitting the 2GB barrier at all, avoiding the whole can of worms that is modifying the user address space allocations."

If it quacks like a duck, it is a duck. In Vista crashes when it runs out of address space, therefore it really is running out of address space. It is not just a difference in appearance/reporting.
 
Snowdog said:
If it was just the case of visibility, games wouldn't crash when they crossed the "imaginary barrier" in Vista like they do.

There is a real difference here. They couldn't get the games to crash in XP at all because they couldn't get the memory usage that high.

If it quacks like a duck, it is a duck. In Vista crashes when it runs out of address space, therefore it really is running out of address space.
Click to expand...

Maybe it's the way Vista is handling that visibility. or maybe it's something entirely different. I mean, if was as big of a problem as they're making it out to be then this forum would be flooded with people complaining about it. There are a lot of people with 8800GTX's and running Vista, and yet this is the first I've heard of it.
 
I think it is something that needs more investigation. Bear in mind that it takes an exceptionally big game of SupCom to cross the barrier (giant map, multi-players).

Often people get into a big scenario like that and just blame the crash on system heating a random bug somewhere. Etc... I think there have been a lot of reported crashes of SupCom.

These guys investigated till they found a reproducible reason.

I also don't think video cards are directly memory mapped, they have a mapped window for transfer, but memory mapping the whole card is extremely wasteful of limited address space.

The AT guys also found a possible reason why MS did this, forcing every application to only access memory in it's own addressing space even when accessing the video card: More stringent DRM. Which is a crappy reason to chew up addressing space. If this is true a fix will be a long time coming, maybe never.

A quick search found mention of this problem on GPG forums:
http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=2382
 
Snowdog said:
The AT guys also found a possible reason why MS did this, forcing every application to only access memory in it's own addressing space even when accessing the video card: More stringent DRM. Which is a crappy reason to chew up addressing space. If this is true a fix will be a long time coming, maybe never.
Click to expand...

Errr.. has nothing to do with DRM but everything to OS/program protection. Every application should be written to behave that way. Remember the days of w95/98, early w2k/XP when drivers, apps and games would BSOD because they would try to use memory already in use by the OS or another app. And don't forget a lot of virus/trojans were written to exploit just that behaviour. As for a fix, like XP, it might take til service pack 1 or 2 to get Vista to be a totally solid OS.
 
Snowdog said:
If I didn't already plan to avoid Vista, this one would seal the deal for me.
Click to expand...
Don't you think people are getting tired of these attempts to bash Vista? If you don't want to run Vista, then don't...simple as that. There's no need to drudge up some article in an attempt to start a thread that will only end poorly. Common sense should be applied here.

As for the actual content of the article, don't you think you'd be finding more and more people complaining about this issue? For the amount of people using SLI cards who also play games on here and other forums, don't you think there'd be some major contention on this issue by now?

I think it's time you start using logic rather than believing everything you here and making decisions on your OS upgrades on one article. Anytime I said RAID0 was over-hyped and worthless, then linked the AT article that said so, all I ever heard back was how one article proves nothing, and I'm an idiot for putting too much stock in one article. Oh, and that the article was wrong because RAID0 "felt" faster.
 
ryan_975 said:
FYI: GPU memory has always been mapped into the address space. Why do you think you can only get 2.7-3.5GB of 4GB when you running a 32bit OS? Vista just shows this mapping.
Click to expand...
Actually it's just the opposite. System memory is reserved and mapped to the video card's address space. This allows the video card to have more addressable memory than it physically has.
 
djnes said:
Don't you think people are getting tired of these attempts to bash Vista? If you don't want to run Vista, then don't...simple as that. There's no need to drudge up some article in an attempt to start a thread that will only end poorly. Common sense should be applied here.

As for the actual content of the article, don't you think you'd be finding more and more people complaining about this issue? For the amount of people using SLI cards who also play games on here and other forums, don't you think there'd be some major contention on this issue by now?

I think it's time you start using logic rather than believing everything you here and making decisions on your OS upgrades on one article. Anytime I said RAID0 was over-hyped and worthless, then linked the AT article that said so, all I ever heard back was how one article proves nothing, and I'm an idiot for putting too much stock in one article. Oh, and that the article was wrong because RAID0 "felt" faster.
Click to expand...

I swore I'd stay out of here because I don't need to get banned for getting involved in an argument.

However, I have to ask... how is him bringing attention to an article 'attempting to bash Vista'? Why don't you just take it for what it is and stop getting your panties in a twist. It's relevant information for people who may be considering buying Vista, or an 8800GTX even.
 
How is it? Easy. It's "bashing" because the article is inane and the only reason given for mentioning it is to suggest that it's evidence of a flawed platform which is to be avoided.

Fact is, though, that it's not evidence of any such thing. At worst, it's evidence that Vista doesn't accomodate crazy users as well as XP did, but that's all!

Windows, in all its guises, has long been able to accomodate activities which require more RAM than is actually present in the system. That's fine for scenarios where the completion of a task isn't really time-critical. In such scenarios we can kick off a task then come back to the results when it's done. But when the completion of the task has urgency involved, it's ALWAYS been more sensible to throw more hardware resources at it. More RAM, in other words. And, once we reached that point where applications were demanding 2Gb and more of system memory in their own right, irrespective of other hardware demands, we also had to make the choice whether or not to move to the 64-bit OS platform rather than remain with the 32-bit platform. If the application was becoming 'cramped' for pure calculations, and not making heavy demands on other hardware, then we could quite possibly get away with simply using the /3G switch to allocate more of the 4Gb limit to applications. If we needed 'more' for both the application and the hardware component interaction we'd be better moving to the 64-bit environment to accomodate needs.

Here, in the Anadtech article, we have the inane scenario posited. A demanding video game pushed to extreme levels of demand. Demand which is placed upon both the graphics resources and the system's capacity for performing calculations. A level of demand to which the ONLY sensible response is to decide to throw 4Gb of RAM at the thing and run it under a 64-bit environment!

Instead, we have Anandtech playing ridiculous mind games with its readers, cramming that demanding task into 2Gb of RAM and running it under 32-bit Windows. And, rather than responsibly pointing out that the hardware resources are inadequate to the task, we see an article which is seeking to claim that one OS version is 'better' than the other on the basis that it handles that inane activity 'less badly' than the other. The game is going to run like shit under BOTH platforms in this situation, so what's the point?

Am I going to ditch an OS platform on the basis that it's less forgiving toward morons? Nope, not at all. I'm gonna throw enough resources at my applications instead, and try to avoid being a moron!
 
Catweazle said:
And, rather than responsibly pointing out that the hardware resources are inadequate to the task, we see an article which is seeking to claim that one OS version is 'better' than the other on the basis that it handles that inane activity 'less badly' than the other.
Click to expand...

Unless I missed something in the article, there appear to be no claims about which OS is "better" as you put it. If you're going to draw that as the conclusion then you only have yourself to blame.

As it stands, it is an article comparing memory usage in the two OSes. It makes conclusions about the respective memory consumption, but not about anything else. If the methodology is flawed, or the data is falsified, then I can understand how one might take issue with it, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
 
Snowdog said:
Did anyone actually read the article?

The extra address space is only eaten up under Vista.
They only had the crashes at limit under Vista.
Click to expand...

Yep, even saw this on the next page:

The address space usage on XP is significantly lighter than Vista, making the situation far less dire. Instead of having to resort to any of the solutions we outlined in part 1, the majority of XP users should be able to get away with not needing to take any action at all, at least for the next few months. The 2GB barrier still exists and still will be a problem, but ideally by the time the situation is as bad on XP as it is on Vista today, we'll have a solution to this address space issue from Microsoft, along with a clearer path on the migration to 64bit.
Click to expand...

Looks like XP has the same fundamental problem as Vista in this regard, but under Vista you're more like to run across it
 
jimmyb said:
As it stands, it is an article comparing memory usage in the two OSes. It makes conclusions about the respective memory consumption, but not about anything else.
Click to expand...

Beg to differ.

The initial article in that 'series' of two makes clear statement in its introduction:
Except in a few cases where 64-bit code is clearly faster, the primary purpose for Vista x64's existence is to resolve the problems of 32-bit addressing space, and we're just not at the point yet where even most enthusiasts are pushing that limit. Once applications begin to push the 2GB addressing space limitation of Win32 (something we expect to hit very soon with games) or total systems need more than 4GB of RAM, then Vista x64 in its current incarnation would be a good choice.
Click to expand...
The direction given there is clear. The 2G barrier has been identified, and the clear recommendation given that people encountering the barrier are best advised to move to Vista x64 which, while not a perfect solution, is the best available. That initial article goes on to expand and explain. The unfortunate thing, though, is that after that initial sensible advice is provided the author goes on to solely concentrate on performance within the 32-bit environment. It's as if the author has assumed that, doespite moving to the 64-bit platform being the sensible thing to do in this scenario, nobody will actually do so.

It becomes more so in the second article, where all reference to the 64-bit platform alternative has been omitted, other than a vague reference in the conclusions section which seeks to give the impression that migrating to 64-bit Windows is somehow prohibitively difficult. That second article makes contrast between the two successive versions of Windows, with claims which are expansive and inclusive.

As far as Windows Vista is concerned, all of this weighs heavily on a fledgling operating system that many people are waiting to get its first service pack before trying. While the performance problems we saw earlier this year with Vista have largely cleared up, now it seems there's a definite issue with address space usage in conjunction with applications that make heavy use of a video card (e.g. games). In turn, it's hard to understate the situation, since hitting the 2GB barrier typically results in crashing.

The situation isn't entirely unmanageable, but the number of questions left is uncomfortably larger than the number of answers provided so far. The problem can be solved by users in several ways we've outlined in part 1 of this series, but none of these solutions are truly satisfactory. The real solution is going to have to come from Microsoft, who thankfully is aware of the problem and we presume we'll be hearing about a solution from them sooner than later. In the mean time however serious gamers will want to take a critical look at Vista if they are currently using it or are thinking about switching to it. This isn't a severe problem with so few serious gamers currently on Vista, but it may be best to hold off on switching to Vista until Microsoft has the issue sorted out.
Click to expand...


I stand by the comments made.
 
pigster said:
..Looks like XP has the same fundamental problem as Vista in this regard, but under Vista you're more like to run across it
Click to expand...
Earlier Windows versions (32-bit) had the same fundamental 'problem' also, but we were more likely to run across it when using XP. Why? Because those earlier versions had their heyday back when we weren't using such 'chunky' hardware and software! Back then the matter was purely academic, rather than one of practical choice. A 32-bit OS platform was all that was needed. Now that the scenario has become one of practical concern for a lot of people, the situation isn't really one of deciding which 'version' handles the problem less badly. Instead, it's a simple decision to not use the 32-bit platform if the 32-bit platform is now proving inadequate to user needs.
 
Catweazle said:
How is it? Easy. It's "bashing" because the article is inane and the only reason given for mentioning it is to suggest that it's evidence of a flawed platform which is to be avoided.

Am I going to ditch an OS platform on the basis that it's less forgiving toward morons? Nope, not at all. I'm gonna throw enough resources at my applications instead, and try to avoid being a moron!
Click to expand...

It is sad that everyone has to get out their fanboy hats and go into defensive mode rather than take the time to read and perhaps more importantly comprehend the article. There is definitely something going on here that bears investigation. There is nothing inane about the article. It is completely straightforward discovery of an issue and ongoing investigation.

To call people morons because they like to skirmish on Supreme Commander or play a game of Company of Heros is not the answer. Neither is a running 64 bit Vista, because unless you have 64 bit games you have the same 32bit addressing limits. Maybe in a couple of year this will be an answer, but not today.

Think about the scale of the difference here, Address Space usage in Company of Heros, with 8800 GTX:

Windows XP: 1.3 GB
Windows Vista: 2.2 GB

This is a hugely significant difference, to pretend this is nothing is the true inanity. It is exhausting nearly half the user address space for no gain in Vista.

Again reading and comprehending the article would go a long way toward realizing that /3G switch is not a panacea. There were only able to get to 2.6GB user space when the attempted to move the boundary.

I would really like the see the HardOCP crew investigate this as a second source of info on this.

pigster said:
Yep, even saw this on the next page:
Looks like XP has the same fundamental problem as Vista in this regard, but under Vista you're more like to run across it
Click to expand...

Both Vista and XP (and so do 64 bit versions when using 32 bit apps/games) have the same 4GB addressing range, and default 2GB limit. ONLY Vista devours nearly an extra 1GB of that space when you using a big memory video card. See above in Red. If you mean more likely in Vista as very likely in Vista and just about impossible in XP, yes that is the only difference, but it is a critical one.
 
Catweazle said:
It becomes more so in the second article, where all reference to the 64-bit platform alternative has been omitted, other than a vague reference in the conclusions section which seeks to give the impression that migrating to 64-bit Windows is somehow prohibitively difficult. That second article makes contrast between the two successive versions of Windows, with claims which are expansive and inclusive.
Click to expand...
The issue is one that obviously only affects 32 bit systems. It would be rather inane to do a comprehensive benchmark of a system which is unaffected by the issue that the article is trying to examine. Especially after quite correctly noting at the beginning that the 64 bit OS is a solution to the problem.

There was some very interesting information conveyed in the article regarding memory usage characteristics of the OSes. I'm quite happy when I learn something new.

The conclusion that I drew from the article (and the one actually stated in it), was that Vista uses more address space than XP. If you want coax other conclusions out of insinuations that the author supposedly made, that is entirely up to you, but it's a stretch to claim that it is "bashing".
 
Snowdog said:
It is sad that everyone has to get out their fanboy hats and go into defensive mode rather than take the time to read and perhaps more importantly comprehend the article. There is definitely something going on here that bears investigation. There is nothing inane about the article. It is completely straightforward discovery of an issue and ongoing investigation.
Click to expand...
It's not fanboism and defensiveness at all, Snowdog. The simple fact is that the pair of articles wholly and solely cram that too-demanding software task onto a machine which is restricted to 2Gb of physical system memory!

The commonsense is clear:

  • Throw more system memory at the rig, and the OS platform which handles it better or..
  • Don't run tasks which make your machine shit itself!

Are we still left with problems when running 32-bit software under a 64-bit environment? Yes, of course we are. Does the 64-bit environment (and more system memory) improve the situation more for us? Yes, of course it does. Would 'improvements' to that 64-bit platform overcome the problem? No, not at all!

Isn't the problem here really that the developers of "Supreme Commander" didn't make also suited to the 64-bit platform, for those users who push it's capabilities to the limit?
 
Catweazle said:
Isn't the problem here really that the developers of "Supreme Commander" didn't make also suited to the 64-bit platform, for thise users who push it's capabilities to the limit?
Click to expand...
That certainly is a problem, but that's not what the article is about.

You seem really ardent about finding negative interpretations to the article. The data presented was truthful, and they don't make any conclusions about either OS being "better".

Nobody is suggesting that a 64 bit addressing isn't the best solution. It quite clearly is. The fact that this article is not about how great 64 bit is doesn't make it "bashing". It's examining a different issue.
 
pxc said:
I use Vista x64, so no 2GB/process limitation here. :cool:
Click to expand...

i just read the entire thread, and thats all i can say as well.


honestly, why wouldnt you use x64? 32bit apps work jsut as well, it doesnt cost any extra money for the 64 bit verison (32bit oem serial numbers work on x64.. so x86/x64 doesnt matter at all) and as we progress things will continue to go towards x64.

the few driver issues there are will be cleared up by sp1/newer releases in just a few months so why cry about using 32bit memory addressing? just switch already, if you were smart you would have know be were coming close to the barrier of 32bit memory addressing awhile ago

and once people actually start migrating to x64, more developers will take that into consideration and produce 64-bit compatible games. SupCom is a perfect example of that, why do weeks of extra work making the x64 bit verison if there are only a select few people running x64
 
Catweazle said:
It's not fanboism and defensiveness at all, Snowdog. The simple fact is that the pair of articles wholly and solely cram that too-demanding software task onto a machine which is restricted to 2Gb of physical system memory!

The commonsense is clear:

Throw more system memory at the rig, and the OS platform which handles it better or..
Click to expand...

This is NOT a system/physical memory issue. It is an addressing space issue. Do you understand the difference? The amount of Physical memory in the machine is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Addressing space is 4GB whether you have 256MB of physical memory or 4GB of physical memory, you still have the same addressing range. You get 2GB of user space in either case as well.


Don't run tasks which make your machine shit itself!
Click to expand...
Apparently it is Vista that makes the machine Shit itself. It is the extra 1GB of address space gobbled up by Vista (for nothing) that is causing the problem. They were unable to crash Supreme Commander under XP. This is either a bug or an incredibly bad security decision to waste all that addressing space on the video card. This might be a reasonable decision under a full 64bit system, but under a 32bit system or even a hybrid system it is mind bogglingly bad decision or Bug. I am having a hard time believing something so fundamentally broken headed might have been done on purpose. The scale of the screwup is enormous we are talking about the potential for Vista to chew up 25% of the of the full 32 bit addressing range needlessly, or 50% of the typical user address space. That is ludicrous.

That is why I would like to see more investigation/confirmation by [H].
 
If there was a problem with the thread from the first post, I would have closed it already. Don't make this thread a problem.
 
jimmyb said:
That certainly is a problem, but that's not what the article is about.

You seem really ardent about finding negative interpretations to the article. The data presented was truthful, and they don't make any conclusions about either OS being "better".

Nobody is suggesting that a 64 bit addressing isn't the best solution. It quite clearly is. The fact that this article is not about how great 64 bit is doesn't make it "bashing". It's examining a different issue.
Click to expand...
I don't need to be "ardent", jimmyb. It sticks out like dog's balls!

Let's say we have a scenario where a supertanker is stuck on a sandbar. In the vicinity there are a couple of aluminium 'tinnies', one equipped with a 10hp outboard motor and the other with a 15hp outboard, and a tug boat. One tow rope. What do we think of people who'd sit there arguing which of the tinnies would be best to hook up to that tow rope? Dopey, is what!

You don't think the articles are comparing one Windows version to the other? Then why even bother producing the subsequent article, which solely concentrates on comparitive performance? And why has Snowdog, right from the initial post, put the matter forward as evidence to justify the position that "If I didn't already plan to avoid Vista, this one would seal the deal for me."


I'm not even arguing one way or another here. I'm simply saying that, if there's a supertanker to be pulled off a sandbar, compare me tugboats, not tinnies! You're wasting my time and insulting my intelligence otherwise!
 
Snowdog said:
If you mean more likely in Vista as very likely in Vista and just about impossible in XP, yes that is the only difference, but it is a critical one.
Click to expand...

Critical? I suppose if plan on staying with 32 bit Vista and playing those two games it's a really big deal, but for most of us it's just an annoyance that will eventually mean nothing.
 
Catweazle said:
How is it? Easy. It's "bashing" because the article is inane and the only reason given for mentioning it is to suggest that it's evidence of a flawed platform which is to be avoided.

Fact is, though, that it's not evidence of any such thing. At worst, it's evidence that Vista doesn't accomodate crazy users as well as XP did, but that's all!

Windows, in all its guises, has long been able to accomodate activities which require more RAM than is actually present in the system. That's fine for scenarios where the completion of a task isn't really time-critical. In such scenarios we can kick off a task then come back to the results when it's done. But when the completion of the task has urgency involved, it's ALWAYS been more sensible to throw more hardware resources at it. More RAM, in other words. And, once we reached that point where applications were demanding 2Gb and more of system memory in their own right, irrespective of other hardware demands, we also had to make the choice whether or not to move to the 64-bit OS platform rather than remain with the 32-bit platform. If the application was becoming 'cramped' for pure calculations, and not making heavy demands on other hardware, then we could quite possibly get away with simply using the /3G switch to allocate more of the 4Gb limit to applications. If we needed 'more' for both the application and the hardware component interaction we'd be better moving to the 64-bit environment to accomodate needs.

Here, in the Anadtech article, we have the inane scenario posited. A demanding video game pushed to extreme levels of demand. Demand which is placed upon both the graphics resources and the system's capacity for performing calculations. A level of demand to which the ONLY sensible response is to decide to throw 4Gb of RAM at the thing and run it under a 64-bit environment!

Instead, we have Anandtech playing ridiculous mind games with its readers, cramming that demanding task into 2Gb of RAM and running it under 32-bit Windows. And, rather than responsibly pointing out that the hardware resources are inadequate to the task, we see an article which is seeking to claim that one OS version is 'better' than the other on the basis that it handles that inane activity 'less badly' than the other. The game is going to run like shit under BOTH platforms in this situation, so what's the point?

Am I going to ditch an OS platform on the basis that it's less forgiving toward morons? Nope, not at all. I'm gonna throw enough resources at my applications instead, and try to avoid being a moron!
Click to expand...

While I agree somewhat with the premise of your argument (that the situation is extreme, and that most people encountering such a situation would just upgrade to 64-bit and 4gb), it still stands to reason that there's a lot of people out there considering buying computers that come with 32-bit Vista OEM pre-installed. There's a lot of people out there just buying 32-bit Vista, for whatever reason. This information is worth covering, if only to bring it to these people's attention that they may want to consider ponying up for the 64-bit version if it's retail and they intend to use their license key on a future computer, or if it's on an OEM computer and they intend to install a new graphics card in the next 3 years or so (since midrange cards will be coming with the same amount of memory in a year or two).
 
Catweazle said:
I'm not even arguing one way or another here. I'm simply saying that, if there's a supertanker to be pulled off a sandbar, compare me tugboats, not tinnies! You're wasting my time and insulting my intelligence otherwise!
Click to expand...
Maybe you think the article doesn't adequately address finding a solution to the issue at hand (that being the amount of addressable memory), but that in no way qualifies it as "bashing" as you originally stated.

Research papers often provide data on a subject, and make no attempt at providing a solution. Nonetheless that research can be both interesting and valuable to the reader. In this case, the author clearly mentions that full 64 bit support alleviates the issue. He then goes onto a more detailed analysis of the 32 bit systems where the problem actually manifests itself. I find it very hard to see how you find a fair comparison of two systems "bashing", particularly when he mentions the solution you seem to be advocating (as I am too).

Many people are interested in seeing the differences of two OS's memory management just for the sake of understanding. That was certainly the case for me. The article does a decent job at illustrating some of that behaviour without making any bold conclusions about which OS is "better".

Anyway, I think I understand the points you are trying to make, but I wholeheartedly disagree, and I think I've made myself fairly clear as well, so I'll just leave it at that...
 
Snowdog said:
If it was just the case of visibility, games wouldn't crash when they crossed the "imaginary barrier" in Vista like they do.

There is a real difference here. They couldn't get the games to crash in XP at all because they couldn't get the memory usage that high.

"Appropriately, the difference in address space usage was the reason that Supreme Commander would not crash under XP like it would under Vista. Address space usage peaked at 2.1GB, which while in excess of the default 2GB barrier is below the 2.6GB mark where it crashed under Vista. Even a slight reduction in address space usage here would have kept the game from hitting the 2GB barrier at all, avoiding the whole can of worms that is modifying the user address space allocations."

If it quacks like a duck, it is a duck. In Vista crashes when it runs out of address space, therefore it really is running out of address space. It is not just a difference in appearance/reporting.
Click to expand...

sorry to break it to you, but Supreme comander crashedf or me in xp too ^^ only after the memory usage crossed a certain limit

and every memory you have, videocard, sound card ram? w/e will take up address space period, because 32bits can only generate 4096 MB of addresses, no matter where they come from, a memory address is a memory address is a memory address :p
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
sorry to break it to you, but Supreme comander crashedf or me in xp too ^^ only after the memory usage crossed a certain limit

and every memory you have, videocard, sound card ram? w/e will take up address space period, because 32bits can only generate 4096 MB of addresses, no matter where they come from, a memory address is a memory address is a memory address :p
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Again, Reading and comprehension.

First and foremost: No the video card memory DOES NOT take up address space in XP, that is the whole point of the article, it takes up address space in Vista, up to a an extra GB of wasted address space either through Bug or Through short sighted design.

It doesn't make it impossible to run out address space in XP but it makes it much more resistant. Note they were were running on a system with the user address space expanded as much as possible, with XP they couldn't crash on Vista they could. If they had been running on default they probably could have crashed on XP, but then Vista would crash MUCH sooner.

XP and Vista are essentially the and have the same addressing limits, but with XP you can save up to 1GB of address space depending on video card used. 1GB is a lot when you total addressing space is 4GB and user space is only 2GB-3GB. With vista you throw away 33% to 50% of the user address range. This is not minor, it is a huge amount.

I am not suggesting people abandon Vista, but if you have XP I wouldn't rush to upgrade, and you have Vista look for a Microsoft fix on this. Again reading the article indicates that Microsoft may be aware of and are working on the issue.
 
Monkey God said:
That article has a number of flaws in it, especially with regards to Supreme Commander.
This is odd, because in article 1, they specifically talk about it, with links to all the gory details.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3034&p=4
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What specific flaws?
Article 1, is discovery/investigation of problem and workaround to deal with it. There is a lot of detail specific to Sup Commander.

Article 2, was prompted by readers who wanted to see what happened under XP, this led to the surprising discovery that Vista actually burns up to an extra 1GB of address space making the problem MUCH worse than it is under XP. Note it also asks that you read article 1, for background, rather than repeat that article. But mainly it concentrates on differences between Vista/XP and now uses other games as well, not just Sup Com.

This second part is big issue that I hadn't seen anything about before and something people with Vista and large VRam cards need to be aware of.
 
Snowdog said:
Again, Reading and comprehension.

First and foremost: No the video card memory DOES NOT take up address space in XP, that is the whole point of the article, it takes up address space in Vista, up to a an extra GB of wasted address space either through Bug or Through short sighted design.

It doesn't make it impossible to run out address space in XP but it makes it much more resistant. Note they were were running on a system with the user address space expanded as much as possible, with XP they couldn't crash on Vista they could. If they had been running on default they probably could have crashed on XP, but then Vista would crash MUCH sooner.

XP and Vista are essentially the and have the same addressing limits, but with XP you can save up to 1GB of address space depending on video card used. 1GB is a lot when you total addressing space is 4GB and user space is only 2GB-3GB. With vista you throw away 33% to 50% of the user address range. This is not minor, it is a huge amount.

I am not suggesting people abandon Vista, but if you have XP I wouldn't rush to upgrade, and you have Vista look for a Microsoft fix on this. Again reading the article indicates that Microsoft may be aware of and are working on the issue.
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Why does this have any effect, just move to 64-bit if you so badly need to play SupCom and stop whining
 
so why does win xp 32 bit, only display 3~ish GB of memory if you have 4?

my point coming from a programming POV is that mem addresses are limited to 32bits, when addressing memory on a videocard, the OS is still 32bit, and has only so much mem addresses left.
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
so why does win xp 32 bit, only display 3~ish GB of memory if you have 4?

my point coming from a programming POV is that mem addresses are limited to 32bits, when addressing memory on a videocard, the OS is still 32bit, and has only so much mem addresses left.
Click to expand...

4GB is split between User and Kernal. User max is 3GB. Again; This problem is nothing to do with installed memory. It is the addressing range.

Of that maximum 3GB of user range. You will lose an EXTRA block of it in Vista. That loss can be as high as a 1GB depending on graphics card. The graphic card loss only happens in Vista.

And for those incapable of reading. It is just not just a Supreme Commander problem, they would have crashed Company of heros as well if the barrier wasn't moved. More testing would probably find more games that will break as well.

Moving the barrier also tended to cause system instability and more BSOD problems so this is not a great solution. In an unmodified system that barrier is 2GB. Give up another 1GB to Vista and you have only 1GB left for the user address space. A lot more stuff will potentially crash.
 
Snowdog said:
4GB is split between User and Kernal. User max is 3GB. Again; This problem is nothing to do with installed memory. It is the addressing range.

Of that maximum 3GB of user range. You will lose an EXTRA block of it in Vista. That loss can be as high as a 1GB depending on graphics card. The graphic card loss only happens in Vista.

And for those incapable of reading. It is just not just a Supreme Commander problem, they would have crashed Company of heros as well if the barrier wasn't moved. More testing would probably find more games that will break as well.

Moving the barrier also tended to cause system instability and more BSOD problems so this is not a great solution. In an unmodified system that barrier is 2GB. Give up another 1GB to Vista and you have only 1GB left for the user address space. A lot more stuff will potentially crash.
Click to expand...


Alright, thought the article isn't too technical, for vista, can you not make a program/game easily aware of 2gb +?
 
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