rendo said:
I should clarify. It will only be a matter of months before DX10 is hacked to work on XP, and what's the point in even discussing it? You're WRONG about the 4gigs. Oh, and a DX10 card WILL work on XP, you just won't get all the nifty DX10 features. N00b Stix^2^32-1 (Since you can't do basic bath on ram maximums ;) ) |
It will also only be a matter of time before the Pentagon's computer is hacked again. Your point being? Given enough time everything can be hacked. It is a matter of discussion because most people do not bother to hack their XPs and DX10s to make hardware and software work in ways they were not intended to. Additionally, I have never in my lifetime heard of someone successfully hacking hardware to accomplish tasks that go beyond their physical capabilities.
How am I WRONG about the 4 gigs not being optimal for 32-bit XP while 2 gigs are? I'm talking about optimal, as in best bang for the buck, because the gains in performance are not linear. You can add 4GB and XP supports it, but 32-bit processes "use" large amounts of memory via AWE (address windowing extension) functions, so they map views of the physical memory they allocate into their 2GB virtual address space. Essentially, they can only use 2GB of memory at a time. All processes (e.g. application executables) running under 32 bit Windows gets virtual memory addresses (a Virtual Address Space) going from 0 to 4,294,967,295 (2*32-1 = 4 GB), no matter how much RAM is actually installed on the computer, so it's still just 4GB max. Throw in a quad-SLI config with 512MB RAM each plus other devices and that 4GB maximum headroom for RAM gets reduced mighty quick. But again, optimal does not mean best or ideal; it means bang for the buck, and for 32-bit XP that is 2GB. OK, maybe 3gb depending on your computer's configuration, but certainly not 4gb. Know why there aren't any 1GB graphics cards on the market? Now you do. Add 4GB to a 32-bit XP, and you might as well send me the money you wasted on that stick of RAM. I'll put it to good use.
DX10 cards will work on XP, who said otherwise? But why would you do that if you are paying a premium for DX10 but utilizing DX9 instructions, which in many ways perform worse than DX10 because the algorithms aren't as polished as DX10, hence actually slowing down the GPU whereas using DX10 would create not only better visuals, but can do so with less a performance impact (in fact, you experience a performance gain)?
(N00b Stix^2^32-1)*2 and I'll reserve my comment about "basic bath on ram maximums ;)
