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General discussion

Question about double buffering

Dec 15, 2003 10:25AM PST

Win 98, AMD Druon 1300 with IDE and ATAPI compatible devices all around, and no SCSI installed that I am aware of. I ran a Sandra report today, and it had a tip that Windows performance would imrpove if I turned off double buffering. It cited that this is only used for real time SCSI devices, yet it is set on by default.

So, the question is, why is it on by default when most users aren't using SCSI, and what are the potential problems I may face if I do turn it off? Is the performance gain really worth it, after all, double buffering is old technology which was introduced back in DOS days so clearly has a purpose.

Basically, this is one of those things I "accept" as being so, since it has been around almost as long as Babage, to enhance performance, not degrade it.

Discussion is locked

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Re:Question about double buffering. Its simple really.
Dec 15, 2003 10:46AM PST

The OS in question was never updated to set things automatically correct. It's from the era where...

'Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea...

Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man had split before. Thus was the Empire forged.

There is a theory that states: "If anyone finds out what the universe is for it will disappear and..." '

You can find some hundred such anomalies in Windows 9x, but what are you going to do about it?

Bob

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Thanks Bob
Dec 15, 2003 7:36PM PST

Since there is no SCSI card in this machine.....

Another query re. that report. Sandra said the latency of my video was too high. Since I haven't a clue what that means, and I am using nVidia Detonator which set things for me, what do I do about that? Where do I look, what is it actually saying to me? If it's a monitor issue, I have a problem, as I can;t find the driver CD which came with it, to properly set the thing from its on-screen menu.

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Sandra latency is widely discussed.
Dec 15, 2003 10:43PM PST
http://groups.google.com/groups?&q=Sandra+said+the+latency+of+my+video+was+too+high

While interesting, what may not make you happy are these truths:

1. Windows 1,2,3, 95, 98 and ME development is dead.

a. No new machines are being made/supplied by Dell/others with this OS. It's been noted that most dollar revenue comes from new owners, so development will focus on what has been shipping for the past two years. Those with older machines/OS will have made the big purchases of software and will not be as ready to buy new stuff.

b. Driver development has ceased for said OS's. My best example is at http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=300
"**Note: Win95/98/98SE are now relatively old operating systems, and drivers are no longer optimized for those operating systems. Many users of VIA chipsets who run Win95/98/98SE report that using an older version, such as VIA 4in1 version 4.35, they experience a more responsive system."

c. A company today will find starting a new Windows 98 development very painful. Microsoft is removing some key development tools such as Visual Studio 97 and many key documents and driver development tools. I expect to see some items to simply never list Windows 98/ME anymore.

d. I think the new Napster is 2000/XP or beyond only.

2. By this time, you should have sorted this out.

A common note about 95/98/ME users is that there is no need to do much with them since they have had 8 to some years to sort their issues out. Interesting comment.
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Have you thought about just loading up Linux? I have some dozen plus machines running it as servers and have a KVM switch on my desktop to some SUSE 9.0 box which I'm almost there as to moving to that platform.

Bob