Thinking of gettiing Vista SP2? HOLD YOUR HORSES!

[CodyValkyrie]

Take a read at this article. This is the summary I linked to:

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1740/windows_vista_sp1_vs_vista_sp2_release_candidate_p erformance/index12.html

I noticed a pretty big performance drop from my hard drives. I'm not happy at all about this... Back to SP1.

Of interest:

http://images.tweaktown.com/content/1/7/1740_9.png

[CodyValkyrie]

BTW, for those interested in uninstalling SP2, make sure you read the following:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948465

[CodyValkyrie]

The plot thickens!

http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/information/vista-sp1-vs-sp2/

[CodyValkyrie]

I would like to reiterate, before anyone goes off and goes nuts screwing things up to do a bit of research.

(edit, and sorry for all the posts. I didn't get any sleep last night trying to figure out what the heck is up with my computer!)

[harleyman]

Well the charts show very miminal HDD drop...

Of coarse that all depends on the rest of the equipment too....


I have Vista SP2 installed with no problems so far. And no drop in performance..

Hope you get yours sorted ....

[CodyValkyrie]

I think the problem I am getting is the issue with the minimum read speed. I am noticing a rather huge change in the speed of my hard drives. I'm testing my results against SP1 again, to be sure I'm not imagining things.

[harleyman]

I seriously doubt that you are imanigining things...


But I have found out that what a chart shows and what actually happens on your computer can be like night and day....

Its hard to think that just a slightly slower read speed could show itself as a big performance drop...

Heres hoping that you get it straightned out...:icon29:

[CodyValkyrie]

Well, sadly, early tests seem to confirm what I was seeing.

I first noticed it when I went to SP2, that while using FSX, I was having a heck of a time multitasking (pulling up charts, using FRAPS, etc). It would get so bad, I would literally have to wait at times in the minutes for an operation to occur. Even checking a forum post or my e-mail was frustrating. Having two monitors, this has always been critical, especially after dropping all my money on that i7 I have.

Once I rolled back to SP1, everything seems to have returned to normal. I posted this topic without delay while loading a free flight session. Not any noticable drop in performance. Wahoo!

I can't believe this fixed it. I grew a few hairs from this. I can't however guarantee this will be the magic bullet for everyone out there.

BTW, for those curious, here are my specs:

EVGA X58 SLI
Core i7 920 (C0) overclocked to 3.9GHz
BFG Tech Nvidia 8800GTX w/ 768 VRAM
3x1MB DDR3 Kingston HyperX 2000MHz (running at roughly 1900MHz for overclock).
3 Western Digital SATA II 32bit HDs (1x150GB, 2x250GB)
Windows Vista 64 Ultimate Edition

[harleyman]

Thats great news and very nice to know...


How about the fact that you are only running 3 gigs of high speed ram...Do you think that might figure into the multi-tasking nightmares?

[CodyValkyrie]

Nah, I rarely if ever go over 2.5-2.8 memory usage. Eventually I will upgrade, but this seemed to work well enough prior to utilizing SP2. With the speed of the RAM, it tends to dump tasks pretty quickly.

How odd....

[rwmarth]

Are you using nhancer? Maybe that could use a reinstall after upgrading to SP2 like youd have to with new video drivers....

[IanP]

I'm having no problems at all with SP2. In fact it fixed some problems I was having with other applications in Vista64.

[CodyValkyrie]

I have already tried several things...

Oddly, I found a significant perf increase when going back, but I found the REAL culprit. I may have raised the alarm too early.

I just checked, it appears that one of my DIMMS is indeed DEAD. I'm only reading 2GB!!! DAMNIT!

[gera]

I have reduced the number of "active" addon scenery--very much so--still using XP the loading time of (this) FSX is loooooooong and nothing I have done makes it faster....any ideas???

[stovall]

Cody, I was concerned that the loss of a DIMM was your problem. Same thing happened to me a while back with another motherboard and DIMM2 setup. There had been no Windows upgrade so the RAM memory is where I looked first.

Glad to hear the VISTA SP2 is not the culprit for you as it seems to be running very smoothly on my rig. As you probably know your DIMM should be guarrenteed for life and replacement should bring you back to speed.

[piperarcherpilot]

Same with IanP and others, I've had only good things happen after Vista SP2. The little stutter that was there in FSX is gone now, the framerate is slightly higher and much more stable, and other games like Rail Simulator and Silent Hunter both run much more smoothly and with better framerates. Sounds like a strange hardware specific issue you had. And, I agree, the charts and specs dont matter as long as the hands on performance is better. I'm running everything on a newer HP laptop and in general I couldnt be happier. Using Nhancer for my 8600GS card, I now get consistant framerates hovering around 20 in the Captain Sim 757 Pro v4.3 at Seattle with dense autogen.:applause: Before Vista SP2, the framerate was in the mid to upper teens and not stable at all.

Like the Best Buy Geek Squad guy told me a long time ago...every computer system is different, even if it's spec'd the same. Strange...

EDIT: Cody, I must have missed the post above about the 'dead' RAM. Sorry to hear that...

[CodyValkyrie]

Well, it is confirmed. It was a bad DIMM. I individually swapped each DIMM in, and found one of them completely unresponsive to the system. I'm glad it was the DIMM though, and not the board. I guess that 2000MHz that the RAM was rated for was just pushing too much.

I'm going to check on the warranty of my Kingston and see if I can RMA the SOB. If that doesn't work, I'll see if anyone is interested in buying two good 1GB Kingston 2000MHz HyperX DDR3 sticks.

Regardless, I ended up getting a 6GB kit of Corsair Dominators rated for 1600MHz and 8-8-8-24 timings. Amazingly, I got the RAM for nearly the same price I bought my original 3GB kit for. Now I have a bit more headroom for doing some rendering.

This has been a bad month for me... but I got a few goodies out of it. Just a few days ago, one of my old CRT monitors went belly up. I ended up with 2 new LCD widescreen monitors (my first!) which I picked both up for only $199. Now I have more desktop space than I know what to do with.

[FLighT01]

I gave in and downloaded SP2 for my Vista64 Ultimate . No changes in FSX perf that I can discern, but this is a dedicated FSX box with FSX on it's own drive, I don't do multitasking, or go on the net for anything but patches, (I use my old box for that stuff), and the Services I had turned off stayed off with no new ones added.

But, my O&O defrag 64 v8.6 got a problem and would hang at 63% on the same file when trying to do a Complete by Name defrag (but not on a Space defrag?). I left it on overnite and still stuck there. Anywho, I uninstalled O&O and deleted it's left over folder and registry key. Running Vista's defragger from command prompt presently and all is well, so far.

[Cazzie]

My performance is better, but the installation of SP2 for 64-bit Vista was not without its snafus. Forst, it removed all of my sound, nothing. I was finally able to get two speakers to work, but my computer would still not recognize the 5.1 surround sound set up built in to my MB. Second, FRAPS would slow FSX and FS9 to an absolute crawl. \

I resolved the FRAPS issue by simply uninstalling and reinstalling FRAPS. It has works fine since.

I resolved the first issue only by installing a SoundBlaster sound card that was in my now defunct velocity Micro. This should have been done before I went through a full day trying to fix the old sound. My sound is now better than ever.

Other than that, SP2 for some reason cleared up at least 20 GB on my HD, go figure how it did that. I can;t say as frame rates in FSX are any better, but there is certainly less stutter and hesitation. FS9 still performs as good as it can be.

Caz

[Dangerous Beans]

I've had no problems at all with SP2. Install went as smooth as silk and I havnt noticed any hardware or software related issues.
I havnt noticed any FPS difference with FSX but it does seem a bit smoother.


I have reduced the number of "active" addon scenery--very much so--still using XP the loading time of (this) FSX is loooooooong and nothing I have done makes it faster....any ideas???

gera, same thing here, under XP FSX takes ages to load anything, especialy the plane selection menu. Ive even had the task manager open while its running and it often says that FSX has stopped responding then sudenly it will start responding again.
I have noticed that if I start FSX and then shut it down and start it again it seems a little better after that.

Under Vista FSX always loads quite fast and never stops responding.

Just one of those things I guess, I've learnd to live with it.

[JimC1702]

I installed SP2 last night and, like Caz, I lost all sound. The sound card shows up and says it's working. I didn't have time to mess with it last night. This morning I discovered that sound is coming out of a headset that is plugged into the soundcard. Perhaps it is behaving the way it should, and the headset is cutting off the speakers which is the way I'd expect it to work but it never did before. I always had sound out both the speakers and the headset. I'll unplug it when I get home and find out.

Jim

[rwmarth]

I gave in and downloaded SP2 for my Vista64 Ultimate . No changes in FSX perf that I can discern, but this is a dedicated FSX box with FSX on it's own drive, I don't do multitasking, or go on the net for anything but patches, (I use my old box for that stuff), and the Services I had turned off stayed off with no new ones added.

But, my O&O defrag 64 v8.6 got a problem and would hang at 63% on the same file when trying to do a Complete by Name defrag (but not on a Space defrag?). I left it on overnite and still stuck there. Anywho, I uninstalled O&O and deleted it's left over folder and registry key. Running Vista's defragger from command prompt presently and all is well, so far.

May want to check your harddrive out. I had one that died on me, and that was one of the first signs of it failing - getting stuck and never finishing...

[FLighT01]

May want to check your harddrive out. I had one that died on me, and that was one of the first signs of it failing - getting stuck and never finishing...

Perfect! This box isn't even a year old.

[JimC1702]

Sheeesh, Microsoft strikes again. I had posted above about losing all sound after I installed Service Pack 2. That wasn't the worst of it.

Tonight I went to run FSX and as soon as I clicked on a plane, it crashed. I re-booted and ran it again, this time the menu screen was blank and it froze there.

Several more re-boots and several more attempts and every time it crashed, sometimes with the "fatal error" message, sometimes not. Just as I was about to restore to before the SP2 install, I decided to run DXDIAG and found that the SP2 install had installed a real old video driver (169.25).

I went to the Dell Support site and downloaded their latest nVidia driver and installed it and **knock on wood**, FSX ran fine. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that was the problem.

If you have issues after installing SP2, take a look at your drivers. Why in the world Microsoft would install older drivers into a new Service Pack is beyond me.

Jim

[Dangerous Beans]

Jim, there arnt any video drivers in SP2 but Windows Update does list drivers sometimes as an optional update.
My Vista install is still running the 182.08 drivers I installed ages ago but WU is listing nVidea display and network drivers for me, I just ignore them.

My advise on useing WU is to turn off automatic updates and check for them yourself on a regular basis.
When it says that updates are available dont just hit the button to install updates, always click to check available updates first.

I woudnt be suprised if thats what happened to your sound an WU installed updated sound drivers without you knowing.

[jimjones]

To update to sp2, since I was not offered sp2 in the first 2 days, I was under the impression I needed to load all the optional upgrades MS had offered but had not been installed. So I installed those as well as IE8. All seems well except that everytime I start IE8 my Norton Internet security indicates that the phishing has been turned off which must then be activated. Also on occasion, perhaps once every 3 days or so, the Norton Framework is shutdown, thus no protection. When that occurs I immediately restart Vista to re-establish protection.

Don't know what program install may have caused this or if somehow the pc was compromised by malware during the process of updating to sp2.

[hey_moe]

Sorry to hear you guys having so much trouble. I installed SP2 but I stop using Vista for any game playing due to it being a hog for resources. I know some in here get 50FPS but on my slow a$$ system I couldn't. I have FSX on XP Pro and no problem. It is on a separate HD and the only program I have on it is a defragger. I have been using Windows 7 as my main OS. It too is on a separate HD with no issues. I need to install FSX back on it. Windows last week sent the beta testers a new updated copy that will carry us to 07/10/2010. Of course you had to do a clean install. Vista kinda reminds me of the OS,ME if you guys can remember. It's like every other release of a new OS is a problem child for MS. What really blows my mind is the different effects it has on computers....Mike

[JimC1702]

This is directly from Microsoft's Support site:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948481

"Windows Vista service packs update several system files and device drivers. When Windows Vista service packs are installed, some older drivers are reinstalled. If these older drivers do not reinstall correctly, sound problems can occur"

Jim