Windows 7 Performance Tools - Performance Tools Kit 4.1.1
Internet Explorer 8 will be not only an apex of performance, but also the next major iteration of the Windows client, according to Microsoft.
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1.9.2008 Is it game over for Windows Vista?
The saviour that was meant to be, Vista Service Pack 1, isnt. In some cases its actually a performance decrease for an operating system already grinding up-to-date PCs to a halt.
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25 Game over
Google's Name Game
Backlash and confusion have dogged Google's plans to scan millions of books, and, while continuing with its efforts, it has opted for a name change from Google Print to Google Book Search.
"We don't think that this new name will change what some folks think about this program," says Jen Grant, product marketing manager for Google, via the company's Web site. "But we do believe it will help a lot of people understand better what we're doing."
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20.11.2005 New Need For Speed Game is ready
The latest EA investors meeting was a great opportunity for the company's boss, John Riccitiello to unveil a host of new and exciting projects.
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18.6.2008 Microsoft Game Testers Wanted
Microsofts Game Technology Group is looking for official software testers for their upcoming projects.
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21.7.2006 Microsoft Teasing New Game Device?
A new viral Web site at notfornoobs.com has launched that appears to tease an upcoming game-related device by Microsoft and hardware manufacturer Razer.
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21.8.2006 Microsoft to Share Game Ad Revenue
Casual game developers will soon be able to share in some of the revenue from MSN Games thanks to a new system developed by Microsoft. The new option is available immediately, and could mean as much as $250,000 in shared revenue for the five most popular titles.
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12.2.2007 New York Police Department calls for boycott of game
The New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and the city's largest police union are calling for a boycott of Activision?s upcoming True Crime: Streets of New York City, calling it "an outrage."
The "mature" rated game is set in New York with a fictional version of the cities police department whose members are depicted as having no problem roughing up suspects and breaking into buildings without search warrants among other naughty acts.
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Free Game from MS! Play Carioca Rummy
In the off chance that you have mastered Solitare, are bored with Minesweeper and like me, have no idea how to play Hearts, Microsoft has a new card game for you to download and install.
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27.3.2006 Microsoft to Acquire In-Game Advertising Pioneer Massive Inc.
Massive?s technology for weaving dynamic, relevant ads into video games will extend next-generation advertising across Microsoft properties and beyond.
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5.5.2006 Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Beta1)
XNA Game Studio Express enables individuals and small teams to more easily create video games using new, optimized cross-platform gaming libraries for Windows and Xbox 360.
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30.8.2006 Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Beta 2)
XNA Game Studio Express enables hobbyists, academics and small, indie game developers to more easily create video games using new, optimized cross-platform gaming libraries based on .NET for Windows and Xbox 360.
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2.11.2006 Burger King Confirms Xbox 360 Game Dev
Turns out that despite all those breaking into people's homes, running across football fields and trying to shove people off high rises, the King isn't as cheerful a guy as one might suspect.
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12.4.2006 Game Developer Says Vista Breaks Casual Online Games
The world is still absorbing all the added features and security of Windows Vista, game developers and casual gamers may have something to be unhappy about when it comes to the Microsofts operating system.
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31.1.2007 Microsoft shares rosy update on its in-game advertising strategy
Microsoft is pinning its hopes on in-game advertising as a future moneymaker for the company across not just Xbox Live, but also MSN, Windows Live and other Microsoft properties.
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16.3.2007 Halo 3 Becomes Fastest-Selling Pre-Ordered Video Game in History
Blockbuster consumer brands including 7-Eleven, Burger King Corp., Comcast, Mountain Dew and Pontiac unveil unprecedented support for the launch of this years biggest entertainment event.
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9.8.2007 Windows Performance Blog
As I said in yesterdays introduction, my job as an engineer on the Windows Vista team is to improve performance. I wanted to look at a study that measure a key area that we focused on for Windows Vista consistent responsiveness during the times that matter most to users (when starting up their machine, after being idle, and when you are under the gun running tons of apps, etc.).
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29.12.2006 Windows 7 Performance Pillars
Attempting to avoid the rather sluggish experience that has become inherently associated with Windows Vista RTM, Microsoft promised, through the voice of Steven Sinofsky, that Windows 7 would not set a single bit out of Redmond until it would meet a set of performance criteria.
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29.8.2008 Windows 7 Performance, Explained
From startup to the way it handles hardware resources available, power consumption and applications, Windows 7 has been applauded as delivering a level of performance superior to that of Windows Vista, even as early as pre-Beta Build 6801.
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29.11.2008 Windows Vista Performance and Tuning
Windows Vista and SP1 focus on delivering greater performance and overall system responsiveness. By striking a balance between speed and responsiveness, Windows Vista and SP1 deliver a level of performance that has the greatest positive impact on the systems usability.
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31.7.2008 Windows 7 -- Approach to System Performance
Many folks have commented and written email about the topic of performance of Windows. The dialog has been wide rangingfolks consistently want performance to improve (of course).
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28.8.2008 Squeezing Every Drop of Performance Out of Windows 7
In the sense in which Microsoft is building Windows 7 as the evolution of Windows Vista, the next iteration of the Windows client will perform as if on steroids, compared to its precursor.
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17.12.2008 Windows 7 beta 1 performance test
How does Windows 7 beta 1 compare to Vista and XP in terms of performance? Thats a question thats been hitting my inbox regularly over the past few weeks. Lets see if we cant answer it!
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2.1.2009 Windows Vista Imaging and Installation Performance
Ideally, installation of an operating system is two fairly simple steps. First, copy all the OS files to the hard disk.
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4.10.2006 Windows 7 on Steroids Next-Generation Performance Boosters
Yes, the silence around Windows 7 is certainly deafening, disconcerting and certainly a source of frustration for end users, but Microsoft is building the next iteration of Windows.
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20.5.2008 The Raw Performance Parallel Universe of Windows 7
Windows 7 more so than any other Windows client will be at the core of the transition to manycore hardware.
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11.10.2008 Windows 7 Increased Performance and Optimal Use of Available Hardware
icrosoft is optimizing Windows 7 in order to increase performance, and, in this context, the dispatcher lock is one of the components that has got cut off.
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6.1.2009 Building a High Performance Windows 7 PC
With Windows 7 release candidate just around the corner, the other day I was asked to spec out a high performance PC suitable for Windows 7 64-bit, This system would also be a great Vista system.
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15.4.2009 Understanding Windows 7 New Levels of Performance and Reliability
For an operating system that required unmatched hardware resources, Windows Vista failed to translate the horsepower available into sheer speed. The same is not the case for Windows 7, as the evolution from Vista brings new levels of performance and reliability.
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11.8.2009Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance
Steven Sinofsky: One of the areas of any release of Windows that receives a significant amount of testing and scrutiny is the performance of
graphicsdesktop graphics all the way to the most extreme CAD and game graphics. The amazing breadth of hardware supported for Windows and the broad
spectrum of usage scenarios contributes to a vibrant ecosystem with many different goalsfrom just the basics to the highest frame rates on multiple
monitors possible. In engineering Windows 7 we set out to improve the real world performance of graphics as well as continue to improve the most
extreme elements of graphics...
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26.04.2009AMD Works with Leading Developers to Drive High Performance DirectX 10.1 Gaming
AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that leading game developers are working with AMD to create a new generation of game titles utilizing Microsoft
DirectX® 10.1 to deliver improved features and performance, and an overall better game experience. Developers including Electronic Arts Phenomic
Studio and its forthcoming fantasy online real-time strategy game Battleforge™, SEGA and its futuristic military real-time strategy game Stormrise,
and NHN Games and its 3D role-playing game Cloud 9, all exploit DirectX 10.1 for advanced gaming performance and visual realism. Only AMD graphics
offer top-to-bottom DirectX 10.1 support: the ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 series and the new ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 series.
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25.08.2008Optimize game settings for
performance and looks
Gaming writer Joel Durham, Jr.
explains how to configure game
settings so they fit with your
hardware configuration and
provide the perfect level of
detail for gaming...
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04.01.2006Company of Heroes videocard
performance
The new real-time strategy
game set in WWII, Company of
Heroes, delivers full
cinematic detail, and in doing
so, it requires quite a lot of
processing power. With all the
visual enhancements enabled,
Company of Heroes looks
stunning, easily making one of
the best looking RTS games of
all time.
However,
before purchasing this game or
even considering a hardware
upgrade, it will be important
to know first if your computer
will run it, and second how
good it will actually look
while at it. There is indeed a
massive difference between low
and high quality settings in
CoH, suggesting older systems
will still be able to run this
title. But then again, having
visual settings set at their
maximum really does this game
justice.
We have
set up a system for testing
Company of Heroes performance
with 14 different graphics
cards from both ATI and
Nvidia, using three different
in-game quality
configurations, at three
different resolutions, plus
quality comparison screenshots
to boot.
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26.09.2006Bioshock videocard performance
Around this time last year we got our first little taste of what could be expected from Bioshock, when 2K released an impressive 14 minute gameplay
trailer. Bioshock is considered by its developers to be the "spiritual successor" of the well acclaimed System Shock 2. There is much more to this
game than meets the eye, which can be discovered when playing the 1.8GB demo which was released just weeks ago.
The full version of
Bioshock has also been released for both the PC and the Xbox 360, allowing us to purchase a copy and do a full analysis of how the current crop of
videocards do in this next-gen FPS. The game uses a modified version of the Unreal Engine 3, also used by Epic's Gears of War and upcoming Unreal
Tournament 3 game. Given that Bioshock is a single-player only game, we were a little amazed by the hype that surrounded it, yet the fact it offers
breathtaking visuals and while the gameplay itself is quite good, the jaw-dropping visuals keep you entertained right till the very end.
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06.09.2007Microsoft: Build Your Own Xbox
Game
Microsoft plans to open up its
Xbox 360 game development
platform to the masses with
the launch of XNA Game Studio
Express, due out during the
holiday season. Anyone with a
Windows XP computer would be
able to use the software,
available for an annual $99
fee...
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14.08.2006IBM Shops Cell to Indie Game Developers
This morning, IBM, in
conjunction with Vivendi game
developer High Moon Studios
and Canadian high-performance
developer RapidMind, launched
a coast-to-coast event to
interest developers into
building a new gaming platform
around the Cell...
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21.02.2007Microsoft: Another Vista Reliability & Performance Update
Vista’s performance is one of those topics that won’t be exhausted until Windows Seven hits RTM. It all comes down to trade-offs. Ever
since the features of Vista were finalized, Microsoft tried to tip the scale the other way by focusing on performance, with the obvious limitation of
not disabling any services. Updates regarding performance and stability are numerous, but most have not hit Windows Update as they are not quite ready
(preview releases). The Windows Serviceability Team wants feedback on one such update, available for download at the Microsoft Download Center, before
its expected release on Windows Update in January.
Read full story.....
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13.12.2007Call of Duty: World at War performance in-depth
Considering the high expectations built around Call of Duty: World at War it will be interesting to see how the game stacks up against other competing
shooters, but perhaps most importantly how it compares or improves upon last year's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare which was an all-around success
on the PC platform. 'World at War' was built using an enhanced version of the CoD 4 engine which should come as great news for PC gamers. Not
only do we expect this game to look really good because of that, but it should also fair quite well on systems with modest specifications.
Read full story.....
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17.11.2008Windows 7 HD and SSD Performance Analyzed
Today we're going to look at how various types of disks perform under Windows 7, both of the traditional platter based variety and new solid state
disks. We're not only curious about how disk performance changes between the operating systems, but if Windows 7's new solid-state specific
optimizations and tuning give you even greater performance compared to Vista.
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29.05.2009Gaming Performance: Windows Vista SP1 vs. XP SP3
Even as Microsoft tries to shove Windows Vista down the collective and unwilling throat of computer users worldwide, the company is still perfecting
the well-aged and well-loved Windows XP. The latter of the two operating systems just received its third (and evidently last) service pack.
<...> Of course, with the release of a new service pack comes a huge, pressing question: How does it compare to Windows Vista and its own
recent update, Service Pack 1, in the game performance department? Vista, of course, has been plagued by criticism that games run on it don't perform
as well as they do in Windows XP, even though most of the problems were due to early graphics drivers and have gradually been worked out.
Come with us as we install XP SP3 and take it for a test drive, and more importantly compare it to Vista SP1 with a batch of performance
tests. Though DirectX 10 is Vista-only, many a gamer has sworn not to upgrade; will XP SP3 cement their decision, or has Vista and its drivers matured
enough to change a few minds?
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12.05.2008Crysis demo performance in-depth
Crysis is a highly anticipated first person shooter developed exclusively for the PC by Crytek, the makers of the award-winning Far Cry. The demo
offers PC gamers a quick look at what will possibly be the most advanced FPS ever created, you just have to swallow the huge 1.8GB download first. Im
sure many will agree that the demo is well worth the download though, offering the entire first level of the game which represents "roughly 45
minutes" of pure gameplay.
Today we are going to see how the various mid-range and high-end graphics cards handle this new and
exciting first person shooter. There will also be some brief visual quality comparisons along with some CPU scaling and DX9 vs. DX10 performance
charts. The single-player demo supports both DX10 and DX9 rendering in Vista while Windows XP users are limited to DX9. While the game has been said
to include 64-bit support, the demo can only be run in 32-bit mode, so there are no 32-bit vs. 64-bit comparisons just yet.
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29.10.2007MS, Doritos Team on Arcade Game Contest
While it had previously called
on developers to produce a
game for Xbox Live Arcade,
Microsoft is now turning to
consumers for the next big
game idea. Through a
partnership with Doritos, five
finalists will be selected
among Doritos-theme game
concept submissions...
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22.06.2007Microsoft investors eye rosy holiday quarter
Investors will be looking for signs from Microsoft Corp. of a strong holiday quarter for Xbox 360 video game consoles and new computers loaded with
Windows Vista when the company reports results this week.
The world's largest software maker posts quarterly results on Thursday
and investors expect the company to get a boost from the continued adoption of new versions of Windows and Office as well as a solid performance at
its video game unit thanks to the release of the blockbuster game title, "Halo 3."
The shares are up 8 percent over the last
month -- outperforming the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Nasdaq and S&P 500 indices -- and 25 of 34 analysts covering the company have a positive
rating on the stock.
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24.10.2007A new way to monitor your Windows systems' performance
Windows Sentinel is a joint project with the exo.performance.network, founded by InfoWorld Contributing Editor Randall C. Kennedy, that enables
InfoWorld readers to monitor system, process, and network performance while contributing to a global repository of information that will yield an
unprecedented, real-time image of Windows-based system performance and behavior.
Register below to download the Windows Sentinel
software agent, which enables you to monitor the performance of up to three Windows desktop or server systems (including Vista systems) and set alerts
for when your thresholds are exceeded. You can display this performance information on a personalized Web page, a desktop widget, or a widget that
works on iPhone, iPod Touch, and Symbian devices.
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15.04.2008How many FLOPS are in game consoles?
Jon Peddie: Floating Point Operations Per Second - FLOPS - one of the more obscure processor performance indicators, and one of the oldest ones. Over
time, it has been modified with prefixes such as M (mega), G (giga), T (tera) and will soon get a P (peta). Tera describes a million millions - one
trillion (10
12) - which is a whole lot of anything whether it is cycles (Hertz), bytes, dollars, or FLOPS.
Recently I
was asked how many TFLOPS are in all the game consoles shipped to date. There are two answers to that question. You can look at it from the
perspective of all the game consoles built and you can look at this question with specific consoles in mind.
Lets look at
the combined TFLOPS rating of all game consoles, which actually provides two answers as well.
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26.05.2008TechEd 2007: Microsoft May Build XNA Game Developers' Community
During a TechEd demonstration
of arcade game development
using XNA Game Studio Express
for novices to the genre,
Microsoft Game Technology
Group community program
manager David Weller stated
his company is exploring the
possibility of assembling an
online community of XNA game
developers, not only for
sharing with but also for
marketing and selling
their works to one another...
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08.06.2007Overview Series: Windows Vista Performance and Tuning
Windows Vista and SP1 focus on delivering greater performance and overall system responsiveness. By striking a balance between speed and
responsiveness, Windows Vista and SP1 deliver a level of performance that has the greatest positive impact on the systems usability. This guide looks
at the following areas of performance improvement:
- Making configuration changes that help a computer feel more responsive when you
use it.
- Using hardware to boost the actual physical speed of a computer.
- Making configuration changes that help a computer to start
faster.
- Making the computer more reliable may help increase performance.
- Monitoring performance occasionally so that you can stop
problems before they get too big.
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29.07.2008Take-Two Postpones 'Manhunt' Release
The future of Take-Two's
Manhunt 2 came into
some doubt Thursday after the
game developer decided to hold
off on releasing the game.
Originally scheduled for July
10, it is now unclear when the
game will be released...
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22.06.2007BioShock Frame Rates: DirectX 9 Vs. DirectX 10
Want a serious performance boost in BioShock? Play it on DirectX 9. Sad, but true. As DirectX 9/10 hybrid games have trickled to market, we've been
testing them to see whether the newer, Vista-only API library is worth its salt. We've done it with Company of Heroes, Lost Planet, and more. In
every case, DirectX 9 performance was far better than that of DirectX 10.
Add another game to the pile. Using FRAPS to measure
frame rates, we've discovered that BioShock plays much more smoothly on DirectX 9. We ran the informal test on a Vista machine with an AMD ATI Radeon
HD 2900 XT graphics card, an Intel QX6700 CPU overclocked to 3.19 GHz, and 4GB of memory.
Playing through five very similar
minutes of the game with FRAPS and timing the frames per second, we shot up a batch of splicers in DX10 and then in DX9, with all other settings being
equal (high quality defaults at 1680x1050). In DirectX 10, FRAPS showed an average of 61.658 fps; in DirectX 9, the average was 80.300 fps.
The game looks pretty much the same in either mode. You certainly don't notice a difference in graphical splendor when you're running
breakneck through the Rapture, dodging grenades thrown by splicers while looking for the telekinesis upgrade.
While we continue
to wait for a game built upon DirectX 10 from the ground up to wow us with its performance, evidence mounts that DirectX 10 just isn't all it's
cracked up to be compared with its predecessor.
winbeta.org -
23.08.2007
