Windows 8... - Page 8

Quote:

Originally Posted by JakeJack_2008 

 

So, what's the last word regarding the DPC latency  for audio (and video)? Is it really higher?

I want to have flawless audio playback from the Internet,

and also from Blu-ray, DVD, CD discs,  digital-files stored on a hard disk drive.

 

Any audio playback impressions?

Audio playback is rock solid on both PCI, PCIe and USB based audio interfaces, be it lossy or lossless audio, both local and streamed.

DPC latency is measured differently, and current measuring tools don't comply with how Windows 8 handles DPC.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roller 

 

Audio playback is rock solid on both PCI, PCIe and USB based audio interfaces, be it lossy or lossless audio, both local and streamed.

 

DPC latency is measured differently, and current measuring tools don't comply with how Windows 8 handles DPC.

Performance wise Win 8 doesn't seem to be any faster. Atleast for games and stuff.

Quote:

Originally Posted by proton007 

 

Performance wise Win 8 doesn't seem to be any faster. Atleast for games and stuff.

I/O operations are slightly faster, games average frame rates are slightly higher as well, and CPU-centric tasks are improved too.

Right now, performance improvements are small but present, and in time will improve further, considering they have already improved since August 15th, the date Windows 8 was made available.

My recommendation of upgrading to Windows 8 is based mainly on power users that are willing to bypass Modern UI, as that will provide a refined Windows 7 experience. For stock users, it might not be the right time or even the right OS. However, it should be noted that Microsoft has no plans of dropping Modern UI for at least 6 years, so users need to decide whether they're going to stay with Windows 7 the same way some people used to do the same with Windows XP, just waiting for EOL support to end.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roller 

 

I/O operations are slightly faster, games average frame rates are slightly higher as well, and CPU-centric tasks are improved too.

 

Right now, performance improvements are small but present, and in time will improve further, considering they have already improved since August 15th, the date Windows 8 was made available.

 

My recommendation of upgrading to Windows 8 is based mainly on power users that are willing to bypass Modern UI, as that will provide a refined Windows 7 experience. For stock users, it might not be the right time or even the right OS. However, it should be noted that Microsoft has no plans of dropping Modern UI for at least 6 years, so users need to decide whether they're going to stay with Windows 7 the same way some people used to do the same with Windows XP, just waiting for EOL support to end.

Thats a good analogy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roller 

There is one very important detail regarding Windows 8. The generic USB drivers are much improved, and do fix issues that some USB DACs have. This is especially important for computers that only have USB 3.0 ports, as some USB DACs behave erraticly or even instantly send the system into a BSOD from the moment they are plugged to a USB 3.0 port.

 

It should also be noted that there are kernel improvements that relate to USB 2.0/3.0 DACs with proprietary drivers as well.

Hi Roller,

This is great news. There have been a couple of threads on his site about USB 3.0  related hardware  and/or software  (drivers?) bugs.

By the way, would connecting an external DAC to a very fast USB 3.0 port (versus the USB 2.0 connection) improve audio quality?

Obviously a lot depends on the USB receiver  itself, asynchronous (or not) mode, and the USB 3.0 hardware implementaion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by drez 

Still no cad for windows 8 though so I am forced to use 7 for work

What about compatibility settings?

Quote:

Originally Posted by JakeJack_2008 

 

Hi Roller,

 

This is great news. There have been a couple of threads on his site about USB 3.0  related hardware  and/or software  (drivers?) bugs.

 

By the way, would connecting an external DAC to a very fast USB 3.0 port (versus the USB 2.0 connection) improve audio quality?

Obviously a lot depends on the USB receiver  itself, asynchronous (or not) mode, and the USB 3.0 hardware implementaion.

Well, I'm of the opinion that as long as the ports used follow official USB specs, no audio improvements are obtained.

Overall, I'm very impressed at the way Windows 8 handles different USB 3.0 host controllers, effectively enabling people with USB 3.0-only computers to finally be able to have glitch/BSOD-free playback/recording capabilities.

Quote:

Originally Posted by drez 

IE10 seems to be very buggy - I went back to using Chrome. My keybaord seems to still be swapping @ and " for some reason. It also took me about 10 minutes to work out how to create a system image due to really poor control panel menu labeling but I got there in the end.
EDIT: Damn UK keyboards...

What's wrong with your particular  copy of the Internet Explorer  10 (IE 10)? Ha, ha, ...

Is it really  buggy, or does it just need some 'sophisticated' tweaking?

No one else on this site reported any problems with the new Internet Explorer 10.

What browsers are they using?

Quote:

Originally Posted by drez 


I found problems with writing posts on the sna forum, plus all my bookmarks are in chrome god bless it's cloud settings. Chrome seems faster as well.

Does anyone even use IE? I've used it only when there was no other option.

Btw just came across this: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-07/considering-windows-8-upgrade-don-t-rich-jaroslovsky.html

How's your experience been like? From what I can see, its better to do a fresh install than upgrade.

Read the comments below the article. Like me, the comment writers can't understand how the process could take as long or be as troublesome as Rich claims. 

Also, ignoring the installation/upgrading process itself (note that Rich never said anything about a clean install experience):

His point about learning keyboard shortcuts is a non-point. I've used keyboard shortcuts all throughout Win XP, Win 7 and OS X. That I have slightly different keyboard shortcuts on Win 8 is still completely acceptable. 

Proton, I really think that for the casual user, who just needs Windows to access the web and run multimedia here and there, Win8 is perfectly usable. There is no strong functional reason to upgrade over 7, but there can be aesthetic ones. 

In the case of someone who would like to get a new Windows Phone, maybe the upgrade will be even better. My friends tell me Win8 really resembles WP7, and so I trust it will resemble WP8 too. That's Microsoft's strategy anyway.

At the end of the day this means that for the average customer, there is more than enough info on whether to upgrade or not. I can't imagine much else discussion necessary.

Well I guess new PCs will ship with Win8 anyways, so ppl will get used to it.

And that article seems a bit far fetched I agree. The guy is clearly biased.

That article was ridiculous, and showed how the writer wasn't aware of things like Windows Vista having higher system requirements. Also, a Windows 8 installation process (clean install) takes less than 15 mins when installing from a flash based medium to an average performance HDD.

The main point of Windows 8 is that its worse performance is as good as Windows 7's best performance, and that has only begun, since hotfixes and service packs will improve things further.

On the Windows Vista topic, 90% of the issues it had when released were due to hardware manufacturers doing a very shoddy job with drivers, that then led to all sorts of system instability and BSODs. After SP1 was released, it became very usable, and after SP2, it became very close to what Windows 7 is. A fully patched Windows Vista is incredibly more stable than the relic that Windows XP is, in great part due to the modular kernel and layered driver system.

EDIT: Forgot to add that SP1 brought WASAPI to Windows Vista, which eliminated a lot of hassles that KS users faced, and even DS users benefited from improved audio due to a much better resampler engine, when compared to the awful Windows XP KMixer.

Another improvement Windows 8 has is a fix for hardware (GPU) acceleration on browsers, something that plagued Nvidia Optimus and AMD Switchable Graphics platforms on Windows 7.