59 replies to this topic

[bladexdsl]

i think it depends on what gfx card your using also well i'm using an nvidia 500 series card and i've never had any problems whatsoever.

[maceman]

I think that people really having issues with win7 & VP simply have other issues unrelated to win7 or just don't have things optimized, but they blame win7 for it.

I agree with that. I must be fair and state that I am using my main office computer right now, and running hdmi cables out the back of my cab to it... I haven't a dedicated Mobo and such ready...so I suspect many of my fps problems are from previous installations and such.....

I still think from the posted results we are seeing at the fps thread at hyperpin that XP seems to be performing higher than Win7...but there are not enough statistics to judge. Everyone needs to post, myself included, so we have real figures and facts i suppose.

Maceman

[bladexdsl]

well i get 180-200 fps

Edited by bladexdsl, 07 May 2011 - 04:53 AM.

[Blitz17]

I think there are certainly some people with Win7 problems that don't have it setup correctly or optimized for peak performance. But I would take issue with just writing off the whole issue at that. I think Rob is spot on about defining the advantages of Win7 over XP and using a 64bit OS over 32bit. I run Win7 on 3 home PCs and love it. For everyday computing I would pick Win7 every time over XP. It is not even close. But for my dedicated pinball cab that is not connected to the internet and that is not used for anything other than playing VP and FP pinball tables XP works better. Mainly for 2 reasons. 1. I like the added benefits of Blurs/swamwyze FPLaunch script which adds loading, pause, and exit screens. With Win7 my loading and exiting of tables would lose focus and I would have to alt/tab to get back to the active screen. I would see the taskbar during loading and exit. Win7 and/or Nvidia graphic cards manages the active windows different than it does in XP. Reason 2. The Future Pinball backglass would only show up as the active Window using Nvidia driver 260.99. Five newer driver releases would break the FP backglass.

Rob, I know how you feel about Nvidia cards so no need to go into a lengthy response about how ATI is better than Nvidia. In my experience I disagree with that but perhaps the newer ATI cards are better. I have an ATI 4850 1G and I never could get the tables to render well. Regardless, today I have an Nvidia GTX 460 and I want FP to work with the newest drivers and I want to use Blur's FPLaunch without my cab losing focus or seeing the taskbar during loading and exit. In the end XP was the answer. Running VP and FP which both are built on a much older code base I don't feel using XP, agreed a weaker OS than Win 7, reduces the functionality or performance of a dedicated pinball cab but rather improves it.

[NicToria]

I actually built my cab with Windows 7 x64 bit and had it running ok. I experience all of the minor problems Blur mentioned. I finally decided to switch to XP and I am very glad for it. The cab runs awesome now. Tables run smoother. Blur's/samwyze FPLuanch script runs great. It is very nice knowing I can turn it on and it all works. No more windows losing focus intermittently. In fact oddly I can now overclock my CPU where before it would fail the OC on windows 7. Anyways, I can't recommend enough using XP for your pinball cab. I love Windows 7. Use it on 3 other home PCs. But XP is best for VP and FP.

UT-O

[maceman]

well i get 180-200 fps

I meant posting results at hyperpin so they are all in one spot. There is a template as well....

Unfortunately, 180-200 fps means nothing. Is that at idle, is that while playing, which game? etc....

Most of the 'studdery' games that are being tested are coming out at around 300 fps -800 fps at idle on XP.

http://www.hyperspin...ead.php?t=12846

Thanx.

[007]

Well, I took the plunge and got XP 64 bit.

So far it's running fantastically. VPinMAME, UVP, everything works!
It's noticeably faster than 32 bit, I used to get stuttering on multiballs on some tables, now they run smoothly.

The only difficulty I've had was that I had to manually resize some images that were very large, or else they wouldn't show when playing.
A bit strange, as I've never had to do that on the 32 bit. Then again, it's a different driver for the graphics.

Happy Days!

[numiah]

Well, I took the plunge and got XP 64 bit.

So far it's running fantastically. VPinMAME, UVP, everything works!
It's noticeably faster than 32 bit, I used to get stuttering on multiballs on some tables, now they run smoothly.

The only difficulty I've had was that I had to manually resize some images that were very large, or else they wouldn't show when playing.
A bit strange, as I've never had to do that on the 32 bit. Then again, it's a different driver for the graphics.

Happy Days!

Grats !

With what gfx drivers you ended up using ?

[007]

Nvidia 270.61 desktop winxp 64bit

I have Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX

[rob046]

You are right about much of that but missing one big point. VP and all the software around it was not written for Win7 or 64-bit. It would be different if the software was updated to work correctly and efficiently with either options, but it's not. Other than horsepower for the added textures and alpha ramps etc, along with multi monitor set ups, the biggest and best is not the true solution to a program that is nearly as old as XP.

I think the jury is still out. I am not even sure DX11 gives you any advantage in VP. This isn't a gaming system people are setting up. It serves a very specific role. It runs fine on Win 7 so far that I've seen, but it is by no means much better than XP. It really needs a rebuild from the ground up if we want to see any massive improvements

VP is DX7, so of course DX11 makes no difference. I'm saying win7x64 is great just as an overall OS. If I were building a VP only cabinet then I probably would go with XP x64 cuz though VP is x32, you want more than 3gb ram. But since most people aren't building cabs & do run apps & games other than VP, then win7x64 is the way to go.

[rob046]

Rob, I know how you feel about Nvidia cards so no need to go into a lengthy response about how ATI is better than Nvidia. In my experience I disagree with that but perhaps the newer ATI cards are better. I have an ATI 4850 1G and I never could get the tables to render well. Regardless, today I have an Nvidia GTX 460 and I want FP to work with the newest drivers and I want to use Blur's FPLaunch without my cab losing focus or seeing the taskbar during loading and exit. In the end XP was the answer. Running VP and FP which both are built on a much older code base I don't feel using XP, agreed a weaker OS than Win 7, reduces the functionality or performance of a dedicated pinball cab but rather improves it.

Yes, the newer ATI cards are worlds better than the 4xxx series or older. Whenever I talk about ATI vs Nvidia, I make that much clear. You can end up achieving similar performance with either brand of card, though I say ATI gives more bang for your buck. I got a $99 ATI card that performs about as well as my $350 GTX 570 with a hefty OC, then a $200 ATI card that performs as well or better than that.
Nvidia is better now with the newest drivers, so it would be nice if things stayed that way & nvidia stayed consistent with performance. With an old 2D program like VP, driver updates really shouldn't be changing performance as drastically as I've seen some do. I know with ATI things were much more consistent across all driver versions.
Just wanted to clear that up, & I'm on nvidia right now, so my opinions aren't that black & white on the issue. I might recommend ATI or Nvidia to people depending on their budget & what they are wanting the card to do for them.

As for this cab friendly stuff. As I said above, when I post I never know who I'm posting to. Cab user? Desktop user? Both? I think we need segregation! While most cab users are posters around here, I know the majority of VP users have setups like myself, where VP is just one of many things we do.
So when you mention "Blur's FPLaunch" & you cab losing focus or whatever, I have no clue what you are talking about. If these are important things to cab users, & XP helps with these things, then obviously do what works best. Though it sure would be nice to see VP & perhaps its side programs get optimized for newer OS's. win7x64 of course has the potential to do more for VP, but VP has to be optimized for it.

[bladexdsl]

do the 500 series nvidia cards work in xp with vp? 550 Ti and GT 520.

Edited by bladexdsl, 08 May 2011 - 01:29 AM.

[Mitchell]

I would stick to Windows XP for VP because it works better on it with everything. Most people still using Windows XP to play VP tables. NVIDIA cards are the best.

Windows 7, it not very friendly because it won't let VP work right beyond VP 9.0.9.

Edited by Mitchell, 08 May 2011 - 01:59 AM.

[bladexdsl]

Windows 7, it not very friendly because it won't let VP work right beyond VP 9.0.9.

such as?

[Ignus Fast]

I'm torn on this issue, and haven't seen any resolution for the issues I've seen....

Windows 7 (Home x86 AND Ultimate x64) - Visual Pinball and Future Pinball generally run extremely well. But Hyperpin seems to have some severe slowdown issues with Windows 7 that makes it tough to use. Takes forever to start up, and again every time you enter and exit a pinball table.

Windows XP - More visual pinball tables have issues with stutter (MB is slow/jumpy, Monopoly is a complete slideshow), but Hyperpin is *blazingly* fast.

I'm going to try tweaking both, since it's a dual-boot install, but it might be easier to make Visual Pinball faster than wait for a fix for Hyperpin...

[Blitz17]

Rob, I know how you feel about Nvidia cards so no need to go into a lengthy response about how ATI is better than Nvidia. In my experience I disagree with that but perhaps the newer ATI cards are better. I have an ATI 4850 1G and I never could get the tables to render well. Regardless, today I have an Nvidia GTX 460 and I want FP to work with the newest drivers and I want to use Blur's FPLaunch without my cab losing focus or seeing the taskbar during loading and exit. In the end XP was the answer. Running VP and FP which both are built on a much older code base I don't feel using XP, agreed a weaker OS than Win 7, reduces the functionality or performance of a dedicated pinball cab but rather improves it.

Yes, the newer ATI cards are worlds better than the 4xxx series or older. Whenever I talk about ATI vs Nvidia, I make that much clear. You can end up achieving similar performance with either brand of card, though I say ATI gives more bang for your buck. I got a $99 ATI card that performs about as well as my $350 GTX 570 with a hefty OC, then a $200 ATI card that performs as well or better than that.
Nvidia is better now with the newest drivers, so it would be nice if things stayed that way & nvidia stayed consistent with performance. With an old 2D program like VP, driver updates really shouldn't be changing performance as drastically as I've seen some do. I know with ATI things were much more consistent across all driver versions.
Just wanted to clear that up, & I'm on nvidia right now, so my opinions aren't that black & white on the issue. I might recommend ATI or Nvidia to people depending on their budget & what they are wanting the card to do for them.

As for this cab friendly stuff. As I said above, when I post I never know who I'm posting to. Cab user? Desktop user? Both? I think we need segregation! While most cab users are posters around here, I know the majority of VP users have setups like myself, where VP is just one of many things we do.
So when you mention "Blur's FPLaunch" & you cab losing focus or whatever, I have no clue what you are talking about. If these are important things to cab users, & XP helps with these things, then obviously do what works best. Though it sure would be nice to see VP & perhaps its side programs get optimized for newer OS's. win7x64 of course has the potential to do more for VP, but VP has to be optimized for it.

I new I would still get a lengthy response. I agree with everything you said there. Spot on!

[Osprey101]

good morning 007, did you sleep well?
it is nice and shiny today, great time to catch up what you missed

so here is 64 bit story:
- your windows xp will never use more then ~3 gigs of ram because of 4 gb limit and gpu memory also takes a part of this so that's where you loose another gig
- vp is 32bit application, even on 64 bit os 32 bit applications have different limits then 64 bit applications, so you will probably never use all of your 8 gig of ram
- actually vp will probably not use more then 2 gigs of ram
- there is one small application or patch to windows 7 that unlimits applications to more then 2 gigs, but you don't ever need this except for few tables with too much graphics, and much better way to solve this would be to fix that tables then to unlimit memory.
- windows 7 will make you more problems then you will profit from it, actually everything will be slower and with pc rig from hell you will get performance of some normal few years old xp pc
- various bugs will bug you on various steps, in vp in fp, with newest gpu drivers that don't like old applications, and so on, you will probably not be able to run backglass on fp, or print screen will not work in full screen mode, and so on

any way win 7 is not a success story, and if you had win7 i would suggest going to xp, since you have xp already i suggest you sell 5 gigs of ram, then you will not have any unused ram

xp 64 has even more problems then win7 64, i never heard of any one using it, specially not with vp and all vp software (pinmame, uvp, ...)

You are the only person I have ever heard, make those claims about Win 7. Granted, it is a big program and you need a newer system to benefit from it. But Win 7 is FAR more stable than XP, more secure, and has a much better driver database.
Another suggestion is to install a video card instead of using the onboard GPU. Then you get all of that RAM. More RAM allows other functions besides what you are working with, to function without stealing memory from your active application.
I have no problems at all running VP or FP with dual monitors and FP backglass displayed on my second monitor.
Personally, I think every Microsoft OS after XP is a bloated, over-done operating system. BUT, Linux wont run everything... yet. Apple/Mac is too damn expensive and difficult to self-repair, in addition to software issues.
And my 64bit system runs every game I own, far better than any 32 bit system did.
Unless you are trying to Win7 on an old computer, you should have a good experience with Win7.

[bladexdsl]

all these problems peeps say they have with win7 i've never experienced 1 of them all tables run fine even monopoly multiball is smooth, gfx look good everything works perfect for me. than again i'm playing on a desktop but i'll just have to wait and see what happens when i get it installed in my cab setup but i'm pretty much using the same specs as i have on my desktop so i don't expect any problems except maybe with HP.

Edited by bladexdsl, 08 May 2011 - 11:44 PM.

[mwong168]

I've been experimenting with Win7 64 bit for the past week and I get better performance on it then XP with the LEDWiz outputs enabled. If I don't have the LEDWiz enabled then in XP all tables (except Monopoly) play very smooth even during multi-ball. However if I have LEDWiz enabled using a 5LED setup I get ball stutter in games like Back to the Future when I launch the ball so bad to the point where I can't see and just have to sit back while it drains. The exact same 5LED setup in Win7 64 bit has no problems or stutter at all and I'm using the latest Nvidia 270.61 drivers on both. The only issue I am having right now in Win7 is when I exit a table in VP, I get a crash message and have to hit ENTER to close it and then it returns back to Hyperpin. I've tried a few things suggested on the Hyperspin forums in regards to my HP settings.ini file or re-compiling the FPlaunch.exe but no luck so far.

[The Loafer]

If I'm going to built a pincab and put 3 to 4K mininum in it, I'll have a kick ass PC which win 7 will run just fine. I'm not very knowledgeable on some of the advantages/disadvantages, but I do think win 7's superior support for SSD drives (which my pincab... if I ever get it done, will have) is a must. Is there a way to get Xp 64 bit to have really good SSD support?