[@ruantec]

Better than i expected....

 

[runawayprisoner]

No, he actually raised some good points. If the thing had an IPS screen, I'd have broken down and bought one.

I think he hit it right on the nail when he mentioned how awkward it was having to switch to desktop to use Office. Still wondering why Microsoft didn't develop a Metro version of Office when they conceived Windows RT. It doesn't look like Office for Windows RT is simply a port, so it'd have made sense to build the app from the ground up to be Metro-compatible.

 

[DinJerr]

TechRadar's review of Win8. Nice comprehensive overview of people talking about something other than just the ModernUI for a change.

Here's a nugget from the comments section on how to restore boot to desktop:

1 - Move the desktop tile to the top left, restart you computer, hit Enter once for Log on and ince to launch desktop before the Start Menu appears.
2 - Use a Scheduled Task to launch explorer.exe or any other desktop application or a script that puts you on the desktop. Then reboot your comuter, logon on an go straight to the Desktop App.

'VBScript Sample COde
'BEGIN SCRIPT
'Execute Desktop
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.SendKeys ("^{ESC}+D+{ENTER}")
Set WshShell = nothing
'END SCRIPT

Just copy this toi notepad, save as a DesktopMode.vbs, or whatever name you choose as long as it has a .vbs extention.
Create a Basic Task in Schedule Task and select run at logon, and select this script as the the program to run.

Looks cool, but will probably only want to get Win8 with a new PC, hopefully soon.

 

[@ruantec]

No, he actually raised some good points. If the thing had an IPS screen, I'd have broken down and bought one.

I think he hit it right on the nail when he mentioned how awkward it was having to switch to desktop to use Office. Still wondering why Microsoft didn't develop a Metro version of Office when they conceived Windows RT. It doesn't look like Office for Windows RT is simply a port, so it'd have made sense to build the app from the ground up to be Metro-compatible.

Talking about Office on RT... i noticed that is not a Metro app but a Desktop one... i wonder if MS is going to Support Desktop applications as well on RT.

 

[-StrikE-]

@shoober420: there was a time when i wanted to do what you want to do as well (for a better PCSX2 performance), right at first it did seemed faster, but that was just because all the effects (like fade in fade out, minimize/maximize animations) where turned down, i found out that with time it became a bit sluggish compared with what aero gave me and it did not compare with the smoothness and speed aero gave me, so my advice is if that with aero for some reason you feel that the effects slow you down go and turn some effects you don't need in Computer right click=>Properties=>Advanced System Settings=>Advanced=>(under Performance)Settings=>Visual Effects=>(select) Custom and select only the things you need (of course keep aero peek, desktop composition and the last option for visual styles), you will see that there's no difference in how it moves at first with the classic theme and with aero, plus you will get to keep the advantages aero gives you. Also regarding squall, he may be a bit hard on people (and biased towards ATi ) but when it comes to PC related knowledge he puts most of us here to shame, so to be honest you should try to learn from him not insult him, also think about the fact that their are four people who advised against disabling aero here, do you think they are all stupid and just spout rubbish ? The rest of us aside @ruantec is a gifted (and successful) programer who familiarized himself very well with the intricate workings of DWM and windows, he knows his stuff. Just my two cents on the matter you can proceed as you wish.

PS: windows 8 does not have aero.

 

[DinJerr]

Talking about Office on RT... i noticed that is not a Metro app but a Desktop one... i wonder if MS is going to Support Desktop applications as well on RT.

Not really. That office thing is just a stopgap measure because they didn't get the new office done in time.

EDIT - I'm surprised people were expecting good things out of RT, probably failing to realise RT isn't exactly Win8.

 

[shoober420]

@shoober420: there was a time when i wanted to do what you want to do as well (for a better PCSX2 performance), right at first it did seemed faster, but that was just because all the effects (like fade in fade out, minimize/maximize animations) where turned down, i found out that with time it became a bit sluggish compared with what aero gave me and it did not compare with the smoothness and speed aero gave me, so my advice is if that with aero for some reason you feel that the effects slow you down go and turn some effects you don't need in Computer right click=>Properties=>Advanced System Settings=>Advanced=>(under Performance)Settings=>Visual Effects=>(select) Custom and select only the things you need (of course keep aero peek, desktop composition and the last option for visual styles), you will see that there's no difference in how it moves at first with the classic theme and with aero, plus you will get to keep the advantages aero gives you. Also regarding squall, he may be a bit hard on people (and biased towards ATi ) but when it comes to PC related knowledge he puts most of us here to shame, so to be honest you should try to learn from him not insult him, also think about the fact that their are four people who advised against disabling aero here, do you think they are all stupid and just spout rubbish ? The rest of us aside @ruantec is a gifted (and successful) programer who familiarized himself very well with the intricate workings of DWM and windows, he knows his stuff. Just my two cents on the matter you can proceed as you wish.

PS: windows 8 does not have aero.

The smoothness you speak of its simply an effect. It doesn't actually make things smoother. Its literally an illusion. When you talk about disabling the effects under Advanced System Settings, it gives you a choice. Either "Adjust for best appearance" or "Adjust for best PERFORMANCE". Now why would it say this? Because all those fancy effects CAN slow your system down. Even if my system can handle all those effects, its still using more resources to produce those effects. I don't want my resources being chewed up to make my desktop prettier. I want all my resources going towards more important things LIKE PLAYING GAMES.

The thing is, Aero looks fruity. It looks gay and unprofessional, just like the XP theme. Aero requires more resource then classic GUI PERIOD. I don't want my resources being used to make my desktop look snazzy. Aero doesn't increase performance in any way, and if it does, PROVE IT. All I can find on the internet is how Aero can slow your system down. I can't find anything on it increasing system performance, because it doesn't.

But back onto DWM, I did some more reading into it, and it does increase performance ON THE DESKTOP. It doesn't increase performance for gaming. So when you really think about it, if there is a process chewing up my GPU to make my desktop faster, it must be taking resources away from my GPU to render more important things like MY GAMES. Even if its only 1% of my GPU resources, I would rather have that 1% of GPU resource dedicated to games rather then my desktop.

Also, DWM doesn't effect hardware acceleration for movie playback, that's all controlled via your media player. If this were true, then I couldn't use OpenGL for my video playback when using VLC Player. There is an option under VLC Player called Accellerated video output which enables hardware acceleration for video playback, its not controlled via DWM whatsoever. VSync is controlled via your video card settings not DWM, and even if you can provide proof that it can enable "Fully Functional VSync", it doesn't matter becuase VSync sucks and lags video games.

Now, Windows 8's "Hardware Accelerated GUI" is simply Aero with no glass effect. The buttons look the same. Its the same thing. The only difference between Windows 8 and Windows 7 is, Windows 8 is a little faster (not for gaming though). I looked up some benchmarks for gaming under Windows 8 and Windows 7 and they either had identical performance or Windows 7 was slighty faster.

Windows 8 is Windows 7 but with no start menu and a terrible GUI, just how Windows 7 is Windows Vista with less bugs. There all the same. Windows 8 is slightly faster in some areas, but its only slightly, and gaming performance is NOT faster then Windows 7. Until Windows 8 brings back the GUI I grew up with and love it can go fail miserably just like Windows ME and Windows Vista did.

 

[barrybarryk]

VSync sucks and lags video games

No...

If you're outputting more frames per second than your monitors refresh rate, you wont see them. On a 60hz monitor you will see absolutely no difference in smoothness between 60fps and 1000fps, what you will see is screen tearing from your graphics card refreshing part of a frame before the rest due to the two being out of sync. If your card is capable of outputting more frames of a game per second than the refresh rate of your monitor you should always have vsync on.

The ONLY time vsync will case any bad effects is if your card can't hit your monitors refresh rate for a game it'll look a little more jerky due to holding back a frame here and there to hit the sync point, and then you just turn it off.

But with vsync off, your graphics card will ALWAYS be trying to render as many frames as possible (even though none above your monitors refresh rate will ever get fully drawn to the screen) which leads to higher power consumption, higher temps, more noise, shorter lifespan of your card and just generally a **** idea.

Stop listening to "gamers", the majority of them have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

 

[-StrikE-]

it doesn't matter becuase VSync sucks and lags video games.

Lmao i've stopped reading after this,you really should stop talking about things which functionality you don't understand....

 

[shoober420]

ROFL you guys don't notice all the input lag with VSync on? Are you kidding me? I instantly know if someone has VSync on because mouse movement is sluggish and not as responsive. Infact, I just reinstalled System Shock 2 with the new 2.4 patch and was wondering why my mouse movement was so laggy, and sure enough, the patch enables VSync by default. I had to turn it off to feel more responsive again. Oh, and you can definitely feel the difference between 60fps and 1000fps. I can for sure tell the difference between 60fps and 100fps. 100fps feels WAY more smooth then 60fps. In CS1.6 it is mandatory you have your fps at 100, and when I limit my fps to 60 with VSync I can immediately feel the difference. If you can't notice the input lag vSync creates, then I feel very sorry for you. Most gamers know that VSync causes input lag. Ask any pro gamer about VSync, he will tell you it lags mouse movement NOTICEABLY. Go and google VSync and input lag. I DARE YOU.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Vsync and input lag are actually dependent on the way the programmer does their coding.

So is FPS. In some games, 60fps in the render counter doesn't mean much if the programmer updates the animation every 2 frames. So it turns out the animation is only updated at 30 frames in that second, thus causing the "lag".

1000fps, on the other hand, allows for animation to update 500 times per second in the same situation, so of course it'll look smoother.

That aside, you probably don't realize it, but Vsync is inherently turned on for Aero. It's also on for any composited interface... like on Mac OSX and so on...

And the last thing you'll hear from an OSX user is input lag.

 

[shoober420]

That's because all mac users are noobs and couldn't tell the difference if Vsync was on or off. VSync causes noticeable input lag with mouse movement. Its been proven. You can't argue this. What serious gamer uses a mac anyway. I don't see any Macbooks at tournaments and LANs bro. I don't even think you know how Vsync works. VSync limits your fps to what ever your refresh rate is (mostly 60Hz for most people). So in return, you would be cut off to 60fps. No matter what game, or how the programmers coded VSync for there game (which sounds ridiculous as VSync is implemented the same in every game) there will always be noticeable mouse lag with it turned on. PROVE ME WRONG. That 30 fps cut off you speak of is fixed with triple buffering. To bad even when you use triple buffering you still have noticeable input lag with your mouse. I would say with VSync and triple buffering the mouse lag is even more noticeable. VSync causes input and mouse lag PERIOD. If you don't notice it, its because you're a noob. Go ask any pro gamer about VSync bro. DO IT.

 

[runawayprisoner]

It's actually pretty evident when Vsync is off to any average person. The screen tears pretty badly when things are moving around. Simple test: get on Windows XP, turn on "Show Window Contents While Dragging" and drag a window. See how it tears.

As for why Macs don't appear at gaming conventions, it's simple: they aren't made for gaming.

But it's not just gaming that's affected by Vsync. 3D modeling works done in AutoCAD and Maya are also affected. While Mac users don't game, they do a hell of a lot of 3D modeling. So their work is still affected by Vsync.

And no, I'm not talking about 30fps or frames per second. I'm talking about animation updates per second. That's different.

 

[barrybarryk]

I don't need to "google it", I've a masters in Comp Sci. Unlike most 'gamers' I actually know what the **** I'm talking about. If your monitor has a refresh rate of 60Hz there is no graphics card on the planet that's going to make it draw more than 60 frames in a second, your reported FPS is not how many frames are being drawn by your monitor, just how many are being rendered by the graphics card, dumped into the cards memory and pushed to the monitor for processing and displaying (again if it's higher than your refresh rate the excess is discarded by the monitor, you don't ever see them).

"Input lag" or perceived input lag comes from the frame that's been drawn on the monitor being too old (It has nothing to do with your keyboard & mouse input, apart from the inherent delay caused by your computer processing it to begin with). Double/triple buffering play a bigger part of it than the vsync, but the biggest factor by far is your monitors response and processing time which can be as high 30 or 40ms combined.

Then again there are a few games that just do vSync wrong, instead of just delaying the visual output until the game gets the ok from the monitor, the engine pauses all processing. But that's pretty rare to see these days and it's a bug with the game, not an inherent problem to vSync

So in short, yes vSync can add a little processing time to a frame, but it's nowhere near as simple as "vSync lags games". It's rarely the largest factor affecting the response time, can easily be counter balanced by using a decent monitor, it improves the image quality and dramatically reduces the amount of work done by the graphics card which will increase it's lifetime, reduce power consumption, reduce the heat generated and the noise.

It's a very, very easy trade off for me to make

 

[shoober420]

It's actually pretty evident when Vsync is off to any average person. The screen tears pretty badly when things are moving around. Simple test: get on Windows XP, turn on "Show Window Contents While Dragging" and drag a window. See how it tears.

As for why Macs don't appear at gaming conventions, it's simple: they aren't made for gaming.

But it's not just gaming that's affected by Vsync. 3D modeling works done in AutoCAD and Maya are also affected. While Mac users don't game, they do a hell of a lot of 3D modeling. So their work is still affected by Vsync.

And no, I'm not talking about 30fps or frames per second. I'm talking about animation updates per second. That's different.

Yeah of course macs aren't meant for gaming. So when you see a guy who plays games on a mac hes either not serious about pc gaming, or an complete noob. Animation updates are dependent on the engine it was built on, not VSync. VSync just smooths out movement or "animation updates" and forces your video card to not draw as many frames as it actually can (hence when the lag comes in). I would rather have screen tears then laggy mouse movement. But then again, that's because I'm serious about gaming. Screen tears happen when your fps does over your monitors refresh rate, so if I used a fps limit cvar for any game and limited my fps to 60fps, I would have no tears. No VSync needed. You can simply fix screen tearing by limited your fps with simple cvar commands. No VSync is needed. Only for a noob is needed (or wanted).

No...
But with vsync off, your graphics card will ALWAYS be trying to render as many frames as possible (even though none above your monitors refresh rate will ever get fully drawn to the screen) which leads to higher power consumption, higher temps, more noise, shorter lifespan of your card and just generally a **** idea.

Haven't you heard of a fps limiter? Most games have a FPS limit cvar you can set (if not all of them do). Just because you disable Vsync doesn't mean all your games will now run at 1000FPS. Most if not all games have a fps limiter.

 

[PsyMan]

I'd suggest to stop feeding it...

but you can do as you please, it's still funny.

 

[shoober420]

I don't need to "google it", I've a masters in Comp Sci. Unlike most 'gamers' I actually know what the **** I'm talking about. If your monitor has a refresh rate of 60Hz there is no graphics card on the planet that's going to make it draw more than 60 frames in a second, your reported FPS is not how many frames are being drawn by your monitor, just how many are being rendered by the graphics card, dumped into the cards memory and pushed to the monitor for processing and displaying (again if it's higher than your refresh rate the excess is discarded by the monitor, you don't ever see them).

Yeah dude this is common knowledge. You don't need a masters to know this. But the thing is, you may not see the frames being drawn that are above your refresh rate, but the game feels way smoother and responsive if you let it go above 60fps. You can for sure feel the difference between 60fps and 100+fps, and if you can't, I feel bad for you.

"Input lag" or perceived input lag comes from the frame that's been drawn on the monitor being too old (It has nothing to do with your keyboard & mouse input, apart from the inherent delay caused by your computer processing it to begin with). Double/triple buffering play a bigger part of it than the vsync, but the biggest factor by far is your monitors response and processing time which can be as high 30 or 40ms combined.

The thing is, VSync holds back the frames being drawn (hence were the lag comes into play). It forces your video card to slow down and not draw as many frames as it could.

Then again there are a few games that just do vSync wrong, instead of just delaying the visual output until the game gets the ok from the monitor, the engine pauses all processing. But that's pretty rare to see these days and it's a bug with the game, not an inherent problem to vSync

No matter what game it is, I can tell if someone has VSync enabled. The mouse movement is not as responsive and its just sluggish feeling. Its as simple as that. VSync causes sluggish mouse movement.

So in short, yes vSync can add a little processing time to a frame, but it's nowhere near as simple as "vSync lags games". It's rarely the largest factor affecting the response time, can easily be counter balanced by using a decent monitor, it improves the image quality and dramatically reduces the amount of work done by graphics card which will increase it's lifetime, reduce power consumption, reduce the heat generated and the noise.

It's a very, very easy trade off for me to make

Sadly, it is that simple. VSYNC LAGS GAMES. It doesn't improve image quality it just eliminates tearing which can easily be done with a fps limit console command. You don't need VSync to do this. You can simply limit your fps with a console command and it does what VSync does, JUST NO MOUSE LAG. Just because you disable VSync don't mean all the games will run at 1000fps, most games have an fps limit. If they don't, there is most likely a console command to limit the fps to whatever you desire, hence taking the stress off your monitor and video card. NO VSYNC NEEDED.

 

[barrybarryk]

Ugh limiting the frames doesn't eliminate tearing, even limiting it to half your monitors refresh rate wont guarantee no screen tearing because the video card isn't checking at what stage the monitor is in before pushing the frame across. THATS WHAT VSYNC DOES!

 

[shoober420]

I'd suggest to stop feeding it...

but you can do as you please, it's still funny.

I swear I'm not trolling. I'm just trying to educate people on the dangers of VSync and Metrosexual GUI's.

 

[PsyMan]

I swear I'm not trolling. I'm just trying to educate people on the dangers of VSync and Metrosexual GUI's.

Of course; since vsync lag is an issue limited only to windows 8 and this thread is all about windows 8... HEY WAIT A SEC!