DreamScene gets mixed reception
CPU use, a tale of two video cards..
Saturday, February 17, 2007 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
Windows DreamScene is Microsoft's animated wallpaper program that's currently in "preview" (beta) for users of Windows Vista Ultimate. So far, reactions have been mixed.
While users seem to love the concept, the amount of CPU used to do it seems to vary wildly. From 12% or so on my ThinkPad T60 to nearly 50% on systems that are much faster.
The difference? So far, it basically can be thrown to the feet of nVidia. Their drivers, which not only seem to crash PC games do double-duty in being very inefficient with DreamScene.
Below are the results on my laptop. Note the very low (as in not great) performance rating and yet its relatively low CPU use while running a DreamScene. It has an ATI card.
Lest someone thinks I have it out for nVidia, my primray machine has two nVidia 7950s in it. I just wish nVidia would take its drivers more seriously. They were crummy on Windows XP. Some may recall how you'd see reports about how WindowBlinds or WindowFX "slowed my machine to a crawl" and called our software bloated not realizing that no, our stuff runs great if the drivers are decent (like the ATI ones or the occasional nVidia one).
Now, Microsoft is getting a taste of what we've gone through. Maybe this time, nVidia will be motivated to worry about desktop drivers rather than trying to show they can get an extra frame per sec in a first person shooter.
Still, if you have a good machine, nVidia or ATI, the CPU use isn't a big deal in actual use, especially if the .DREAM file's content is in MPEG and not WMV (WMV is more CPU intensive). And hopefully soon nVidia's drivers will get better. Because I want to get an Geforce 8800 but am not going to get one until they fix this stuff.
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Reply #22 Sunday, February 18, 2007 10:23 PM
Now that was just rude and uncalled for!
Reply #23 Monday, February 19, 2007 9:07 AM
Since Vista came out not long ago I am sure all the driver bugs will be worked out in the near future.
Reply #25 Monday, February 19, 2007 6:19 PM
Reply #26 Monday, February 19, 2007 11:15 PM
Reply #27 Monday, February 19, 2007 11:51 PM
1) after 10 minutes this idea put into practice gets annoying
2) its really a useless feature until they integrate some form of knowledge into the background desktop (i.e. stock market ticker, sports scores etc)
3) it will put useless wear on your hardware 8% system resources or 80%
4) stardock "created" desktopx widgets for the things mentioned in my point #2
5) will for once in its career, this company admit 2 things?
5a) Some stuff stardock does is 100% innovative, 50% creative, and done 100% top notch
5b) Some stuff is stupid, completely ineffective, and a complete failure
If ever there was a time to toot one's own horn about M$ asking Stardock to help them on a project, this was NOT it...after...StarDock frequently cites the numerous flaws found within or without other OSes and software...be more and realize you gotta know when to hold em...know when to fold em...know when to walk away, know when to run!
Reply #28 Tuesday, February 20, 2007 12:26 AM
More accurately,
5b) Some stuff is not to my liking and I have no predilection towards its use.
Then, with the gambling analogy.....horses for courses....
Reply #29 Tuesday, February 20, 2007 12:35 AM
Those of us who have found great wallpaper videos that we enjoy and play constantly believe your opinion is simply that...YOUR opinion.
Different strokes for different folks, mate.
Thanks for sharing.
Reply #30 Tuesday, February 20, 2007 12:47 AM
Just once, I'd love to see where a stardock fanboy or even employee says, "We tried, failed, and we are sorry, we will work harder in the future." In my opinion the company is growing to fast and the evidence lies within products such as the .dream format.
If Stardock ever becomes publicly traded I'd love to see their goals and aspirations as a company because I'm confused as a customer...are you a software company or a content provider? You have excellently demonstrated your abilites to write SUPERB software such as CursorXP, Object Bar, DesktopX, and the THinkDesk Suite. Focus on what you're great at and leave the other stuff alone until the dust settles a bit.
Reply #31 Tuesday, February 20, 2007 1:33 AM
When confronted with the issue of proprietary BIOS-use Bootskin became fundamentally unviable as an on-going product. As it stands it will fail to function on several computer configurations so thus remains discontinued.
I am neither employee nor 'fanboy' [I still contend the latter is a derogatory term as it implies blind, unthinking devotion], but can safely say that Stardock has NOT failed with regards to Bootskin [for one], but were beaten by system disparity.
Please, one and all, find a better collective descriptor than 'fanboy'. It rankles fast.
SUPPORTERS of the SD software, etc. are NOT reliant on gestalt to function but each one of them can form intelligent and independent thought/opinion.
Please respect them as fellow community members/site users....
Reply #32 Tuesday, February 20, 2007 6:32 PM
Reply #33 Thursday, February 22, 2007 12:33 PM
Now an interesting screen-saver makes sense because you are clearly not using your computer at the time but when I'm concentrating hard on object life-cycles/access in a multi-threaded C++ program I need to be concentrating on what I'm doing!
Microsoft should be concentrating on improving the value of some of their core tools.
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Reply #21 Sunday, February 18, 2007 10:04 PM
The Ati system has been flawless with vista whereas i still need to force my laptop (6150) to use the 6200 driver or my VGA out will not work. It is a 6150/430 MCP chipset and alot of AMD systems out there use it. Nvidia should have gold drivers with full Nview monitor support one month after Vistas release! It's seriously making me think AMD/Ati products are going to have a BIG stability advantage in the future.