augie wrote:

You doing that with the 9500 Julian?

Doing this with a single-core Sempron LE 1250

I'll be getting myself the 9550 or the 9650 at a later date ; I'm staggering my single to quad upgrade over a period of some months...

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Main thing is though, this AM2+ mobo really ROCKS !!!!

Aah cool Julian. I did check out the board earlier, that's decent for a budget board.

LOL I seem to have completely hijacked this thread and turned it into a straightforward AM2+ mobo testing thread, but without the quad core CPU mentioned in the thread title

I've seen a lot of people complaining about the performance of games in Vista vs XP/XP x64, so I've decided to have a little test of my system, and my dinky li'l GeForce 8500, with some game demos for various DX10 and DX9 games that are out there (my limited experience with gaming in Vista is with graphics-lite strategy games mostly, and the few games that I have been playing actually work BETTER in Vista than XP/XPx64 ).

I've no joystick, so there will be some limitations to this testing, but it's getting to be frustrating not really *knowing* what people are worrying about -- anyways, it's harder to get a more Vista-friendly machine than the rig I have now, GPU limitations aside, so --- let's have a twirl

Well, been testing both DX9 and DX10 games and demos on my rig, in the XP x64 and Vista x64, and my tentative conclusion is ...

... that Vista x64 just wipes the floor with XP -- provided you have configured the Vista properly

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I have a GeForce 8500, which is hardly the most powerful beastie around, but on my current gaming config, I have ZERO issues with the DX9 stuff and ZERO issues with the DX10

I have of course installed the latest DirectX runtime components, and nVidia has just recently provided a 169.28 Beta drivers package for the card, seemingly designed for the Vista SP1

... but that is NOT enough

I configured the computer for gaming by setting minimum/maximum values for three paging files on three separate SATA hard drives of 1024 / 2048 MB

AND I plugged a 2 GB USB 2.0 flash drive into the rig, all of which I am using for ReadyBoost (NB - this is NOT possible in the Server 2k8, as it does not include the ReadyBoost feature)

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After rebooting, the gaming experience just slaughters anything I've ever seen on XP

I haven't done any benchmarks, it's just not my thing --- but unlike in the XP x64, the sound DOESN'T stutter, and the DirectX is NOT choppy, nor does it ever hang like in the XP x64

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Of course, the Vista SP1 is the real prerequisite here

Quote:

LOL I seem to have completely hijacked this thread and turned it into a straightforward AM2+ mobo testing thread, but without the quad core CPU mentioned in the thread title

No worries Julian as I'm learning quite a bit from your trials and tribulations as I'm sure others are also. I'm quite intrigued with your experiment with Vista X64 as I built this rig specifically for X64 but XP has nothing to offer me, I consider XP X64 to be a dead duck. I'm going to check to see if my periphs have Vista X64 drivers, if so I may go that route. I have a budget to look at so I can't go willy nilly into Vista X64. BTW, benchies would be nice to see.

Oh, if you want, I'll split this convo off but I see no need.

I like that AMD are finally coming up with their own motherboard chipsets

Yeah, I'm starting to think of XP x64 as a dead duck myself Algis...

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Been playing a DX10 game for a few hours, in both DX9 and DX10 modes in the V64

The DX9 version is really, really smooth --- but the eye candy in the DX10 version is yummy ; of course, the game is just an eye candy fest

The DX10 in this gaming config runs pretty well, but I am currently limited by the single core, by not enough RAM and not even dual-channel, and of course by the limitations of the GPU ; sooo, if I add any extra options to the DX10 game config beyond the DX10 options selected automatically by the game setup program, framerate can start to go a bit wonky. But it's clearly a local hardware limitation, not an OS problem...

Sound playback in the game could be improved, as it uses some default config instead of the local one.

One cool thing about the game I've been using to test the DX10 (it's Hellgate:London BTW) is that it is installed and runs in native 64-bit mode (of course, it still works in 32-bit )

The game itself is OK I suppose, although they've clearly focussed R&D resources on the gameplay and the eye candy instead of on game design per se. There's kind of a story, but it's drastically subverted by the fact that levels keep on repeating themselves just like in a first generation video game. That wouldn't matter if that's how the game presented itself ; but no, it presents itself like some kind of RPG-like Epic struggle against the Forces of Evil ... ... The game environment (including the eye candy) would be more suited to a game with more of a strategy element and less of the pseudo-RPG stuff IMO. If the game had been about progressively taking control of the London Underground instead of basically just visiting it whilst fighting zombies and demons, various more interesting tactical scenarios could have been devised and it could actually have been a lot more successful... on the plus side, a couple of the levels have been very very well designed in relation to the DX10 -- the Chocolate Park level is just so, so, soooo scary in the DX10, and it shows exactly how cool a well-designed DX10 game could be, provided the rest of the game were up to scratch.

Either scope should have been restricted IMO, or far more work should have gone into the RPG-inspired elements --- the game as it stands feels like a weird compromise, with the only real reason to perhaps buy the game being the DX10, but there are several other games I could have chosen for the test. I just chose this one for the keyboard-and-mouse interface, and no other real non-DX10-related reason...

Everything worth seeing in the game design per se is in the free demo --- BUT the free demo is 32-bit and DX9 only In other words, this is most definitely NOT the must-have game that DX10 really needs, and it is also strange that the free demo for this DX10 game is DX9 only ; I mean how can they expect people to run out at get themselves a Vista/DX10 rig without even providing real demos showing prospective customers what the DX10 is all about --- and also, what's the point of your game design per se if the whole thing can fit into a free demo you're giving people ???

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Sigh, roll on Star Wars : The Force Unleashed I guess

Hmmm the game is starting to grow on me LOL

By reducing the display size to 1024x768, I can get the full DX10 effects except for the DX10 Smoke --- oh, and for some reason it doesn't like the Surround Audio HD, so I have to keep it on stereo.

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Overclock is up to 2.74 Ghz from the stock 2.2, and still showing no signs of weakness

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This M3A AM2+ motherboard has been a good buy, and I am VERY VERY impressed with both performance and stability.

Sure, it means giving up completely on the XP 32-bit ; and even the XP x64 appears weak on this rig, and I'm thinking of just going 100% Vista --- well, at least until the Windows 7 Betas start crawling out of the woodwork

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But this motherboard shows that AMD are back in action, in a BIG way

Thanks for the game review Julian, I'll keep my money in my pocket.

Wow man, that's quite an OC you got there!