EVE General Discussion

I assume this list is just the home user branch, since W2k and WinNT were the business operating systems.

Win8 is fine. People just don't like change and go mental if it happens.

My advice is to take one of two paths..

Path A: Get Win7 x64 and drop 24+ gb of ram into the system - it'll last you a very very long time, and it's managed to wrap up pretty much every feature (with the exception of one that I kinda miss) that you'll want in a windows OS.

Path B: Get Win8 x64 and the 24+ gb of memory, and then get a Start button replacement (like Start8 from Stardock), and an app that "unhooks" the metro apps from the base OS - again I ended up at Stardock and got an app called "ModernMix". I also missed having the "windows gadgets" that MS decided were "too large a security risk" for the OS, but I think they just wanted us to use the App store and buy Metro apps to halfway do what gadgets used to do for free. I found an app that puts the Win7 gadgets back into 8, so I can have a desktop clock (god forbid!), weather app, and CPU/GPU meter. The one feature I -REALLY- miss from 7 is Aero Glass - I have no clue why MS decided to cut it from the windows product, but it's gone, however in return I got the only feature from Win8 that I do like - they finally made the Win7 taskbar (which is a thing of wonder) properly span all monitors in a multi-monitor setup, and a minimized app on one monitor actually minimizes to a button on that monitor, instead of remaining on the primary taskbar.

Win 8 is great, but if your OS Fu is weak you might find it hard to work with.

It takes me about 30 seconds to make Win 8 look and work like Windows 7 if that is what I want.

You don't need to use the metro, in fact its fairly easy to disable.

5 years, perhaps. But "5 years" and "Never" are two very different things.
EDIT: Oh and while Mac and Linux are not a top priority for most game designers, most simply use engines that make cross platform development trivial. Converting a game from PC to mobile/tablet isn't a case of getting the graphics going and screaming "woohoo", there's usually a lot of design considerations to make outside of that. Making the graphics work is usually the easy part.

Confirmed, as a software developer I don't use my PC enough to satisfy people who can't handle a change in the way an operating system displays it's list of programs.

So much bad advice in this thread. Let me begin by answering your questions:

A 32 bit system can only access up to 4GB of ram. The operating system itself takes up some of that, and any other programs you have running will take up some of that. Including EVE.

So if your Win XP is taking up 2 GB, your TeamSpeak/Mumble/Ventrillo is using up 1 GB (exaggerated for clarity), that leaves 1GB for EVE to use.

Now if you have a 64 bit OS with 8 GB RAM, your operating system takes 2 GB, your TeamSpeak/Mumble/Ventrillo uses 1 GB, leaving 5GB for EVE to use.

Extra RAM will only make a difference on your system if you ever run out of it.

Now, to point out that bad advice I mentioned:

1) 24GB of ram is stupid overkill. I have 8GB + Video card RAM and don't come close to using it all (for gaming). Anyone suggesting you get more for today's games is just being an elitist rich douche. Why pay $50 for RAM today (that you will never use) when you can pay $5 for the same RAM 2-3 years from now IF/WHEN you need it. And when I say IF, I don't mean games will never use that much. I mean, by then, you may end up with a whole new computer. So that money you wasted on all that unused RAM is wasted. Besides, RAM is dead easy to upgrade. Do it later, when you need it.

2) Windows 8 is a new OS, with improved kernels (the under-the-hood stuff you don't see). The user interface is something you learn. Kids today will use Windows 8 UI just fine and wonder what all the fuss us old timers spew on about. People don't like change. People also predicted that windows 8 would suck, because of the pattern, ie: every other release of Windows sucks, so Windows 8 has to suck. Now they can't ever say otherwise (warranted or not) or else they'd have to admit they're wrong.

From where I'm coming from: I use Windows 7 on my Desktop (gaming) because I felt no need to pay money to upgrade. However, I installed Windows 8 on my girlfriends laptop, and it went from a clunky pain in the ass to having a couple more years of life to it. If I were to replace her HDD with an SSD, it would look and feel like a brand new laptop.

3) DX9... Developers stuck to DX9 because of CONSOLES. They didn't stick to it because of the venerable Windows XP. Much to the disgust of the PC Master Race, the money is in consoles. There is a new generation of consoles out now. I leave the rest up to you to decide if gaming technology has peaked at DX9, or if it will move on.

What he means that when a 32bit system can only access 4 gb RAM is that 4gig is all the computer has to work with regardless of how much is actually installed.

On my computer, EvE typically uses around 800meg or so, but that increases/decreases depending on what's happening around me in game. For example, being surrounded by a big fleet fight will cause your client to get much bigger in terms of RAM usage.

How much difference will it make? It depends on how you use the computer. If you need serious number crunching power, then you'll definitely notice the difference. I'm talking about 3D modelling/rendering, video editing, gaming (eve with multiple clients running or routinely getting into large fleet battles). But, if all you do is use one eve client to afk mine or watch videos and check e-mail, or listen to music, then you'll never notice the difference.

This.

And AFAIK EVE is still a 32bit client so no it shouldn't address more than 4gb of memory (though it technically can with some jiggery pokery from CCPs side, but rather than do that they'd probably just build a 64 bit client)..

Just an FYI, the 4GB limit for WinXP is a licensing issue, not a hardware issue. It's been possible to make use of more than 4GB on 32-bit systems since the mid '90s, and if you buy the right version of any NT-kerneled Windows you can have up to 128GB. It all depends on which license you buy: the normal consumer-grade windows:es simply don't include this functionality in their license (but it can be hacked back in if you want to ruin experiment with your OS).

The main problem is that going that high has a tendency to deteriorate your performance unless the software is written for it — some will even become hilariously unstable. You still have the limitation of only being able to access 4GB at any one time — all processes currently active have to fit within that space, and adjusting the current space for new processes adds a fair bit of overhead. In particular, for gaming, the removal of the 32bit address space limit means you can make better use of large-memory graphics cards. It's no good having a bajillion-gig DXfortyeleven card when your OS and drivers have to jump through hoops to address all that space as well as all your RAM.

iirc, there's a 2GB (ish) limit on addressable space for a single process, on a 32 bit system. You can play with it to get it up to around 2.7, iirc. but that limit is pretyt much set.

With PAE, you can get above that for the OS, which is managed by having 'pages' of ram, which can be swapped around.

It used to be that 64 bit windows was a bad idea. That was down to bad drivers. These days, 64 bit drivers are a lot more polished, unless you're using something really obscure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Vista, after SP 1, was actually ok.

It was severely marred by the initial release of drivers, as a new driver model was introduced, and no-one had any experience writing drivers for it. Once that was in place, things got better. But by that time, people believed that Vista was a lemon, and no-one would touch it with a barge pole.