The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

There's plenty of old games that don't work even in XP unfortunately. Remember XP marked the move from separate consumer/business versions of windows (95/NT4, 98/2000) to a single conjoined version (XP Home/Pro) built on the NT (Business) model, thank goodness. Net result of this is all the games that were incompatible with NT were also incompatible with XP, along with a good few more. The more recently released or better supported titles got patches, for everything else, you needed to keep 98 lying around. Of course, you could have kept Me instead, if you were a masochist

 

I don't mind working with XP, but there has long ceased to be a real performance or compatibility difference between the two. Win 7 is generally a lot faster and better to use IMO.

 

Being in IT I work with XP regularly. It's a bit nostalgic, and I still like the cleaner, less muddled interface, but then I sit down and realise all the PCs running it are old, and thus slow, and it annoys me. Then I remember all the features it hasn't got that W7 has, and that annoys me further. Having an XP virtual machine on my PC is handy, but I wouldn't want to go back to using XP every day as a main work machine. I stuck with XP through most of the Vista era, and on all other PCs but the main gaming PC until 7 retail arrived, but even the latter is over 4 years ago. It was only 4 1/2 years when a seemingly 'very old' 98 PC got replaced with an XP one in this house, and again, that was when XP had been out for considerable time, as the PC came with SP1 installed.

 

Yes, exactly! LOL!!!

 

I was always rather fond of XP for the same reasons. But yes, the features it lacks become pretty apparent quickly as you try to do daily tasks with it.

I tried Vista a few times, but was never satisfied with its interface or the fact that it meant an instant drop in games performance. One of my friends has purposely flopped back and forth between 7 and Vista so he's familiar with it for work. Apparently, Vista has gotten a large wave of patching since Win 7 came out, and many of the largest functionality and speed issues have been reduced or eliminated.

 

I would never go back to Vista, there's no need. Vista 'done properly' is basically what 7 is. However, my hand was forced as at the time I ventured into Quad-CF, the Win7 RC wasn't out, and I wasn't going to try a Beta version of Windows after seeing what retail Vista was like - so Vista it was since XP didn't support over 2 GPUs. By the time I switched back to 2, it was 2011 and Win7 was well established on all but one of my PCs (the latter kept specifically for hardware XP requirements, it's rarely used).

 

Yeah once I used Windows 7 and realized how good it was, most of the machines I work on and use were quickly switched over. I still keep XP installed on my filebox for certain software and games functionality, but 99% of the time it'll be 7 x64 Pro for everything.

I still await eagerly for Windows 8.2

I have no issue going to a new version of Windows, especially considering it's basically streamlined Win 7 under the hood. Get rid of that awful UI that you can't avoid, and it should be a very nice OS. The actual performance is really nice, and it shows improvements for many different softwares, procedures and tasks. I have been sorely tempted to switch over already, but the underlying Metro UI being forced into everything has kept me away. I simply cannot stand it. Even with Classic Shell, it's still unavoidable at times. Really frustrating as all the functions are still there in verbatim, but require an extra layer of navigation for anything, period. It's just plain unnecessary for the cartoony UI to be there. None of it makes contextual sense as well, so navigating to basic things becomes a guessing game at what the UI is actually telling you.

My PC is not a smartphone, Microsoft, get it through your thick skulls. PC sales are dropping in percentage of market share due to new technologies being available, not dying out. Also, I did not build and overclock a $1500 tablet...

 

Even using things like Outlook, Word and Excel you realise how anti-consumer Microsoft has become. If a feature is giving their software development team a hard time, they remove it. Simple as that. Eventually there will come a time when it gets so much a problem that some other company will end up taking over. Dunno who it'll end up being though

 

I haven't used Microsoft Office software for years. Third party everything. Thunderbird for email especially. Very nice. I do have a hotmail account as my main email address. The only thing to be halfway reliable, and not tied to a service.

If they can make a basically good OS, I'll use it. In the case of 8.2, removing the Metro UI will be the best move they have made in a long time. I don't care about the Microsoft monopoly if their software doesn't suck. Windows 7 is fantastic. Probably their best release ever. Windows 8 is decidedly one of their worst.

 

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

Hmmm. That does give me pause. Viruses shmiruses - I have had windows update turned off for years - Kaspersky protects me - lol.

In Daryl's case he has an older laptop with a not-too-speedy processor. I could clearly see the same YouTube video dropping more frames in W7 than in XP. But I did not look at the stats to get the exact count - I might do that some time for the fun of it. Yes, it could be flash.

Myself, on my gaming rig where I hardly ever boot to the smaller xp disk drive anymore, when I first got Windows 7, I saw my frame rates, on my converter benchmark, drop from 518 with XP to 508 in Windows 7 - a pretty minor 0.2% difference - which my brother characterized as "essentially no loss in speed for all the advantages of Windows 7" - but when he said that, I was thinking, "What advantages?"

He feels that same about it as you guys. For example, he loves the windows 7 search built into every folder - he uses it all the time in his work. I almost never use search, and I have had search indexing turned off on all drives for years - he said I am nuts to do that because it's a quick index for each new file, and then never again on that file. He's probably right - I was just always wary about any background tasks.

What do you guys think about the auto indexing?

Anyway, this feedback suggests that maybe I should just leave things as they are, in which case all my research invested in studying XP Mode would turn out to be time well spent. Like I say, XP Mode is PDG (pretty damn good!)

By the way, I found out how to bridge connections (rather than NAT which is the default option) within XP Mode which causes the virtual machine to use the same ethernet controller as the host, and thusly to appear on the network as a fully separate computer. This allows me to communicate from within XP mode directly to a network printer the same as I do from another XP machine. So I did finally get that working. The computer is so fast that XP Mode will still probably be faster than XP is on my present desktop. And for some reason it tickles me to have a little virtual xp machine, waiting for me whenever I need it. I just hope that an additional 10 years of de-bugging have fixed the problems I had with running virtual 98 under XP - which was great until the virtual machine wouldn't open one day - that happened twice!

If it happens now I will hunt all of you down and send you to live in Canada.

Yes, Kevin, there are some great w98 games, like the one that was featured on the w98 disk, the space marine game called Outwars from Microsoft (I still have the game demo - should I put it on my ftp site so you can download it?) that had jet packs, and it also had hang gliders that you could shoot from, which glided for a really long time - and you could play in LAN mode. One time I had my assistant and his sister and I in my office playing on 3 w98 machines, the fastest being 400 mhz.





Not to mention, Monster Truck Madness. I still have the steering wheel and brakes and gas pedal for that game - incredible fun - again in Lan mode with 3 slow w98 computers, accelerated on 3dfx cards, at Fernie's 10th birthday party (he's 19 now)!!!





DDP knows what I'm talking about. What else do they have to do up there in those frigid conditions, but to play video games, including the w98 ones that the rest of us binned a decade ago?

Rich

 

Thanks for thinking of me Rich, but I'm really not much of a gamer. I like some GTA IV(and probably GTA V), but that's about it at the moment.

I figured you canadians sat around a fire, singing kumbaya lol.
I could see playing with certain types of models. Probably star trek models

 

Congratulations on your strong showing in that rocket contest. My last name is Estes and I have always had some curiosity about the company Estes Rockets, which apparently is pretty big for that kind of hobby here in the states. It sounds interesting!

Back to models - I remember, ddp, that you didn't want to post any pictures of your model warships, because you hadn't finished one yet. But that was about two years ago, so surely you have at least one of them completed and painted by now. Any chance we can get a photo?

Rich

 

You do realise there are free third party tools to virtualise windows right? VMWare Player and Virtualbox for example.
Man, I remember Monster Truck Madness, it was old when I played it at about 13, and I'm 25 now

 

Just had a good weekend grinding experience points in War Thunder. Excellent promo deal going on where you can win a usually paid aircraft for free by completing a predefined set of objectives. In this particular case, you needed to get 200 combined air to air kills in any American P-63 Kingcobra, German BF109, or any of their variants.

Completing the challenge wins you a lend-lease Russian P-63 Kingcobra. It is very similar to the American variants required to earn the prize with some minor customizations.

The P-63 itself is a very capable fighter plane with a 37mm anti-tank cannon in the nose and 4 .50 cal Browning M2 machine guns in the wings. Two on each wing. Used an unusual mid-engine configuration that made for weird handling characteristics but allowed room for the large cannon in the nose. It was great for bomber interception due to its extremely heavy armament, and was faster than most Germans ME109s until later in the war when it finally became outclassed.

The Russians liked the plane because they were cheap, maintenance-friendly, and pretty easy to fly if you could avoid going into a flat spin from the weird weight distribution. The cannon was also welcome, because it was one of their few truly fast planes with the proper armament to whack high altitude bombers. Russian air doctrine was piss-poor until late war so many of their fighters were either poorly armed or too slow to keep up. The P-63 and its earlier, slower, but largely identical older brother the P-39 Airacobra were extensively used by the Russian air force for lack of anything even close to it.

Within the context of the game the P-63 is considered quite good up to a very high level due to its decent to good speed and punishing cannon. I find it to be extremely maneuverable and excellent in a turn fight, but easy to stall if you're not used to its turn geometry. One of my favorite planes. Have many hours on it both with Mouse + KB and in simulator mode with the HOTAS joystick. Nothing like the *thump*...*thwack* of 37mm High Explosive Fragmentation tank shells to put the fear of God in 'em

The ME109 can be obtained very early in the game, but it's variants extend nearly to the end of the tech tree. At all levels it is a nimble fighter middling armament and good speed. Most common configurations have a 20mm nose cannon(nowhere near the power or velocity of the P-63's 37mm) with two 8mm Mauser machine guns in the upper nose cone. Some variants can take two extra 20mm gun pods under the wings which are quite effective but have limited ammo.

My P-63s in-game are very similar to this one here. Note that the plane in this pic is not armed. 4 x .50 caliber wing MGs 900 rounds, 1 x 37mm anti-tank nose cannon 54 rounds:


Early model Me-109 E3. These are what fought against the Brits in the Battle of Britain. 2 x 8mm nose MGs 1000 rounds, 2 x 20mm wing cannons 120 rounds:


This is a mid-late model ME109/BF109. I think it's a G-Trop variant. Note the added dust cover over the air intake, differently shaped nose cone and longer wings. 2 x 8mm nose MGs 1000 rounds, 1 x 20mm High Velocity Armor Piercing nose cannon. 400rounds:

 

Haha - that was Fernie's favorite game by far!! We were all playing the demo, but then I figured out how to buy the full game on ebay. He was blown away and begged his family to let him stay up - "Dad, all those new maps!" He was 10 as I mentioned.

So at age 13, twelve years ago, did you enjoy that game, Sam?

(I got into gaming late compared to you - it was about 9 or 10 years ago, around 2003 or 2004, and we were a W98 shop, cranking out real estate brochures and mailings, with 2 color epson 980 network printers, a couple of black and white laser printers, several slow W98 computers, all well under 900 mhz, like 400, 600, etc. and one much more modern 2 ghz xp machine that we were dabbling with, running xp on the D drive and w98 on the C drive, using it as our print server, as it was fast enough to run the color printers at full speed. I didn't even know those game demos were on the w98 disk until Fernando's dad, Pedro, said that little Fernie wanted some computer games to go along with the 200 mhz computer and crt monitor that I had given them. And here I had one of my closest relatives in the gaming business as a modeler and animator - he had already moved up to Seattle to work on TF2.)


Wow Jeff, those are beautiful airplane pictures. That must be fun to play - especially with the joystick. I have played fighter pilot a few times, like especially in the game Medal of Honor Pacific Theater, one of my favorite world war 2 shooters that I liked almost as much as COD2, but I am not that great as a pilot.

I googled 37mm anti-tank cannon, and apparently that was the size mostly used by infantry all during world war 2, especially in the Pacific theater against the lighter-armored Japanese tanks.



But the later German Panzers had too much armor to worry about a 37mm shell, and by the end of the war in the European theater, I read, we largely had switched over to the British 57mm cannons.

The article didn't talk about the cannons being mounted in airplanes - so that p-63 must have been quite lovely, and I wonder what kind of feed mechanism reloaded those 1 1/2" diameter shells - some kind of chain link system I suppose? I have always wondered how an airplane in world war 2 could pose a threat to a tank, but I guess barreling down at high speed firing those heavy rounds from above - some of them might penetrate the armor and kill the tank crew.

But you are talking about gunning for bombers - if you make contact one of those shells would probably cause quite a bit of damage inside a bomber, but not enough to take it out I wouldn't think - or am I wrong?

Rich

 

The most common field gun was the 6lber(57mm) but many units had the 75mm M3. Later on, the 75mm M3 became more common. Just enough to do the job on most German tanks. Panthers, Tigers, and King Tigers were not very common. Panzer 2s, 3s, and 4s, certainly were. The 37mm was a pea shooter in WW2, and was barely adequate in the Western Front. It was quite effective against lighter Japanese armor in the Pacific though.

Against bombers, the 37mm was a firebreathing horror. It fired high explosive fragmentation shells and Armor Piercing Incendiaries in a 57 round magazine. It would tear the wings and tails off of German bombers and a round in the cockpit almost always meant one or both pilots was dead. It could also detonate undropped ordinance

Later in the war a lot of the allied armies in Western Europe had switched up to 90mm and 76mm for the Americans or 17lbers(77mm) for the British Commonwealth.

The American 75mm was barely adequate later in the war as it was a medium velocity howitzer in nature, though it performed excellently against Panzer 2s and 3s in North Africa. The first big upgrade was the 76mm, which was much higher velocity, but still inadequate for fighting Panthers and Tigers in many situations. It could penetrate the sides up close, but not the front from far away, while German tanks simply had to point and shoot at any distance or angle. The 90mm really changed things, and put us on even footing, finally matching the excellent 75s and 88s the Germans were fielding.

The British played with 2lbers(40mm) 6lbers(57mm) and many different 75mm gun configurations with varying results, but none of them could penetrate enemy tanks reliably. Finally they got the idea to add magnum powder charges to a bored out Vickers 75mm High Velocity, with a modified breech. It came out to 77mm. This was very good, but not quite enough, so they modified it some more, and added even more powder charge. This was the 17lber. A whole different beast from any other gun in the war. Just as powerful as any 88mm or 90mm.