64 Bit Vista

[Ward Robinson]

Help, will Celstia work under 64 bit Vista?

[ANDREA]

Help, will Celstia work under 64 bit Vista?

Yes, it works, but actually (at least this is my situation) much slower than with WIN XP.
This is due to the actual lack of VISTA 64 nVidia drivers final release, and moreover the absolute missing, up to now, of such drivers for ASUS motherboards (never more I'll buy an ASUS!).
We are waiting for the future, hopefully!
Anyhow remember that Vista sucks a lot of memory, so be ready to update your RAM to at least 1 GB, but more is much better.
Bye

Andrea

[rra]

Andrea,
in my case, the performance is comparable with
windows XP's performance.

Did you get all openGL features enabled ?

I get 70 frames/s , which is the max. number limited by
the screen-refresh rate, when a high-res. earth
is shown with clouds and cloud-shadows enabled.

Memory usage is about 700 MB for windows without any
non-windows programs loaded.

B.T.W. I also do have an ASUS board with an AM2 processor

Ren?©

[ANDREA]

Andrea, in my case, the performance is comparable with
windows XP's performance. Did you get all openGL features enabled ?
I get 70 frames/s , which is the max. number limited by the screen-refresh rate, when a high-res. earth is shown with clouds and cloud-shadows enabled. Memory usage is about 700 MB for windows without any
non-windows programs loaded. B.T.W. I also do have an ASUS board with an AM2 processor. Ren?©

Ren??, I have very different result, so that I would like to understand if we are speaking of the same thing, I mean if we are comparing results obtained under the same conditions.
First of all, I don't know what is your hardware, and this could help to understand.
My bad results are when loading a heavy texture, e.g. Space Graphics' m46v2_16k_315deg-Mars.jpg texture.
In WIN XP it takes 20 seconds to load, in VISTA 64 exactly the double, 40 sec.
Moreover Mars rotation is absolutely fluid in XP, in Vista it's not.
I checked the nVidia drivers, release 93.71 for XP, and latest 100.59 (beta) for VISTA.
OpenGL Drivers Info gives identical results, with following exceptions:
XP OGL is 2.0.3 while VISTA ?¬s is 2.1.1
In VISTA there are the following lines, missing in XP

GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample
GL_EXT_framebuffer_object
GL_EXT_gpu_program_parameters

Don't understand what may be the reason for such a dramatic performance reduction.
Any idea?
Bye

Added Later: I have just seen in OpenGL Drivers Info that while for XP gives the following info:
Renderer: GeForce 7900 GTX/PCI/SSE2/3DNOW!
in VISTA it is
Renderer: GeForce 7900 GTX/PCI/SSE2
As you see there is no more the /3DNOW!
Does it mean something regarding my problem?
Help, please.

Andrea

[rra]

can't give you any clues right know, the PC I am talking about is my son's; in a few days I have the time to go to his place.
I'll let you know.

What I do know is that he has a AM2 (4400+ Athlon-64) ,
and a 8800GTX (just installed, he has money that I don't have),
but the speed-results I mentioned were based on a 7600GS on Vista-64.
Can't reproduce that system anymore unfortunately

Hold on ,

Ren?©

[ANDREA]

can't give you any clues right know, the PC I am talking about is my son's; in a few days I have the time to go to his place.
I'll let you know. What I do know is that he has a AM2 (4400+ Athlon-64) , and a 8800GTX (just installed, he has money that I don't have),
but the speed-results I mentioned were based on a 7600GS on Vista-64.
Can't reproduce that system anymore unfortunately
Hold on , Ren?©

OK Ren??, I'll wait for further info, thank you.
Bye

Andrea

[rra]

ANDREA, I may have time tomorrow to
test the performance on the AM2/8800GTX/Vista-64 system,
to compare the 2 systems I would like to
use the same texture.

Where can I find the Mars texture you mentioned ??


Ren?©

[ANDREA]

ANDREA, I may have time tomorrow to
test the performance on the AM2/8800GTX/Vista-64 system,
to compare the 2 systems I would like to
use the same texture. Where can I find the Mars texture you mentioned ??
Ren?©

Sorry Ren??, you cannot download it, it's not available.
But you can make the check using Praesepe's 16k Moon that you can find in Motherlode as
16k Moon Surface Map (single, NOT VT ).
Thank you for your help.
Bye

Andrea

[rra]

Andrea, finally I did find some time to check the performance again of the Vista-64 system,
I used the 16K moon you suggested and watched the frame-rate.
The monitor's resolution was only 1024 * 768 pixels, its max. gramerate was set to 85 FPS.
I used the NVDIA driver 100.59 (still Beta) on a 8800GTX board.
So comparison will be a bit like comparing apples and oranges,
anyway:

I got a average FPS of about 45 FPS (!!) which I think is dissapointing
and also lower then I previously stated for the 7600GS board.
When I set the video 3D option (in NVIDIA control panel) from
"quality" to "performance" the FPS did rise a lot,
I got the full 85 FPS again.

To get a good comparison we have to setup a well defined Celestia system (including openGL render type, render flags,textures,..)
and with predefined monitor-resolution, screen refresh-rate.
Loading of Celestia with its HR moon texture took only a few seconds , 10 secs max I think.

Ren?©

Here's the openGL output from Celestia:

Vendor: NVIDIA CorporationRenderer:
GeForce 8800 GTX/PCI/SSE2Version: 2.1.1
GLSL version: 1.20
NVIDIA via Cg compiler
Max simultaneous textures:
4Max texture size: 8192
Point size range: 1.000000 - 63.375000
Supported Extensions:
GL_ARB_color_bufferfloat
GL_ARB_depth_texture
GL_ARB_draw_buffers
GL_ARB_fragment_program
GL_ARB_fragment_program_shadow
GL_ARB_fragment_shader
GL_ARB_half_float_pixel
GL_ARB_imaging
GL_ARB_multisample
GL_ARB_multitexture
GL_ARB_occlusion_query
GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object
GL_ARB_point_parameters
GL_ARB_point_sprite
GL_ARB_shadow
GL_ARB_shader_objects
GL_ARB_shading_language_100
GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp
GL_ARB_texture_compression
GL_ARB_texture_cube_map
GL_ARB_texture_env_add
GL_ARB_texture_env_combine
GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3
GL_ARB_texture_float
GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat
GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two
GL_ARB_texture_rectangle
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix
GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object
GL_ARB_vertex_program
GL_ARB_vertex_shader
GL_ARB_window_pos
GL_ATI_draw_buffers
GL_ATI_texture_float
GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once
GL_S3_s3tc
GL_EXT_texture_env_add
GL_EXT_abgr
GL_EXT_bgra
GL_EXT_blend_color
GL_EXT_blend_equation_separate
GL_EXT_blend_func_separate
GL_EXT_blend_minmax
GL_EXT_blend_subtract
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array
GL_EXT_Cg_shader
GL_EXT_bindable_uniform
GL_EXT_depth_bounds_test
GL_EXT_draw_buffers2
GL_EXT_draw_instanced
GL_EXT_draw_range_elements
GL_EXT_fog_coord
GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit
GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample
GL_EXT_framebuffer_object
GL_EXTX_framebuffer_mixed_formats
GL_EXT_framebuffer_sRGB
GL_EXT_geometry_shader4
GL_EXT_gpu_program_parameters
GL_EXT_gpu_shader4
GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays
GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil
GL_EXT_packed_float
GL_EXT_packed_pixels
GL_EXT_pixel_buffer_object
GL_EXT_point_parameters
GL_EXT_rescale_normal
GL_EXT_secondary_color
GL_EXT_separate_specular_color
GL_EXT_shadow_funcs
GL_EXT_stencil_two_side
GL_EXT_stencil_wrap
GL_EXT_texture3D
GL_EXT_texture_array
GL_EXT_texture_buffer_object
GL_EXT_texture_compression_latc
GL_EXT_texture_compression_rgtc
GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc
GL_EXT_texture_cube_map
GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp
GL_EXT_texture_env_combine
GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3
GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic
GL_EXT_texture_integer
GL_EXT_texture_lod
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias
GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp
GL_EXT_texture_object
GL_EXT_texture_sRGB
GL_EXT_texture_shared_exponent
GL_EXT_timer_query
GL_EXT_vertex_array
GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip
GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat
GL_KTX_buffer_region
GL_NV_blend_square
GL_NV_copy_depth_to_color
GL_NV_depth_buffer_float
GL_NV_depth_clamp
GL_NV_fence
GL_NV_float_buffer
GL_NV_fog_distance
GL_NV_fragment_program
GL_NV_fragment_program_option
GL_NV_fragment_program2
GL_NV_framebuffer_multisample_coverage
GL_NV_geometry_shader4
GL_NV_gpu_program4
GL_NV_half_float
GL_NV_light_max_exponent
GL_NV_multisample_filter_hint
GL_NV_occlusion_query
GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil
GL_NV_parameter_buffer_object
GL_NV_pixel_data_range
GL_NV_point_sprite
GL_NV_primitive_restart
GL_NV_register_combiners
GL_NV_register_combiners2
GL_NV_texgen_reflection
GL_NV_texture_compression_vtc
GL_NV_texture_env_combine4
GL_NV_texture_expand_normal
GL_NV_texture_rectangle
GL_NV_texture_shader
GL_NV_texture_shader2
GL_NV_texture_shader3
GL_NV_transform_feedback
GL_NV_vertex_array_range
GL_NV_vertex_array_range2
GL_NV_vertex_program
GL_NV_vertex_program1_1
GL_NV_vertex_program2
GL_NV_vertex_program2_option
GL_NV_vertex_program3
GL_NVX_conditional_render
GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap
GL_SGIS_texture_lod
GL_SGIX_depth_texture
GL_SGIX_shadow
GL_SUN_slice_accum
GL_WIN_swap_hintW
GL_EXT_swap_control

[rra]

Forgot to mention:

on my own Vista-32 system,
I do have the 3DNOW! render flag available,
not so for the Vista-64 bit system.
Must be a NVIDIA driver issue.
I have no idea what this means regarding performance
of the openGL code.


Ren?© (with ALT-130)