Win XP SP2 to Include DirectX 9.0C??

24 Jun, 2004 at 2:36pm ET Article published in Tech

According to The Inquirer the latest version of Windows XP Service Pack 2 has DirectX 9.0c inside.

The latest version of Windows XP service pack 2 has DirectX 9.0c inside.

Which is great. But this service pack is still not officially launched, and according to reports on other sites appears to have suffered some delays.

The people that are getting MSDN packages from Microsoft are already able to download it and some of them told us that they’ve done so, but we haven’t.

All drivers from 61.34 have support for Shaders 3.0, it appears.

Source: The Inquirer

Comments

24 Jun 2004 ~ 5:11pm Gobbles yeppers it does... I just shot these on my lappy...

Gobbles
24 Jun 2004 ~ 5:22pm TheBaron i need to figure out why the hell SP2 is so unstable on my machine
24 Jun 2004 ~ 8:53pm Zeni Weird, I have SP2 RC2 installed and it lists my DX version as 9.0D...
25 Jun 2004 ~ 12:08am Gobbles which version of release candidate 2 zeni...
you have to look at the build number. You may have a more recent build number.
screen shot it in jpeg format and post it...

Gobbles
25 Jun 2004 ~ 9:01am Zeni Ah, strange, just seems to be the "info" page of NvMixer that lists it as DX9.0d, just ran DxDiag and it comes up as 9.0c.

Confusing to say the least....

From DxDiag.
From NvMixer
25 Jun 2004 ~ 10:44am Gobbles

TheBaron wrote:

i need to figure out why the hell SP2 is so unstable on my machine

odd... I have actually had no stability issues which is odd as I was expecting some. The firewall manager however cannot give me status on my symantec AV corp edition v8. Other than that I have had no problems.. But this laptop is ultra stable anyway...

Gobbles
25 Jun 2004 ~ 12:10pm Straight_Man SP2 install on my box slowed down XP Pro by 25-35%, OVERALL (visible slowdown). I could see diffs such that I did an uninstall of the SP2 RC2 Tech preview after four hours of looking at the performance hit I got

I will give you an idea of some of what is happening. Swap commit doubled, and RAM and CPU load went to 1.25X what they were with SP1a plus the partsof SP2 that were RTM'd in WindowsUpdate version 4. Right now, Mary Jo Foley is telling Ziff Davis that it is quite possible that Longhorn will need a GIG of RAM to be stable. I had 512 MB of Corsair PC3200 LLPt in the P4 at 3.1 GHz running at time of install. SP2 is swapping so dang much that system performance is relatively BAD on same hardware at THREE GIG processing levels thta I realyl wonder what is happening on slower boxes. On my box, the uninstall of SP2 RC2 Tech preview worked fine, and took about 25 minutes overall to even uninstall-- including reboot. the install of SP2 RC2 Tech preview wants TWO successive restarts (with some run time between them) of XP Pro to reach normal speed for that pack. First restart gives base install commit. SECOND restart after a run of an hour gives a performance increase. I based the slowdown on the result after teh second restart, and the performance return to about 97% of normal after uninstall on a two restart change-forward and change-back process.

SP2 is not at all RAM efficient, the protection from security issues results in much more RAM in use as concommitent base load. On a 256 MB (RAM) system, I think the system would break or be not very usable, and do so in strange ways.

So, amelioration, which I tried as part of a field test here, was to defrag all HDs. Machine loaded apps VISIBLY faster thereafter. The SP2 late-beta (Release Candidates from Microsft are semi-public betas) release eats RAM big time for XP itself . And results in apps being swapped more. At 512 MB RAM in box it was visibly slower but stable, zero BSODS. FAST RAM was used, very fast box was used. ID I ran one major app at a time and culled many things from running in background, I got almost normal run performance out of that one major app and could run two majors at once usably, but on a three GHz box I should be able to run 3-4 majors (and do here on my box) in a usable way.

What I got with the SP2 pre-release test package was not DirectX 9.0c, it was something that is more properly called 9.0d or 9.0e. 9.0c test beta was officially never released to masses by Microsoft. It was pulled while in beta form.

The one exception to this performance was Internet Explorer 6.0 SP2 that came with it. I could browse faster than with 6.0 SP1. At this point, I suspect that Ms might have a RTM form of the full XP SP2 out in LATE July in reality-- at earliest, adn assuming that an RC3 is not released first to handle RAM usage issues or try to handle them. BUT, they need to work on how much RAM XP grabs for iteslf using SP2 before that or they will get a mess with boxes in the 2-2.4 GHz range as far as performance. MANY of those boxes came with 256 MB of RAM.

Also, SP2 tech preview hooks to Version 5 of Windows update, which is not only itself in beta, but is feeding beta updates. Uninstalling SP2 RC2 Tech Preview rolls abck to version 4 of Widnwos Update which is current production and RTM version.

NO WONDER MICROSFT says NOT to install on production boxes. yuo get things that are beta in updates to this pack also, as well as IT being late beta and NOT a release-to-masses (RTM) version itself. Be very careful with installing it on a machine that is not tightly ratio timed and that is not completely a test box, and does not have LOTS of RAM or a REAL fast HD storage bus running, PLEASE!

HTH to explain, but telling folks to double or quadruple RAM AND get much higher performance and quality of RAM to run SP2 is not something I will like doing-- AT ALL!

If its unstable, best things you can do are two things-- run it for several hours, let the reporting software report, then uninstall the thing until the RTM SP2 version comes out. This is not by any means a normal service pack-- this is an XP subversion revision with many files loaded (in my case, about 3,000 fiels were changed, and the kernel was replaced amongst a lot of other things, all at once).

Expect Longhorn to have a suggested RAM requirement of about 1 GIG, and a BARE minimum of 512-768 MB to run under full production load, and to requrie a fast overall box to begin with. For SP2 of XP, I would say that 512 MB of RAM is marginal on low side. Taking one stick of 256 out on my box broke highly visible things (that fixed themselves when the box was returned to 512 MB) and gave such a radical decrease in performance that I would have to say such a box is unusable with SP2.

So, one other fix set (hardware change and timings changes) might be to take RAM to 768-1024 MB in size for performance betterment and to take box down from a more extreme OC to a more conservative OC or to stock and see if SP2 is stable but slower.
25 Jun 2004 ~ 12:42pm Thrax Longhorn is capable of running with requirements as low as Windows 2000, and performing like it.
25 Jun 2004 ~ 10:07pm Spinner

Gobbles wrote:

which version of release candidate 2 zeni...
you have to look at the build number. You may have a more recent build number.
screen shot it in jpeg format and post it...

Gobbles

There is only one build classified as RC2, that is v2149. So far I haven't been made aware of any newer builds having been made available from Microsoft to anyone. Correct me if I'm wrong. But even if there was a newer build available I believe only one build can carry the RC2 label. Any newer builds from now on will be the build up (if you excuse the pun) to the final release version. Presuming there is not going to be a RC3.

Nevertheless, 9.0c here aswell.

Gobbles wrote:

The firewall manager however cannot give me status on my symantec AV corp edition v8.

Indeed, this is an issue which has improved by each newer build, but not something that is working flawlessly. Certainly room for improvement in the Security Center.

Cheers