FSX Improvement & Vista SP1?

[thrakete 0]

Happened to read a business oriented tech column in today's paper. The writer says that the real purpose of Vista SP-1 is commercial sales related, and I had better not go any further into that.The point of this post however, is that he states that Vista SP-1 will be mostly just a compilation of the updates present users have been receiving on a regular basis.Hope he is wrong, and that SP-1 really will solve some of the FSX problems, particularly the ones some Graphics Card people are allegedly blaming on the present version of Vista.Did I make that vague enough?Comments (non provocative) invited.Regards,Thrakete

[soaring_penguin 428]

Hi,There is a misconception about Service Packs.This misconception is there since XP Service Pack 2 altered the OS so much that it actually was a complete different beast. A Service Pack in the classic meaning is a point in time of patches and updates, that all have been tested toroughly together, and are considered stable.Microsoft will be shipping from then on Vista SP1, and not anymore Vista RTM. This does not mean that Microsoft can not add something to the package, to make it faster, more stable, etc. They can do this because they have had the chance to test it - and this is important - in one package. I do not know what this something is, only MS can know that.There is proof : if you want to download the complete SP1, this is possible (even recommended for big accounts) but it will be a very big download.The second option is to download it from WindowsUpdate, and the download will be much smaller, because it will ony download what is missing. This is what I am waiting for.I already hear the moaning and complaints about people who expect too much. Yes, that writer is right : SP1 is "mostly" a compilation of all the current updates + a "something". And I do not expect this "something" to do the same thing as it did with XP SP2. Certainly, do not expect it to be the magic bullet to fix FSX.On the other hand, possibly Nvidia and ATI have had the chance to test their drivers with Vita SP1 since a few months now, so maybe - and mind you, just maybe - we will see some fixes from them in the weeks following SP1 (For Nvidia, it has been 3 months since the last WHQL driver for the 8800).Jan

[Guest UlfB]

Thrakete,I might add that I previously had SP1 RC1 installed and it had no noticeable effect on FSX. Some people reported an increased fps, but no one produced any reliable benchmark, so I consider it to be a placebo effect.Ulf BCore2Duo X6800 3.3GHz4GB RAM Corsair XMS2-8500C5BFG 8800GTX, Creative SB X-FiFSX Acc/SP2, Vista 32

[Guest]

>Happened to read a business oriented tech column in today's>paper. The writer says that the real purpose of Vista SP-1 is>commercial sales related, and I had better not go any further>into that.>nonsense.>The point of this post however, is that he states that Vista>SP-1 will be mostly just a compilation of the updates present>users have been receiving on a regular basis.>true.>Hope he is wrong, and that SP-1 really will solve some of the>FSX problems, particularly the ones some Graphics Card people>are allegedly blaming on the present version of Vista.>They're wrong to blame Vista, as usual the problem is with a 3rd party product, in this case the video drivers.A service pack for an operating system is unlikely to contain "fixes" specific to specific applications (though it happens), especially games.That's not to say that there won't be an effect, but it won't be dedicated to that game.>Comments (non provocative) invited.>by non-provocative, do you mean you don't want comments that tell you what you don't want to hear?Or comments that are not negative about Vista?Without such specification it's impossible to comply with your request.

[jdk2 1]

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[thrakete 0]

Thank you for doing the impossible and complying with my request.Regards,Thrakete

[Peter Clark 21]

The only thing Vista32 SP1 did for me was eliminate some of my OOM crashes when hitting 72%+ RAM usage on a 4GB quad core system. It didn't seem to have any effect on FPS or anything else, just baseline system stability (which is what SPs are really for).

[thrakete 0]

Peter, That observation is in agreement with the article I referred to. The writer stated that the Vista systems now in business use have shown a noticeable improvement in stability in the last few months (due to the updates). Therefore, since SP-1 will really be "mostly" a compilation of these updates, anyone who now uses Vista, and is installing the updates as they come out, should not expect any radical change in the OS when SP-1 is installed.Regards,Thrakete

[Guest ziporama]

I'm a happy user of Vista x64. SP1 has fixed for me the major problem, which had to do with file copy performance, but I've really not had any issues with FSX on Vista x64.The DX10 graphic glitches seem for the moment squarely related to Nvidia drivers and are not addressed with SP1, although the new beta drivers do reduce the flickering quite a bit (although they crash another game I use on startup - not a good situation).I also read many differences between the 32 bit version of Vista and the 64 bit version, in terms of performance and behavior, so I want to constructively :) caution against comparing Vista without referencing which version.Cheers,Etienne

[thrakete 0]

A good point, and I have run into this before. Whether 32 or 64 bit should be specified in any Vista discussion involving a problem. Thanks for the reminder.Regards,Thrakete

[Snowfalcon 18]

Ok confused here. Is SP-1 for Vista out? If not when will it be released?

[thrakete 0]

I am not an "insider", but here is what I think is happening:My present impression is that Vista SP-1, both the 64 bit and the 32 bit versions are out and available (somewhere, to some people-MSDN members are one group). This is supported by the fact that some of the posters are running Vista SP-1.However, I have been advised that release as an automatic download to all Vista users is imminent, and that the automatic download version will install only the software not previously furnished as updates and installed on the particular user's computer. This would make it a much smaller download than adding the whole SP-1 to the original Vista released version.I intend to wait for the automatic download version.Regards,Thrakete

[Guest firehawk44]

"Ok confused here. Is SP-1 for Vista out? If not when will it be released?"Tomorrow, March 18th. http://www.techspot.com/news/29385-vista-s...lmost-here.htmlJim

[Guest UlfB]

Jim,Thanks for the link. Short but informative. I uninstalled SP1 RC1 because boot time for my Vista increased about 150% with SP1 RC1. So I'll await feedback from others before going for SP1 once more, and if I do I'll make sure that I can revert to pre SP1 in a safe way if I get any problems with it.Ulf B

[Mace 1,909]

How long will it take for SP1 to come on the Vista distribution media?RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian