“The latest Community Technology Preview version of Windows Vista contains a new feature aimed at helping the average Joe and his friendly Best Buy shopping assistant figure out what kind of horsepower is needed to run the new OS. The rating consists of an aggregate total rating on a scale from 1 to 5 and a number of sub-ratings on a scale yet to be specified, broken out by hardware categories like processor, memory, video card, and hard drive.”
MS’s driver certification program will be the only thing preventing hardware/drivers from being “optimized for” (cheating on) this benchmark.
There’s also a monoculture problem here too. They can’t optimize for all of the dozens of benchmarking apps out there. But if this one benchmarking app gets too popular because it’s built into Windows…
MS’s driver certification program will be the only thing preventing hardware/drivers from being “optimized for” (cheating on) this benchmark.
Beating the benchmark (ruling out individuals hacking the binary to return a high score) would either require an OEM working to cheat it (which would mean at least bad press when exposed because of the disparity between similar systems from other OEMs), or there would have to be colusion among multiple manufacturers in different markets as the benchmark tests multiple systems. Some parts can’t be optimized away unless the manufacturers detect the binary, avoid doing the work, and MS doesn’t check the output.
Not to mention that it is only to test if your computer can run Vista properly at Vista’s maximum settings, nothing more. Thus in a few years with better computers this program will be useless, as essentially all new computers will eventually pass the test with flying colors and invalidate the whole point of the program.
Which gets to another question. Can this be uninstalled? One of the most annoying parts of Windows is all of the useless applications (for me anyway) that MS installs that can’t be easily uninstalled, if at all, and they end up just wasting valuable hd space.
Which gets to another question. Can this be uninstalled? One of the most annoying parts of Windows is all of the useless applications (for me anyway) that MS installs that can’t be easily uninstalled, if at all, and they end up just wasting valuable hd space.
It’s not just an application. It’s a set of system components used to acquire system metrics so the OS and applications can scale back or scale up features based on your hardware, and it is planned to be updated over time.
It’s a set of APIs available to application developers, a commandline tool, and shell UI.
I thought the rating was supposed to be open ended. Otherwise, the newest computers would quickly get to a point where they score 5/5, at which point the metric becomes kind of useless to compare machines.
As I understand it though, it isn’t so much for comparing computers against each other, but for comparing them against what is needed for Vista. If the newest computers all score 5, that’s all we really need to know: they will work fine with Vista.
So why should it be open ended? So we can say “this computer works perfectly with Vista, while this one works double plus good with Vista, and this one works splendiferously perfect with Vista!”
A computer scoring 5 should tell us all we need to know about how it will work with Vista
The scale is open ended. Some Microsoft guy stated that a few weeks ago. There could have even been a link in osnews.
So why should it be open ended? So we can say “this computer works perfectly with Vista, while this one works double plus good with Vista, and this one works splendiferously perfect with Vista!”
A computer scoring 5 should tell us all we need to know about how it will work with Vista
I read an article and understood it to mean that that system rating could end up on system requirements… Like Adobe Photoshop CS3 requires your system be a 3 or something. If it were open ended then that would allow room for very advanced games and what not 3 or 4 years from now, because like a previous post mentioned once every computer made is a 5/5 the rating is utterly useless.
They could keep it open ended by letting higher-powered machines start scoring 6, 7, 8,
(Mine goes to 11!)
First, I think this speaks good and bad of microsoft and what vista will be to the PC market. Obviously, there is a great problem brewing with the specs needed to run the new system and PC makers have been selling only the minimum for XP for a very long time. [i.e. 3.0GHz with a TNT64 32 MB video] What I’d say from this is that Microsoft is recieving a great deal of pressure to “lower” the specs of its system to allow the cheap $299 PCs that just aren’t possible to build without turning off some features. Vista looks to have mac mini like specs as a minimum for a well rounded system… how ironic.
Second, We REALLY need something like this for Linux!!! But not for the same reasons. The community needs to come up with a branding scheme that will show what type of features you can expect to get from older hardware. It should be based on the “average” specs from say each year of PCs sold, with extra ratings or bonus for video cards, extra ram, special hardware. That way distros can be designed around a target PC spec and we can reduce the number of people trying to run full Gnome 2.14 on P2 233MHz boxes with 64MB ram, but also point them to a system made for their box that works very well and does everything possible. The side effect is that Linux would become a better system as more programs get optimized for the lower spec environments. The top end will really scream again.
Come on, minimum for XP is 3.0 GHz with 32 MB video card ? Which planet are you living in ? XP in my house runs very well on a 1.7 GHz with 512 MB RAM. Heck, even my office system is only 2.4 GHz 512 MB RAM. I mean come on. you can do better then that.
Maybe he meant 0.3 Ghz
I think he meant the bare minimum for video support, and that’s the reason he mentioned a 3.0 GHz processor with a 32 MB video card: the contrast.
That still makes no sense. A 32 MB TNT2 is not a slow-poke when it comes to 2D alpha-blending and hardware video and the like.
Come on, minimum for XP is 3.0 GHz with 32 MB video card ? Which planet are you living in ? XP in my house runs very well on a 1.7 GHz with 512 MB RAM. Heck, even my office system is only 2.4 GHz 512 MB RAM. I mean come on. you can do better then that.
Please, read into the post before you make an ass of yourself.
He is talking about unbalanced systems where the vendor places an extreme bias towards the CPU whilst deliberately deglecting the graphics card or hard disk.
That is what cheap vendors do, they pump up the processor to insane specifications, then go cheap on everything else; net result? shit house performance.
For me, personally, drop the demand for $299 computers, and face reality; save a little more, and actually spend the little extra so that your computer will last the full 3-4 years rather than the thing turning into an unreliable POS within a space of 12 months.
You get what you pay for – and nother can be more of a truism than that phrase in the IT world; want crap, you pay less; want quality, you pay more.
As for those with $299 PC’s, they either fall into two groups, either they wanted a cheap PC to throw away every couple of years, or they’re so poverty ridden that they would have been able to afford to upgrade to a legal version of Vista anyway.
The side effect is that Linux would become a better system as more programs get optimized for the lower spec environments. The top end will really scream again.
I guess it’s possible, but I don’t see it happening. It’s already well known that some popular open source projects (not going to mention names) run horribly on older hardware, and very little has been done to change it. How would a number help?
I haven’t read the article yet, but am wondering if they’ll have this available seperate from Vista for current PC owners who want to benchmark their computers before upgrading?
Seriously, the more layers of ‘cruft’ you slather on, the slower it will run…
I have a 700Mhz Athlon with 384MB ram running Win98SE, and it responds faster than my Dad’s 2.4Ghz P4 running WinXP – THAT’S SAD!
From boot-up, to login, to opening a program – 98 responds faster because it has fewer features. Honestly, there’s little in XP that makes me want to ditch an installation that has run just fine for six years. Yes it is very (very, very) old, but it gets the job done faster when I’m in a hurry. Now I know that the actual execution speed of the software is slower, but I run very little that needs HPC-level performance. And if I haven’t asked my machine to start doing something, it shouldn’t begin background tasks just because it feels like it. When the system starts chugging on “something?” out of nowhere (what the heck is XP doing half the time!?), that’s a major problem for me. A silent hard drive is a good thing.
Processing speed is not relational to latency without clean, lean code (not that 98 is very clean) – but I shudder in fear to think of all the services and candy that will be crammed into Vista.
I’ll probably still be using 98 until 2008, a decade-worth of patches seems to be appropriate for some Microsoft products
remember Millenium? whoooo! That horse should’ve been made into glue before it hit the racetrack!
Reasons to upgrade to XP? How about proper multi-tasking? Protected memory? Fully 32-bit? Multi-user? Better memory management?
The list is enormous. You’re basically comparing DOS with a 32-bit extension to a mature, stable, and modern NT kernel. 😐
Sorry, but I’m just comparing performance between the systems regarding one person’s regular use. Yes, XP has more features, but as long as my applications actually work – I don’t really care what else the system has to offer. So I agree that it is unfair to compare DOS to IBM’s NT-OS, but as they are (or were) both sold as Microsoft products (one supposedly more advanced) it should be regarded as bad taste to say they cannot be compared. Responsiveness is generally the most significant factor in ‘upgrading’. Now, for the record – I don’t take this 98 machine online (that’s just asking for trouble), whatever I need I download onto a CF card and load it to my 98 box. That’s not the case with most people, so regarding security – that would be my only suggestion for upgrading past NT. And the list doesn’t seem to be that “enormous”….
Oooh, proper multi-tasking – big deal. If the system simulates multi-tasking, and gets the job done – I as an end-user shouldn’t (and don’t) really care.
Fully 32-bit – so what? Few of the applications I use require this. This may not be the case with other users, but again – I don’t notice any issues.
Protected memory – I’ll give you this one, but seeing as I haven’t taken my 98 machine online in five years, it’s of little relevance to me. (just me) Stand-alone machines are special circumstances, so most of my post is relevant to machines that don’t need a Great Firewall of China.
Multi-user – I’m just one person, and I don’t let others use my machine. Switching between users and having to put up with ownership permissions is not something I deal with on my box.
Memory management – again, this shouldn’t be very relevant to the common end-user. I do make use of memory management behind the scenes when writing software, but not directly. Programming generally relies on the system providing the garbage collection and whatnot – but I don’t deal with that, so it’s not a good enough reason to change what works.
If you’re looking for a better OS than 98, just stick with Win2000 and apply all the necessary patches. That’s just what XP is, IBM’s operating system with lots of patches and candy… …garlic candy to me.