Ok - this is my first topic and I really don't want to start a flame-war over anything, I would just like it if some tech-minded folk answer some questions for me..
Right, here goes.
I've got an adequate laptop which is about three years old.. It's Vista capable and does more or less everything I want it to (though a blow-job USB device would be nice). It came pre-installed with Windows XP which I used for a while and then for work reasons I installed Linux (openSuse 11.1) on it as well allowing me to use Linux for my work junk and Windows for my fun stuff.
However over time I began using Linux more and more - only because of work pressures you understand - until it ended up that I only booted into windows for gaming.
Now, my laptop isn't that great. To put it in gaming context, Far Cry, Half-life 2, Painkiller and Doom III are about the most advanced games it can run (all circa 2004ish) - which isn't a problem because they're pretty good games. Anyway, last week for a laugh I installed Dawn of War on Linux using Wine (if you don't know, Wine is a system that allows you to run Windows apps on Linux, the same as Darwine lets you run Windows apps on the Mac). What happened was a bit weird because I was a) not expecting it to install and b) expecting it to run like a pig. What actually happened was Dawn of War ran incredibly smoothly - with every option maxxed out. What was even more surprising was that I had my laptop unplugged and it was therefore running on "power save" mode (so the processor was at 1ghz and not 2). I'd also forgotten that I was running all the Linux KDE desktop effects as well so I found I could still rotate the my desktop, check my mails, and generally run all of the 3D compositing effects at the same time as running the game.
To test this further I rebooted, reinstalled XP, updated the service packs, got latest nVidia drivers etc and installed Dawn of War again, this time in native windows. And the game didn't run nearly as well as it did under Wine. In fact I had to turn down some of the options to make it playable.
I further tested this by installing Far Cry, HL2 and Doom III on both OS's (remember, they're using the exact same hardware) and in every case the "emulated" versions on Linux performed better than their native Windows counterparts (except for disk access - load times are way slower in Linux).. Further testing shows that my Genesis emulator runs faster in Linux - so does Mame.. And so does my Super Nintendo emulator.
So - I guess my question is - WTF is going on here? How come I can run admittedly old games faster on a platform that doesn't support them and is already running enough desktop eye-candy to make Vista look like Windows 95? Is it because the Linux nVidia drivers are better somehow? Or that Wine only loads the barest minimum of stuff needed to get an app running? For reference my system is a dual core 2ghz intel, 2.5gb ram, nVidia 7400 go 256mb, 80gb HD partitioned into 30GB Windows NTFS, 10gm Linux root, 10gb Linux home and 30gb FAT32 for sharing data between the two OS's.
I may be getting ahead of myself here but I think it would be nice if there was a Windows boot option that was simply for Gaming - so Windows doesn't load all of the stuff that you don't need for games and therefore runs faster...
Anyway - as I've said, I'm not dissing Windows here, I'm just wondering whats going on.. Any help or pointers would be appreciated.
Finally - sorry for the damn long boring post!
*edit - probably shouldn't have put this in the "off topic" forum. Damn. Sozz.*
Right, here goes.
I've got an adequate laptop which is about three years old.. It's Vista capable and does more or less everything I want it to (though a blow-job USB device would be nice). It came pre-installed with Windows XP which I used for a while and then for work reasons I installed Linux (openSuse 11.1) on it as well allowing me to use Linux for my work junk and Windows for my fun stuff.
However over time I began using Linux more and more - only because of work pressures you understand - until it ended up that I only booted into windows for gaming.
Now, my laptop isn't that great. To put it in gaming context, Far Cry, Half-life 2, Painkiller and Doom III are about the most advanced games it can run (all circa 2004ish) - which isn't a problem because they're pretty good games. Anyway, last week for a laugh I installed Dawn of War on Linux using Wine (if you don't know, Wine is a system that allows you to run Windows apps on Linux, the same as Darwine lets you run Windows apps on the Mac). What happened was a bit weird because I was a) not expecting it to install and b) expecting it to run like a pig. What actually happened was Dawn of War ran incredibly smoothly - with every option maxxed out. What was even more surprising was that I had my laptop unplugged and it was therefore running on "power save" mode (so the processor was at 1ghz and not 2). I'd also forgotten that I was running all the Linux KDE desktop effects as well so I found I could still rotate the my desktop, check my mails, and generally run all of the 3D compositing effects at the same time as running the game.
To test this further I rebooted, reinstalled XP, updated the service packs, got latest nVidia drivers etc and installed Dawn of War again, this time in native windows. And the game didn't run nearly as well as it did under Wine. In fact I had to turn down some of the options to make it playable.
I further tested this by installing Far Cry, HL2 and Doom III on both OS's (remember, they're using the exact same hardware) and in every case the "emulated" versions on Linux performed better than their native Windows counterparts (except for disk access - load times are way slower in Linux).. Further testing shows that my Genesis emulator runs faster in Linux - so does Mame.. And so does my Super Nintendo emulator.
So - I guess my question is - WTF is going on here? How come I can run admittedly old games faster on a platform that doesn't support them and is already running enough desktop eye-candy to make Vista look like Windows 95? Is it because the Linux nVidia drivers are better somehow? Or that Wine only loads the barest minimum of stuff needed to get an app running? For reference my system is a dual core 2ghz intel, 2.5gb ram, nVidia 7400 go 256mb, 80gb HD partitioned into 30GB Windows NTFS, 10gm Linux root, 10gb Linux home and 30gb FAT32 for sharing data between the two OS's.
I may be getting ahead of myself here but I think it would be nice if there was a Windows boot option that was simply for Gaming - so Windows doesn't load all of the stuff that you don't need for games and therefore runs faster...
Anyway - as I've said, I'm not dissing Windows here, I'm just wondering whats going on.. Any help or pointers would be appreciated.
Finally - sorry for the damn long boring post!
*edit - probably shouldn't have put this in the "off topic" forum. Damn. Sozz.*