Vista + Virus Scan + Gaming
Erich Kohl
situation, it keeps proving itself as being a decent OS.
The other day I upgraded my copy of AVG Anti-Virus to version 8.0. I
was really impressed with all of the new enhancements. (This is a free
program by the way, which just goes to show that you don't necessarily
have to dish out a lot of money in order to help protect your Wintel
machine.)
So as it started to scan my system, I decided to play a little Dirt (an
off-road racing sim). And to my astonishment, I still got excellent
frame rates, even though AVG was working in the background. The game
ran really smooth most of the time, and you could barely tell that a
virus scan was being performed, since I only noticed a couple minor
hiccups here and there throughout the game play. And I must stress
that Dirt is very intense as far as graphics is concerned.
Since the general consensus amongst many people seems to be that Vista
is nothing more than a resource-hogging piece of bloat, you'd think it
would be next to impossible to achieve this level of performance while
multitasking two heavy applications at the same time.
I love my quad-core Vista PC!
(And yes, I use it for other things besides gaming, too.)
Jerry McBride
> You know, I thought Vista was supposed to really suck, but in my
> situation, it keeps proving itself as being a decent OS.
>
> The other day I upgraded my copy of AVG Anti-Virus to version 8.0. I
> was really impressed with all of the new enhancements. (This is a free
> program by the way, which just goes to show that you don't necessarily
> have to dish out a lot of money in order to help protect your Wintel
> machine.)
>
All windows based machines NEED some kind/form of virus protection. Amazing
in the 21st century...
> So as it started to scan my system, I decided to play a little Dirt (an
> off-road racing sim). And to my astonishment, I still got excellent
> frame rates, even though AVG was working in the background.
So it had NO IMPACT or it has SOME IMPACT. If I know my windows... inbetween
freezes, you had just ok frame rates...
> The game
> ran really smooth most of the time, and you could barely tell that a
> virus scan was being performed, since I only noticed a couple minor
> hiccups here and there throughout the game play.
So... it was obvious that something was causing your game to stall, stagger
and generally just behave like crap while AVg was running...
Nothing new here Folks... keep walking....
> And I must stress
> that Dirt is very intense as far as graphics is concerned.
>
Yeah... not even close to other games...
> Since the general consensus amongst many people seems to be that Vista
> is nothing more than a resource-hogging piece of bloat, you'd think it
> would be next to impossible to achieve this level of performance while
> multitasking two heavy applications at the same time.
>
> I love my quad-core Vista PC!
>
> (And yes, I use it for other things besides gaming, too.)
Gee... Holly Crap... a Quad Core and it STILL suffered from resource run
outs... Only Windows could do that.
Nothing new here Folks... keep walking....
--
Jerry McBride (jmcb...@mail-on.us)
Erich Kohl
> Erich Kohl wrote:
>
> > You know, I thought Vista was supposed to really suck, but in my
> > situation, it keeps proving itself as being a decent OS.
> >
> > The other day I upgraded my copy of AVG Anti-Virus to version 8.0.
> > I was really impressed with all of the new enhancements. (This is
> > a free program by the way, which just goes to show that you don't
> > necessarily have to dish out a lot of money in order to help
> > protect your Wintel machine.)
> >
>
> All windows based machines NEED some kind/form of virus protection.
> Amazing in the 21st century...
Of course Windows isn't 100% bullet-proof. I wish it was. But I just
think that the risk of malware -- even though it does exist -- can be a
little blown out of proportion at times. Setting up a protection suite
like AVG is easy and free, and it does its job automatically with
little intervention needed by the user.
Have I *ever* had to deal with an infection on my system? Yes. Does
it happen all the time? Heck no. Common sense, preventive measures,
and safe computing habits go a long way.
>
> > So as it started to scan my system, I decided to play a little Dirt
> > (an off-road racing sim). And to my astonishment, I still got
> > excellent frame rates, even though AVG was working in the
> > background.
>
> So it had NO IMPACT or it has SOME IMPACT. If I know my windows...
> inbetween freezes, you had just ok frame rates...
It had a VERY SMALL amount of impact. The game was quite playable.
>
> > The game
> > ran really smooth most of the time, and you could barely tell that a
> > virus scan was being performed, since I only noticed a couple minor
> > hiccups here and there throughout the game play.
>
> So... it was obvious that something was causing your game to stall,
> stagger and generally just behave like crap while AVg was running...
>
> Nothing new here Folks... keep walking....
No, the game was very playable. My point is, it should have run like
pure molasses, and it definitely did not. After all, Vista? At the
same time that a virus scan is being performed?
>
> > And I must stress
> > that Dirt is very intense as far as graphics is concerned.
> >
>
> Yeah... not even close to other games...
Well, the majority of the testimony that I've seen from reviewers on
Amazon.com who also own the game say the same thing that I do, and that
is that it's a very demanding piece of software.
Also, when I first ran the Dirt demo before I bought the game, I had a
GeForce 8600 GTS video card. I had to tone down the resolution and
visual quality in order for the demo to run smoothly. But when I
upgraded to a GeForce 9800 GTX, I was able to crank up the eye candy.
Dirt definitely taxes your video card.
>
> > Since the general consensus amongst many people seems to be that
> > Vista is nothing more than a resource-hogging piece of bloat, you'd
> > think it would be next to impossible to achieve this level of
> > performance while multitasking two heavy applications at the same
> > time.
> >
> > I love my quad-core Vista PC!
> >
> > (And yes, I use it for other things besides gaming, too.)
>
>
> Gee... Holly Crap... a Quad Core and it STILL suffered from resource
> run outs... Only Windows could do that.
>
> Nothing new here Folks... keep walking....
Before I upgraded to a quad-core, I had Vista running on a dual-core,
and I had no complaints. The reason I upgraded to a quad-core had
nothing to do with Vista's performance.
Just trying to make the best out of the situation, that's why I
"advocate" Windows every now and then. We're all aware of Windows'
flaws. So, when things work right, I feel pleased. If we're going to
criticize Windows when it fails us, I believe we should also commend it
when it works well.
Thundercleets
Relative to XP Vista does suck.
On it's own it just needs work.
People were upset about it for the price tag (99.00 USD for Vista
Basic and 479.00 USD for Ultimate?)
Then M$ set the requirements too low, probably so mainstream
manufacturers could see old stock with Vista.
The driver issues did not help with some manufacturers charging for
drivers that actually work with Vista.
Vista is also killing gaming on Windows and this is most likely on
purpose.
Restricting DirectX 10 to Vista only was dubious at best.
M$ is making only licensing on Windows whereas they make licensing,
hardware and software sales on XBOX, which do you think they want to
put their money behind.
You will without a doubt, have a better "experience" with XP if you do
not need support for DirectX 10.
For an ever better gaming platform get a PS3, the graphics are as good
or better at 1/3rd the cost.
As far as AV goes NOD32 and ClamAv seem to be better, AVG has been
caught ignoring bad things and as of late was annoying site hosts by
scanning every link on a page heather or not the user selected the
link.
Quad core is nice and even faster under Linux since Vista still does a
absolutely horrible job of load balancing and process distribution.
TMT
We've got to put a lot of money into changing behavior.
--Bill Gates
Erich Kohl
>
> Relative to XP Vista does suck.
> On it's own it just needs work.
>
Well, I don't know. I'm not going to go so far as to say there's
absolutely nothing wrong with Vista, but on the other hand I don't find
it be ten times as worse as any other Windows release either. The
success rate of compatibility with all of my devices and applications
has been quite high, and most of the cases of system instability or
blue screens that I've encountered have occurred when I was still
trying to assemble a collection of stable drivers and programs/hardware
devices that were Vista-friendly. That was a long time ago. (There
was this one time, though, when my system blue-screened for no apparent
reason on a couple of occasions during shutdown. I can't recall it
happening since then, however.)
I love Vista's interface and features, and performance hasn't been a
problem. Granted, I was initially running it on a dual-core system,
and now I have a quad-core. No matter what operating system you have,
with specs like that, you should expect it to be responsive.
UAC can be annoying at times, but you get used to it (at least I have).
I've noticed a few bugs too, but most of them have been isolated
incidents.
>
> People were upset about it for the price tag (99.00 USD for Vista
> Basic and 479.00 USD for Ultimate?)
>
I will agree that the pricing for Vista is a little too unreasonable.
I was lucky enough to be able to get a really good deal on a legit copy
of Vista Ultimate, so I didn't have to pay anywhere near the full
retail cost.
>
> You will without a doubt, have a better "experience" with XP if you do
> not need support for DirectX 10.
> For an ever better gaming platform get a PS3, the graphics are as good
> or better at 1/3rd the cost.
>
I don't dislike consoles (I own an original Xbox), but I like to game
primarily on my PC, probably because I consider this machine to be my
general-purpose computing platform, so I use it for a little bit of
everything.
>
> Quad core is nice and even faster under Linux since Vista still does a
> absolutely horrible job of load balancing and process distribution.
>
To be totally honest, there are times when my security maintenance
chores do have an effect on the performance of the rest of my system;
it really all depends. Sometimes it seems to have varying degress of
impact, sometimes it doesn't. Tonight, for example, I played some
Unreal Tournament 3 again while AVG was working in the background, and
other than the fact that the game took longer to load, any evidence of
a virus scan being concurrently executed was virtually unnoticeable.
Preston
"Erich Kohl" <synth.v...@gmail.com> wrote:
Antivirus software? Haha.
--
- p