Vista 64 with Vangaurd

[Korupt]

Will Vangaurd run on Vista 64? Does anyone have a SS's of the game on Vista 64?

[rabb1t]

Someone is running with Vista and says it's fine. Not sure on if that was the 32-bit or 64-bit version.

[Zorfidius]

I am running it on Windows Vista 64 on an AMD 64 3200+
No problems with that.

[Korupt]

I am running it on Windows Vista 64 on an AMD 64 3200+
No problems with that.

Ss's?

[Zorfidius]

I have no idea what SS means :)

[rabb1t]

Likely Screen Shots, however, the shots would look no different than on any other OS since VG does not use DX10 coding. (And even if it did it would have to be using new DX10 effects to see a difference.)

[Rhadagast]

Zorfidius how much ram memory you have?

[darrath]

I've run VG under Vista 64 here, 4Gb RAM + X1800 + core 2 duo @ 2.7ghz. Runs okish but I prefer to run under xp for these reasons;

* Game client is still 32 bit therefore only uses 2GB RAM
* ATI drivers cause massive texture flickering with hardware occlusion on under vista 64 and it's too slow without that on
* Slower that xp due to unoptimised graphics drivers
* DirectSound doesn't support hardware accelleration or EAX under vista, games need to use OpenAL instead and whilst it looks like VG may do that it still disables the option for hardware sound for me

Once the gfx drivers are non beta, optimised and working I could run under vista but the lack of h/w sound + EAX is a killer for me. Until a 64 bit client comes out then I may reevaluate depending what extras it gives me.

[Faedar]

I run Xp 64bits and the latest patches in Beta disabled Generic Hardware sound for me. I don't know why but after that I only got Generic Software. :(
I should get my VG CE soon so I can try with the latest patches.
I have on-board sound.

I'm hoping to upgrade to Vista 64bits soon, but I'll wait till they get stable drivers.

Can anyone confirm if SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeMusic has working drivers for Vista 64bits and does Vanguard use them properly?
I am thinking of buying X-Fi to get sounds working better if nothing else works.

[darrath]

I run Xp 64bits and the latest patches in Beta disabled Generic Hardware sound for me. I don't know why but after that I only got Generic Software. :(
I should get my VG CE soon so I can try with the latest patches.
I have on-board sound.

I'm hoping to upgrade to Vista 64bits soon, but I'll wait till they get stable drivers.

Can anyone confirm if SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeMusic has working drivers for Vista 64bits and does Vanguard use them properly?
I am thinking of buying X-Fi to get sounds working better if nothing else works.

Got an X-Fi XtremeGamer here and I think it's the same drivers, they work ok in vista 64 but you still don't get hardware sound currently.

[Kanevala]

Got an X-Fi XtremeGamer here and I think it's the same drivers, they work ok in vista 64 but you still don't get hardware sound currently.

Same issue here, X-FI Fatality on Vista Ultimate x64, Vanguard sets the sound to Software and doesn't allow the option for Hardware. This is with the December drivers from Creative.

[Kanevala]

This might explain the lack of hardware sound under Vista.

OpenAL on Windows Vista

As already stated above, Microsoft® will be removing DirectSound 3D Hardware support from Direct X with the launch of Windows Vista. DirectSound and DirectSound3D will still function; however, they will no longer use hardware acceleration.

The native OpenAL devices on Sound Blaster Audigy and Sound Blaster X-Fi™ soundcards do not use DirectSound or DirectSound 3D and so they will be completely unaffected. For games that use these devices, nothing will change. The game will continue to enjoy hardware based 3D audio and effects.

The Generic Hardware device will no longer be available, as it requires the use of hardware DirectSound 3D Buffers. Instead, this device will gracefully, and automatically, fallback to using the Generic Software device, which will continue to work as before.

[Faedar]

This might explain the lack of hardware sound under Vista.

It still doesn't explain why I lost Generic Hardware settings on Windows XP Pro x64 edition. I don't have Vistas but I still lost Generic Hardware and can see only Generic Software. (or at least at the very end of Beta... still waiting the postman to bring me my VG CE box...hoping tomorrow or monday).

[troldan]

vg issuppose to be open al game but it wont enable the hardware acceleration unless dsound.dll is in the vg directory from the creative alchemy program.

lookup creative alchemy for the program.

i don't even thing hardware/software sound works since swithcing them doesn't restart sounds or anything. think its part oif the buggy settings ui that can't remember ansiotropy settings.

[Kanevala]

ALchemy does work for Vanguard, however the music is low compared to combat effects, so it isn't an optimal solution.

Vanguard apparently isn't a native OpenAL game which I thought it was.

[troldan]

ALchemy does work for Vanguard, however the music is low compared to combat effects, so it isn't an optimal solution.

Vanguard apparently isn't a native OpenAL game which I thought it was.

also according to my dump file after viewing the call stack and such with windebug it was a creative driver causing my page fault in nonpaged area blue screen of death. so either alchemy is messing it up or we know why MS removed direct sound because creative sucks.

i have removed dsound.dll and haven't crashed since though i havent played alot yet since then but will find out tonight.

[Faedar]

I found a new problem with today's hardware. It seems 4GB RAM messes up Creative's drivers or soundcard. I think it messes up on-board audio some too.... so let me explain what I found out:

I originally had 2GB RAM and on-board audio. VG Beta used to work on XP x64 with Generic Hardware sounds. I was hoping to get Vista cause I'm always interested in new OSes etc. To prepare for the memory eater (Vista) I bougth 2GB more RAM. After I put them in I lost Generic Hardware option in VG beta, though a new VG patch came in at the same time, so I thought the patch messed it up. Then after playing a while Beta ended and I ordered X-Fi card, new Harddrive + Vista Ultimate x64. After installing the new hardware I disabled on-board sound from BIOS and happily began the new installation of both OSes to get nice dual-booting. I repartitioned all HDs. I got XP Pro x64 installed first and then installed Vista x64. Then I began testing sounds and noticed I lost all sounds even with Creative's XP x64 drivers. I tested this a bit and got sound working when I disabled BIOS memory remapping over 4GB... sounds started working and HW acceleration for sound, but I lost 1 GB of RAM. So now my computer has 4GB of RAM but I can use only 3 GBs, even with 64bit OSes! So it seems the soundcards drivers or soundcards themselves suck so badly that they don't support computers running 4GB or more RAM. I Googled about this a bit and others have same problems as well. With only 3GB of RAM in use I got Vista x64 sounds working with Creative's BETA driver. VG doesn't work well in Vista due to the BETA drivers, so I'm still using XP x64 for almost everything.

To put it shortly: Vista drivers suck + soundcards and/or their drivers suck too.


Looks like Creative Labs and probably bunch of other companies never thought PCs could have 4GB of RAM, even when modern games are hitting the Win32 2GB limit.

I hope that somewhere in this world we can find a decent company that could make a decent sound card that would work like other hardware works! Video cards, SATA controllers, network cards... they don't have problems with 4GB of RAM!!! The damn sound cards seem to have problems. :(


Has anyone else noticed this or have similar problems ?



My rig:
Abit KN8-SLI (with latest BIOS)
AMD Athlon64 X2 4400+
4GB RAM DDR400
nVidia GeForce 7800GT
Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic (probably taking this back to the shop and asking for my money back)
80GB+200GB+320GB HDs (all SATA 3GB)

[Cronjob]

Will Vangaurd run on Vista 64? Does anyone have a SS's of the game on Vista 64?

I don't know why you'd want to run Vista. Especially if you're going to go 64 bit. Plenty of games are not playable on 64bit windows and there is no reason to go with Vista, unless you need the DX10 -- which at this point you don't. At some point, Crisis is going to make use of it and I read something about Vanguard going DX10 someday, but it's hardly worth the bloated, crappy installation of Vista just for two games that either aren't currently available or don't currently use DX10.

[rabb1t]

I don't think this is all Creative's fault. Vista apparently does some different stuff with how it uses sound and they are having to adjust for that. So yes, sound is problematic with Vista right now, however, once they get that solved the X-Fi will completely dominate other sound solutions with Vista.

As to running with XP 64-bit, you should be fine. I only have 2 gig total, but I've had no problem running Vista either in beta or post-release.

I read something about Vanguard going DX10 someday

That day is many years off. The last I saw mention of it they weren't even going to consider it prior to expansion 2, which is ~2 years off.

[visceral monkey]

I spent the better part of the day on a lark getting vista up and running and installing vanguard on it to compare performance. Surprisingly, it's now on par with XP when playing the game. I did use alchemy to get my Generic Hardware option back and it seems to work fine. Because I over clock my 8800gts and you cant do that yet in vista, I instead flashed the video card bios and that took care of that. All in all the performance is almost identical with my install of vanguard on xp. My only real complaint is I dont have Digital Vibrance on vista for color balancing and this pisses me off. I'm not what the point of it all was, but it works fine.

[Faedar]

I don't think this is all Creative's fault. Vista apparently does some different stuff with how it uses sound and they are having to adjust for that. So yes, sound is problematic with Vista right now, however, once they get that solved the X-Fi will completely dominate other sound solutions with Vista.

As to running with XP 64-bit, you should be fine. I only have 2 gig total, but I've had no problem running Vista either in beta or post-release.



That day is many years off. The last I saw mention of it they weren't even going to consider it prior to expansion 2, which is ~2 years off.

The 4GB problem appears in XP x64 edition as well. So it's probably Creative's drivers and/or the card itself that has the problem.
Now that I have posted to Creative's boards some people pointed out to me that they have had this 4GB problem with their X-Fi for a year now and Creative Support hasn't done anything about it. It seems the X-Fi is a waste of money. :(
So far I can't recommend X-Fi to anyone with 4GB of RAM. If you have 3GB or less you can use it, but not with 4GB.

[injin]

Any news regarding a Vanguard 64-bit client?

I was under the impression from pre-release that the game was going to release for DX10 and 64-bit Vista. I guess all that went out the window when they decided SOE (omg no) was a better solution than Microsoft?

[Kanevala]

Any news regarding a Vanguard 64-bit client?

I was under the impression from pre-release that the game was going to release for DX10 and 64-bit Vista. I guess all that went out the window when they decided SOE (omg no) was a better solution than Microsoft?

It was moved to post release at some point. I wouldn't hold my breath however.

[rabb1t]

The 4GB problem appears in XP x64 edition as well. So it's probably Creative's drivers and/or the card itself that has the problem.

It is also entirely possible that your board isn't quite compatible with the ram, or some other board related aspect.

Re-skimming the thread I note that you are assuming this is a software based creative labs problem. You seem to have ignored the possibility that when you added hardware there was a hardware incompatibility problem.

I'd recommend pausing the at the bios level and seeing if if sees all 4 gig of ram and/or booting in safe mode, which loads no drivers, and seeing if your system shows all 4 gig.

I don't think you have ruled out hardware possibilities yet.

I'm not saying you are wrong, I am just saying, check to be sure your system acknowledges and functions with all 4 gig before blaming specific software incompatibilities.

If you have 3GB or less you can use it, but not with 4GB.

I find that hard to believe. I still don't see how sound software would restrict ram use. It just doesn't make any sense.

Have you removed the Creative Labs software, physically removed the X-Fi card, and found that your PC registers all 4 gig?

[rabb1t]

I was under the impression from pre-release that the game was going to release for DX10 and 64-bit Vista. I guess all that went out the window when they decided SOE (omg no) was a better solution than Microsoft?

You were confused. At one time, long ago, there were rumors that Vanguard was going to be a Windows Vista only game. That rumor was quickly dismissed.

Note that this (a game being Vista only) has nothing to do with DirectX 10, nor 64-bit.

[unst4blec0d3r]

That day is many years off. The last I saw mention of it they weren't even going to consider it prior to expansion 2, which is ~2 years off.

I've seen this said before, but Brad says otherwise in this post. Although this was posted less then a month ago is it outdated? Or am I just missing something.

http://forums.vanguardsoh.com/showpost.php?p=1914719&postcount=160

[rabb1t]

That post would be after the last post he made on it. That would indeed be the newest info on it.

However, do note that he does not mention a date for that first expansion.

[Faedar]

It is also entirely possible that your board isn't quite compatible with the ram, or some other board related aspect.

Re-skimming the thread I note that you are assuming this is a software based creative labs problem. You seem to have ignored the possibility that when you added hardware there was a hardware incompatibility problem.

I'd recommend pausing the at the bios level and seeing if if sees all 4 gig of ram and/or booting in safe mode, which loads no drivers, and seeing if your system shows all 4 gig.

I don't think you have ruled out hardware possibilities yet.

I'm not saying you are wrong, I am just saying, check to be sure your system acknowledges and functions with all 4 gig before blaming specific software incompatibilities.



I find that hard to believe. I still don't see how sound software would restrict ram use. It just doesn't make any sense.

Have you removed the Creative Labs software, physically removed the X-Fi card, and found that your PC registers all 4 gig?

If I turn on hw or sw 32bit Memory Hole option in BIOS, then the BIOS and both Windows versions see the whole 4 Gigabytes of memory and can use it without problems. But when the OSes see 4gigs, then sound either stops working totally or loses hardware acceleration when using Creative X-Fi.
If I disable the 32bit Memory Hole (which actually remaps the last gig to over 4G address) then BIOS only sees about 3Gigs of RAM and OSes too and then X-Fi works perfectly.
I read some information about this and it seems that memory mapped I/O uses some addresses under 4 gigabytes. Motherboard/BIOS can remap the memory chips last gig of memory to over 4GB memory address thus allowing the memory mapped I/O to continue using it's addresses between 3GB - 4GB. But Creative's card or drivers don't understand this. This is purely normal for computers with 4 gigabytes or more memory.
My guess is that Creative converted the 32bit X-Fi driver to 64bits by just compiling and added few little tweaks... but still the core of the code is made for 32bits so the drivers fails to understand a true 64bit system that addresses more memory than 32bit system can.

Sorry for my bad english. I hope you undertand what I mean.

Remapped memory "map":

Normal memory (0 - 3GB) - I/O address space (3GB - 4GB) - Rest of normal memory (4GB ->)

So if computer has 4 gigs of memory the BIOS actually remaps the last gigabyte to over 4GB address and only 64bit system can access it. My system has no problems with 4 gigs and addressing it all. Only X-Fi drivers dont understand it.

[rabb1t]

My guess is that Creative converted the 32bit X-Fi driver to 64bits by just compiling and added few little tweaks.

This doesn't help you at all, but that is extremely doubtful since I had my X-Fi sitting on a shelf for about 3 months due to the lack of 64-bit drivers. Had they simply converted the 32-bit to 64-bit I don't see why that would have taken so long.

[Letsinod]

So is there any difference in running Vista 32 vs 64 for Vanguard performance? Has anyone actually done any testing of this? I am about to install Vista this weekend. (please don't lecture about not using Vista)

[rabb1t]

If you are installing Vista I'd say go 64-bit and don't worry about what problems you have "right now". Being that Vista will be the way peeps move you should be fine pretty quickly.

Besides, with as bad as VG can get are you really going to notice a performance hit? :p

[Letsinod]

Does switching from 32 to 64 require a whole new install?

[Kanevala]

So is there any difference in running Vista 32 vs 64 for Vanguard performance? Has anyone actually done any testing of this? I am about to install Vista this weekend. (please don't lecture about not using Vista)

There's not much to gain over XP, performance is more or less the same for me with an 7800 GTX, and AMD FX-55.

[milktoast]

I fail to see why anyone would want to run 64 bit Vista (or 64 bit XP for that matter) unless they have an application that exceeds the current 4gb memory address space limit for 32 bit Windows.

The lack of 64 bit application and drivers, along with the additional overhead and performance hit from thunking when runnng 32 bit applications makes 64 bit Vista a loosing proposition, from my perspective. You can't even run 32 bit drivers on Vista, so unless all your devices have native 64 bit drivers you're screwed. Porting to 64 bit isn't as simple as it seems since the native integer size remains 32 bit but pointers are now 64 bit. This creates additional complexities that don't exist when the interger size equals the pointer size.