Fista Activation

Lee · Post by **Lee** » June 13th, 2007, 12:04

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:I wonder if some of the speed difference is because Fista doesn't do hardware sound (if I was doing a proper head to head test, I'd use onboard sound)

It doesn't? How come?

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » June 13th, 2007, 12:07

Because microsoft fucked about with shit quite heavily. I'll let eion explain.

eion · Post by **eion** » June 13th, 2007, 12:22

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:Because microsoft fucked about with shit quite heavily. I'll let eion explain.

To be more accurate, Fista doesn't do DirectSound 3D hardware acceleration (so stuff like EAX doesn't work as it did previously).

The Fista sound stuff was changed to help avoid BSODs by moving as much of Windows as possible from kernel mode (where a problem usually means a BSOD) to user mode (where a problem usually just means a crash). It's also much easier to debug stuff in user mode, which should make things easier for driver developers.

Anyway, all audio now goes through a relatively small audio driver, and there's a new API called WASAPI (Windows Audio Service API) replacing DirectSound and Wave/MME. OpenAL is still there though (as is ASIO).

In a nutshell: there are lots of changes, made for a good reason, which mean that old stuff may well not work as expected.

buzzmong · Post by **buzzmong** » June 13th, 2007, 13:04

Update for Eion's post:

Creative offer a reach around to beat Fista's removal of the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) using openAL, bascially means you can run EAX again under fista with no problems.

Check the creative webby for the beta software.

Stoat · Post by **Stoat** » June 13th, 2007, 13:28

Useful software? And Creative?
When the fuck did this happen?

mrbobbins · Post by **mrbobbins** » June 13th, 2007, 13:38

Stoat wrote:Useful software? And Creative?
When the fuck did this happen?

Speaking of Creative.. anyone with an X-Fi experience any severe PC crashes?, I think mine is causing some nasty crashes and may be the source of my BEEF problems, although can't be sure as I only installed BEEF on my newer PC after I got the X-FI.

Although it's happening in STALKER as well which did work fine pre X-FI and now crashes my whole puter (not just CTD) reguarly

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » June 13th, 2007, 13:47

buzzmong wrote:Creative offer a reach around to beat Fista's removal of the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) using openAL, bascially means you can run EAX again under fista with no problems.

That thingy is x-fi only i thought?

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » June 13th, 2007, 13:52

mrbobbins wrote:
Speaking of Creative.. anyone with an X-Fi experience any severe PC crashes?, I think mine is causing some nasty crashes and may be the source of my BEEF problems, although can't be sure as I only installed BEEF on my newer PC after I got the X-FI.

Although it's happening in STALKER as well which did work fine pre X-FI and now crashes my whole puter (not just CTD) reguarly

May I suggest sticking the X-fi in another pci slot?

Sounds like it might be an IRQ issue (which is strangely common with soundcards) Often swapping slots can fix it (you can probably fettle in the bios too, but that takes time and thought)

buzzmong · Post by **buzzmong** » June 13th, 2007, 13:57

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:
That thingy is x-fi only i thought?

Well, yes.

But according to creative's website, they're rewritting drivers for Fista for Audigy 1/2 series cards as well.

And Stoatbobbins...I'm sure there's some patch somewhere that is to do with Windows/XFi spackups...I think I read about it in pc gamer sometime last year.

mrbobbins · Post by **mrbobbins** » June 13th, 2007, 14:35

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:
May I suggest sticking the X-fi in another pci slot?

Sounds like it might be an IRQ issue (which is strangely common with soundcards) Often swapping slots can fix it (you can probably fettle in the bios too, but that takes time and thought)

Cheers, sounds like a plan.

Can you change the assigned IRQ's in BIOS?

/lazy

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » June 13th, 2007, 14:36

should be able to, depends on your bios, the moon etc. etc.

Fear · Post by **Fear** » June 13th, 2007, 14:39

Most BIOS by default will allow the OS to assign IRQs once it has got beyond post - you can normally override this, though it's not something I've ever done.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » June 13th, 2007, 15:47

Christ! I thought we'd heard the last of IRQs.

Post by **FatherJack** » June 13th, 2007, 16:29

mrbobbins wrote:Can you change the assigned IRQ's in BIOS?
/lazy

IIRC the option "reset hardware configuration" will cause it to clear all IRQ settings and reassign them at boot.

Post by **TezzRexx** » June 13th, 2007, 18:20

I believe that BEEF and CS:s actually ran better on Fista then my XP setup.

If they can get Albatross, Trickster, AOEIII and HL2 working properly I'll prolly go back for teh gaming reasons.

However, there is a HEUGE difference in Sony Vegas (which I've started using lots since last year) in terms of general speed and rendering times between XP and Fista, with XP being almost 3 times a fast. So it takes about 20 minutes to render a 20 minute film in MPEG-1 rather then a whole hour. Which when rendering often to make sure your shit is perfect, really makes a difference in terms of the time it takes you.

So unless that improves, its either going to be dual boot or just XP for me

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » June 15th, 2007, 2:44

I've done more poking about now.

It seems that while this dell oem thing is lovely, it has a few issues, namely:

1)Difficult (should be possible, not tested) to get dual boot working because it uses a few haxes and some grub.

2)There's been some speculation that it might not work after a system upgrade (due to the haxes) I'll test this later

3)Audigy2 support sucks. hard. (this is Fista more than the copy)

Edit: Tested the upgrade thing. Does cause problems, Added an extra stick of ram (taking me to 4GB

) and it caused nasty BSODs on boot

On the plus side, my mobo booted with 4GB of ram, which was nice.

Edit: seems a repair installation won't fix it either

Post by **deject** » June 15th, 2007, 5:25

run memtest? or are you sure they're good RAM sticks?

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » June 15th, 2007, 5:39

Fairly sure, that one is fresh out of the box (yay rma)

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » June 15th, 2007, 6:31

Well, the ram sticks are fine, just the mobo causing memtest to shit errors everywhere.