Windows Accelerators - Do They Really Work? 777
danila asks: "Today I came across an intriguing review of Windows tweakers on a Russian technology news site. Among the plethora of traditional registry tweakers, the review mentioned Hare 1.5.1. The developers promised nothing less than up to 300% speed increase, 10% FPS increase in 3D games, automatic RAM preservation and even a wizard that automatically cleans and optimizes Windows. It also had AntiCrash 3.6.1 a program to prevent up to 95.8% of Windows crashes. Understandably, I was both intrigued and suspicious since it sounded too good to be true." Has anyone tried this piece of software with any degree of success? How successful are other "windows accelerators" at improving Windows performance?
"After a little research I found that download.com didn't have it and there are precious few reviews of this revolutionary software online, but that it was endorsed by McAfee and that developers touted conformance with Microsoft's interface guidelines as an important feature.Still suspicious, I gathered all my courage and installed both programs (silently preparing for something like Bonsi Buddy or XXX Toolbar) on my Win2k Pro machine (P4 1.6/512Mb). Truth be told, after several minutes I was blown away. Obviously I can't tell how well every promised features works, but disk caching (and pre-fetching) that Hare does is outstanding and display performance improved enough to scare me - windows were opening, minimizing and redrawing without the delay I was accustomed to.
The question is -- is it real or was I fooled by some clever placebo tricks? And if it is real, why isn't the Web full of success stories involving Hare and AntiCrash? Why isn't everyone installing them on every Windows machine in the world? And a rhetorical question -- why doesn't Microsoft incorporate some of the features into its operating systems."
7-Max (Score:5, Informative)
WARNING: Parent's sig is malicious (Score:5, Informative)
As an AC poster pointed out, the parent's 'sig' executes rm -rf /
I tried to post an analysis, but I kept getting hit by the lameness filter, so I posted the analysis to http://www.dlitz.net/stuff/malicious-perl-sig/ [dlitz.net]
Hint: If you're somewhat familiar with Perl, try doing the analysis yourself. The code is actually not anywhere near as complicated as it looks.
why doesn't microsoft do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:why doesn't microsoft do this? (Score:4, Informative)
I bought several of these accelerators years ago and Hurricane was the only one that actually did anything.
Re:why doesn't microsoft do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:why doesn't microsoft do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:why doesn't microsoft do this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:why doesn't microsoft do this? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBL/tip5800/rh5826.htm
You can configure it here..
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Con
EnablePrefetcher Value Name, a REG_DWORD data type. Allowable values...
0 Disabled.
1 Application launch pre-fetch.
2 Boot pre-fetch.
3 Both Application launch and Boot pre-fetch.
Less technical explanation (Score:5, Informative)
Re:why doesn't microsoft do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gravity (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gravity (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gravity (Score:5, Funny)
Most Linux systems crash just as fast, and just as often as Windows in this manner.
You heard it here on
Re:Gravity (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Gravity (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gravity (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Gravity (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gravity (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gravity (Score:4, Insightful)
So does software weigh anything? I guess it's just a matter of how practical you want to be. It's like asking whether an idea has any mass - can the idea exist without a brain/note/hard drive to store it?
Re:Gravity (Score:5, Funny)
Apple.com has a great accelerator (Score:5, Funny)
Don't use this ! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't use this ! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Apple.com has a great accelerator (Score:4, Funny)
*ducks*
Re:Apple.com has a great accelerator (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Apple.com has a great accelerator (Score:5, Insightful)
My Win2K Pro install was pretty fast too. Ever since then I haven't had any viruses, crashes, or slow performance. I've never really found Win2K Pro to be at fault for a program crash. Photoshop, Lightwave, and the games I play are all stable. In fact, Lightwave crashed more on the OSX machines at school than here at home.
It all boils down to the user(s) of the machine.
Re:Apple.com has a great accelerator (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Apple.com has a great accelerator (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Apple.com has a great accelerator (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows machines DO get slower with time. Proper maintenance, uninstalling spyware, removing unneeded TSR programs, regularly updating windows, etc, can assist in this, it is FAR too difficult for the average user.
"Stuff that starts when Windows starts" needs to be given a higher priority to the user. Even most experienced users I know aren't aware you can use msconfig to modify or remove all the CRAP that gets installed.
This important a tool to be hidden like that is ridiculous. Microsoft claims that 80% of their support now is for problems related to spyware. Good. Then make it easier for (L)users to see what their computer is actually DOING and why. Don't call them "processes" and list all the windows processes as well. And put some information with them. Knowing that OSCDX is running means nothing to most people. (I made it up. It IS nothing.) But some sort of connection should be made between a process name, and a descriptive text. "Loader program for Gator advertising software", for example. Have a button to connect to a DB and FIND the file if need be.
Additionally, we need education. People need to know that the 14 things they have running in their system tray are slowing the computer down. Why can XP tell you that you have icons on your desktop you haven't used, but can't pop up a window as you start saying "I notice you have a large number of programs running from startup. These slow your computer down. Click here to select ones you're not using to remove them."
Another thing that bothers me about software is inconsistency of installation. For example, if you install 3 games, each of them will decide to be in a different folder. I HATE that. I hate having to remember "is this game by EA? Or Maxis? Or Fox Interactive? Valve? Vivendi?" just to be able to play it. If I install "Doom 3" I want the link to be in "Start - All Programs - Games - Doom3". Games - Half Life 2. Games - Sims 2. Don't make us remember the publishers, you stupid bastards. We don't care. Oh, and you're allowed to install an icon to the desktop, to tempt me to play when I'm supposed to be working. But only ONE. Do not link to your exe, help file, a web link, uninstall file, etc.
Oh, and the top of the start bar is NOT an acceptable place for software to install to. ICQ I'm looking at you.
Magic Beans??? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think I'll wait and see what my geekly brothers have to say before I assume it is anything other than a faster way to have your data deleted.
Re:Magic Beans??? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but it's 300% faster11!!!
-
Yes, they work. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes, they work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
And disappointed when that didn't happen. I know. I know. I love Bonzi Buddy too
There is a simple reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There is a simple reason (Score:3, Informative)
fluxbox [sourceforge.net]
there is no way any windows desktop can beat that speed.
Re:There is a simple reason (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't be too sure.
Lately I've been using LiteStep [litestep.net], a Windows version of the Unix window manager AfterStep, and I have to say I have been very impressed with the overall improvement in performance. I've got an old Celeron 800Mhz notebook with 256MB of RAM that was struggling under standard WinXP Pro, even with all window-dressing (so to speak) turned off (like zooming windows, big desktop background graphics, etc.). This was especially obvious when I would use a removable wireless adapter card -- Firefox was sluggish and even unresponsive at times. (And seriously, this was a completely stripped-down environment -- no extraneous services running or background programs sucking up available resources.)
But since switching from Explorer to LiteStep as my default shell, just about everything about how Windows works has improved in terms of responsiveness and speed in general. My frustration level has been seriously cut down. And on top of that, my wife now refuses to use the laptop because of the new shell -- what a shame.
I'd bet a WindowsXP machine using LiteStep as the shell could keep up with just about any stripped down window manager for Linux like Fluxbox.
Re:There is a simple reason (Score:4, Informative)
bugmenot.com (Score:5, Informative)
Re:There is a simple reason (Score:3, Informative)
Stop it with the grandma (Score:4, Interesting)
You would be suprised how many grandmothers worked in business and had Unix come in as the newbie. To them linux will be childs play just as soon as someone actually allows them to get their hands on it and the teenage looser grandson doesn't think he knows best.
For the rest I agree with you. My linux desktop been more then ready. I code, surf, watch movies all a lot easier and faster then on a windows machine. I still can't understand all the stuff about codecs. Movies just work for me. Got to love mplayer. Linux not ready? Windows is not ready. Windows got the codecs, just not the architecture to install them all easily.
Re:There is a simple reason (Score:5, Informative)
1. What options do the accelerators need? The AGP video drivers should take care of accelerating things that have to do with using the graphics card.
2. Linux is not the main competition for Microsoft Windows on the desktop. Microsoft's largest competetor for the desktop is it's own older products. There are still many many 95 and 98 installations out there. I think it's very unlikely that linux desktop manager development is driving Windows desktop development. I think it's more the other way around, where Linux desktop developers look and see what works and what doesn't with Windows and implement features accordingly. Microsoft invests a huge amount on GUI research, makes sense for Linux developers to benefit from that instead of reinventing the wheel.
I think these accelerators are junk most of the time, or they tweak things that make the desktop perhaps more responsive and thus it -seems- faster. You want a faster computing experience? Get new hardware.
Why get new hardware? (Score:5, Insightful)
I find the idea that you should buy new hardware when your old hardware is grossly-underutilized, or at best ill-utilized, appalling. Are you a hardware vendor? Or an MS employee?
Certainly the AGP video drivers should take care of acceleration. But apparently, they don't! At least, not as well as they should, by default.
I suspect most Windows users could get a noticeable speedup from their current hardware, if only MS had made it easy to do so. Instead. you have to be a registry expert, which is right up there with assembly language programming on most folks' skills list or list of things to learn.
Re:There is a simple reason (Score:3, Interesting)
PS, they do the same thing for Linux XFree86 drivers as well.
Re:There is a simple reason (Score:5, Funny)
Another Simple Reason: APPARENT speed gains (Score:5, Interesting)
In creating GUIs for programs I've worked on, I've noticed that people will THINK I've made something a lot faster if only I tweak how the slow task looks on the screen. For example, let's say my program parses an XML file in 5 seconds. I have some options:
Of course the easiest to do is option 1, but to users this also appears to be the slowest. 2 is an improvement -- but still seems kinda slow. Users think option 3 is blazingly fast for some reason -- and EVEN BETTER is if you create a progress bar that fills up to 100% multiple times before it's done (users no doubt think "WOW, look at that progress bar go!").
But back to the point: windows accelerators. I remember finding a registry tweak a LONG time ago which eliminated the short delay between displaying 'trees' in the start menu. Whenever ANYBODY used my computer (while this tweak was in effect), they always told me how fast it seemed to them. Was it faster? Well, yes, a 0.1 second delay was removed, but really it didn't make what you were trying to do go any quicker.
I guess my point is that speed doesn't matter so much as appearance.
Re:Another Simple Reason: APPARENT speed gains (Score:5, Informative)
For anybody interested, it's [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\MenuShowDelay], the value is milliseconds delay (400 default). If you don't like mucking with the registry directly, get yourself X-Setup [x-setup.net], it's like TweakUI, only ten times better.
Re:There is a simple reason (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:There is a simple reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless my Linux machine is thrashing REALLY hard because of a runaway app or something, it never lags. No hourglasses. My desktop menus always pops up when I need them. I can have 3 applications crunching away in the background and my machine remains faily responsive with no hanging of the GUI.
I think Microsoft has made the GUI zippy at the expense of proper multitasking. But I guess that is their choice to make that tradeoff. I prefer proper multitasking, personally.
-matthew
Re:There is a simple reason (Score:4, Insightful)
300% speed increase -- caution flag (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd buy your browsing speed will imporove 300% if you remove IE spyware, but a broad 300% speed increase is bogus.
Re:300% speed increase -- caution flag (Score:5, Funny)
And I'll promise "up to $1M" to anyone who replies to this comment. Seriously.
Bear in mind that the term "up to" includes the number "zero", so to promise "nothing less than up to 300%" is to promise "nothing less than zero".As for my "up to $1M" offer, guess which end of the scale I choose for payoffs. The zero end.
details please (Score:5, Funny)
Re:details please (Score:5, Insightful)
No. This is Slashdot. All you're gonna see here is a bunch of repetitive jokes that aren't really that funny even.
Re:details please (Score:3, Funny)
2) ?????
3) Profit!
Re:details please (Score:5, Funny)
In another crippling bombshell to the beleagered /. community, Netcraft showed abysmal uptimes from the /. servers over the last several weeks. Part of the downtime was attributed to lame jokes, which caused the sysadmins to not care whether the site was running or not.
Tip (Score:3, Funny)
Doubtful (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh-huh (Score:5, Funny)
Did you know that gullible is not in the dictionary?
Yes it is! (Score:3, Funny)
Wait a sec...
Old software... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3)
Hah! (Score:3, Insightful)
With statistics like that, no wonder I laughed so hard. Thanks for the morale boost!
Re:Hah! (Score:3, Funny)
Hare (Score:5, Interesting)
The only program that ever seemed to speed anything up was O&O Defrag (oo-software.com) who have a background defragger. Leave your computer, and the defrag turns on. When you come back, it is off in anywhere from instantly to a minute. The program also has a nice complete defragger to boot.
Re:Hare (Score:4, Informative)
Also, sysinternal [sysinternals.com]'s pagedefrag and contig are pretty usefull.
Not that defragmenting your hard drive will give you enormous performance boosts, though.
The first thing I do when I sit down in front of an XP machine is turn of the unnecessary themes/skinning, animations and shadows, unwanted services (services.msc), unwanted start up programs (try sysinternal [sysinternals.com]'s autoruns), and of course the adaware/spybot thing.
Also, I usually set the swap file to be some fixed number of megabytes (4 times RAM or some ludicrous amount like that), and make sure IE's and mozilla's cache sizes are pretty minimal (i.e. 10MB should be enough) if the machine is on a broadband connection.
If these programs can do anything more to optimize my setup, they're welcome, but I wonder what exactly they do..
I call BS... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hare will improve performance no matter what software you use, thanks to a revolutionary compact 88-bit Kernel, which accelerates common system instructions
WTF? This is complete BS.
Re:I call BS... (Score:5, Funny)
From the hare website:
Hare will improve performance no matter what software you use, thanks to a revolutionary compact 88-bit Kernel, which accelerates common system instructions
WTF? This is complete BS.
No, it's not ! I have disassembled that 88-bit kernel, and here is the source:
Oops... (Score:3, Funny)
How to speed up Windows (Score:5, Informative)
In Windows XP you can get things running faster by right clicking on my computer going to properties and clicking on the advanced tab to go to performance settings. From here you can make things run for best appearance or best performance. There are a lot of things I have disabled such as the normal Windows XP start menu and almost every built in animation and fading technique built into Windows XP.
Another good way to speed things up is to move the cache for programs to a RAM-Drive. This will keep things running fast by using the RAM as opposed to the hard drive and it will delete everything without a trace if you are paranoid that the feds are after you. I wrote a RAM-Drive program a while ago but it only works on Windows 9x. If you want to download the program it is available at http://home.comcast.net/%7Esessions9/RAM-Drive.ht
Re:How to speed up Windows (Score:5, Informative)
It's possible, I suppose. (Score:5, Interesting)
Some hacker wrote a program called IIsi RAM Muncher which allocates the first megabyte of memory on start-up, and then does nothing with it. Result? All your stuff runs in the faster SIMM memory. The speed increase could be as much as 400% - not bad for giving up 1 meg of RAM.
Connectix Ram Doubler and CrashGuard (Score:3, Interesting)
Mechanic-in-a-can (Score:5, Funny)
Or not.
People are going to claim that "you can edit your 1337.ini file and set suck=no under the [R0XoR5] heading, and get a 11.1% FPS difference, d00d!"
This is great for the tinfoil hat crowd, that MS, Intel and Madonna are part of a sinister cabal to put you on an upgrade treadmill. It's also great for the Uncle Joe 6Pack crowd, people who typically "know about computers" and have loud opinions on that great free HP printer they got when they signed up for MSN.
There's no magic bullet.
ummm, yes and no. (Score:3, Insightful)
By the way, the accelerators can work because they turn off some 'features' that almost nobody will miss, cache stuff that wasn't cached before, and even increase the sizes of certain buffers and caches. At least in general, that's how they work.
As to anticrash software, some is a nightmare to your system, some is useless, and some will drive you nuts.
If you're talking about those that actually work, the trick is there are crashes going on all the time in the OS and other programs that just aren't handled. Anticrash programs 'handle' them and let you know. That's why people think they increase the number of crashes. They just make the invisible ones visible. The basic thing is windows ignores or poorly handles a lot of problems, but then again, they wrote that code before it was in the hands of millions of users. The anticrash programmers studied (if they are anygood) tons of data on crashes, and worked out methods to handle it better for those. Since 80% appx are caused by just a handful of errors, it's relatively easy to concentrate on just those.
Useless piece of trivia...
Back when ######## was working on creating their anticrash program, they found that the single most crash prone program on the windows platform was Microsofts FindFast. (Or is that FastFind, I always get that backwards...)
That's a big reason why every technician will have you yank that from startup if they see it.
It's EVIL ! That's pure EE - VILE ! Don't Touch it!
Later peeps!
10% FPS increase in 3D games? (Score:4, Funny)
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
* Hare technology: the core of Hare is a re-written Kernel, working at up to 88-bit (instead of the standard 32-bit) and accelerating most basic system actions by acting as the Windows Kernel. This is done by triple-buffering all I/O data, in order to achieve an emulated 88-bit Kernel. This technology is fully safe and we have implemented safeguards in order to make it impossible to damage your computer.
That seems a bit suspicious. 88-bit!? Ok, so it's emulated. That still seems like 1) a strange number (not 64, not 128) and 2) would "emulated" 88-bit architecture really work? Isn't the CPU's inherent 32-bitness (or 64-bitness) the end-all anyway?
* CPU Tasking: the CPU Tasking technology's goal is to give more CPU to the program you currently use. Even if you don't know it, there are a lot of programs working in background and sucking CPU from your frontmost application - the CPU Tasking will know how much CPU you must give to each application."
Doesn't Windows already do this?
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Informative)
That site is basically a complete lie, and if the article submitter actually thinks this sped up his machine, he should just go take a look at his system settings. My bet is that this "Hare" program just turns off a bunch of unneeded services and wasteful windows drawing options that come installed as defaults on all Windows systems.
Besides, your memory couldn't pass 88-bit instructions, and even if it could, what good would it do to process a number that big? Just a bunch of Russian mobsters preying on clueless grandma's.
88 bits (Score:4, Funny)
It just uses your piano along with your processor. As long as you can stand the noise of your piano running at several Ghz, it's quite the improvement.
Regclean (Score:3, Informative)
AntiCrash? (Score:3, Funny)
A long time ago... (Score:5, Funny)
COMPUTER MAKERS DON'T TELL YOU EVERYTHING! THERE'S SECRET TRICKS THAT CAN BE USED TO CONVERT YOUR 386 into a 486!
Now, conviced it was just a hoax, or something worse, I tried the program. (I didn't really care about my data - the harddrive was dropped into the ground - multiple times, and the poor few working sectors I had only contained data I had copied from floppies anyway), The program happily told me the magical transformation was complete. I fired up MSD.EXE to check - no change in identification. Still a 386. I ran a benchmark program, which didn't show any change from before. Just to try, I ran the magic software again - this time I got the text "Your computer is already a 486!". At least the programmers thought about that. Well, no bigger disappointment, since I didn't really expected anything useful to happen. I never found out if it was a virus either...
Years later - a new little utility turned up on the BBSes I frequented - it was called 486toPentium, and the cheerful description of the file was "FROM THE GUYS WHO BROUGHT YOU 386to486"
Amazing!
Re:A long time ago... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A long time ago... (Score:3, Interesting)
It didn't work of course, but it did allow me to run some software that insisted on an FPU (Quake 1 was... interesting
Re:A long time ago... (Score:5, Funny)
looks like smoke and mirrors (Score:5, Informative)
i looked at the screen shots of hare, and it looked alot like the popup windows i've been seeing for accelerators. if you really did see a speed improvment, the you probably just found a spyware version of a spyware-blocker.
from Hare's faq:
* Hare technology: the core of Hare is a re-written Kernel, working at up to 88-bit (instead of the standard 32-bit) and accelerating most basic system actions by acting as the Windows Kernel. This is done by triple-buffering all I/O data, in order to achieve an emulated 88-bit Kernel. This technology is fully safe and we have implemented safeguards in order to make it impossible to damage your computer.
there is so much BS just oozing out.
so, they replaced the windows kernel?
running 88-bit on your 64 or 32 bit cpu?
triple-buffering?
impossible to damage your computer?
Hare is on the market since 2001 and no one ever experienced crash or data loss because of it.
possible claim, after all, Hare isn't about saving and loading data, its about running programs, so any data loss would be do to 3rd-party failings.
awards (on a popup?):
techtv - 404 (site redesigned, so this is expected)
locker gnome - 404
file hungy - "Not Yet Reviewed" but has a 4.5 of 10
shareware junkies - 5 of 5, english worse then mine.
Re:looks like smoke and mirrors (Score:5, Funny)
worse than mine
-
Man! (Score:5, Insightful)
Suspicious review (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm... "prevents absolutely no windows crashes" meets the criteria of "prevents up to 95.8% of windows crashes". Strike one - plus what's up with the obviously made-up 95.8% statistic with its meaningless but important-sounding precision?
After a little research I found that download.com didn't have it and there are precious few reviews of this revolutionary software online, but that it was endorsed by McAfee
So by now we've decided its "revolutionary". Good to see an unbiased starting point. Also, since when does "sold by" mean "endorsed" in all but the loosest sense? Strike Two. Oh, and notice that McAfee only sell one of these products, and not the one that the reviewer makes the most claims about...
Still suspicious, I gathered all my courage and installed both programs... truth be told, after several minutes I was blown away. Obviously I can't tell how well every promised features works, but disk caching (and pre-fetching) that Hare does is outstanding and display performance improved enough to scare me.
Ah well, that's okay then. Asked and answered. And absolutely no signs of bias in this result . Absolutely no signs of any attempt at objective measurement of results either. Not one benchmark or even stopwatch timing showing any improvement at all? Strike Three.
Isn't it about time Slashdot started asking its reviewers if they have any affiliation with the product they are touting?
lies, lies and damn lies (Score:4, Insightful)
what's so great about having a nice graph telling you, you have x amount of free memory? what the hell are you going to do with your free memory? look at it?
Maybe it works.. (Score:5, Informative)
long after. It had a ram-optimiser, which *seemed* to at least free
memory from programs that didn't free everything (leaky MMOs).
I did find some registry settings that gave somewhat more of a
result, though. Some of them are from Slashdot posts, others from
various tip sites. Here are the filesystem settings I use for XP:
----- BEGIN -----
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlS
"NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation"=dw
"Win31FileSystem"=dword:00000000
"W
"NtfsDisa
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoLow
---- END -----
This switches off many filesystem options the average user doesn't
care about, and increases disk activity a little when handling a
lot of files at a time.
The NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate key means no files are tagged with
a last access timestamp when you read them, and the last option
is a convenience to kill off that pesky low diskspace warning that
tends to pop the game I'm playing to the back while nagging..
There are also some virtual memory settings you can try, if you
feel brave:
----- BEGIN -----
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlS
"ClearPageFileAtShutdown"=dword:0000
"IoPageLockLimit"=dword:00020000
"LargeSyst
"NonPagedPoolQuota"=dword
"NonPagedPoolSize"=dword:00000000
"Pag
"PagedPoolSize"=dword
"SecondLevelDataCache"=dword:00000100
"WriteW
"DisablePagingExecutive"=dwo
----- END -----
Just stick everything into a
If you want to know what everything does, Google for it - it's best
that you investigate before trusting me blindly
Re:Maybe it works.. (Score:4, Informative)
I tried that once, and I was surprised at the number of programs that still used 16-bit APIs (and thus required 8.3 name creation). This setting will break those apps.
One that stood out in my mind was one of the more popular installers...I forget which one it was now though.
Not worth it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Having said that, in my experience these programs virtually all cause some instability or other that makes them just not worth it. I wouldn't run one of these for the same reason I don't overclock my systems -- the couple of percentage points of increased performance just isn't worth the increased risk that my system might die at some critical moment, causing me to lose hours or more of work.
YMMV.
I can't believe they accepted this story (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe the editors let this sort of crap through. The seeming "question", and then the amazing success story of using the wonderful Hare program. Ugh.
Even if this "advert" wasn't intentional by the submitter (which I have a hard time believing), it is giving this shady Hare program way more free publicity than it deserves.
It works GREAT! (Score:3, Funny)
Doubting Thomas (Score:4, Interesting)
speed vs. Correctness (Score:5, Insightful)
You can short circuit a lot of semaphores in the OS and speed up any operations that require concurrency. It'll work most of the time, and trash your data 2% of the time. If you don't need correct behavior, speed can be had more easily.
That said, windows is built to run decently on some pretty odd hardware. If you strip out all the unnecessary drivers, and set up some better config defaults for your hardware you can make some big gains. Setting memory zone preallocation, default filesystem allocation size, maximum table lengths, I'm sure you could easily add 75% to your performance ON AVERAGE. I am, however, extremely skeptical of any claims about game frame-rates. Games interract with the OS minimally, and are mostly hardware bound.
-my $.02
Re:88-bit kernel (Score:5, Informative)
Re:88-bit kernel (Score:5, Insightful)
What they mean by 88-bit kernel isn't what most Linux users mean by kernel. They're referring to the programming style of the graphics kernel.
In this case, they're using floating-point registers for data moves, and other 'demo-scene' tricks to gain much higher memory bandwidth than simple 'mov eax, [screen]' assembly would normally generate, which is what the stock Windows graphics kernels use. In practice, it actually works quite well, and hand-tuned assembly-language memory-twiddling routines (which are all graphics kernels are) will be 2-4x faster than equivilant C/C++ code would be, so the speedups for some operations (like redrawing the windows, which is all the program is really claiming to speed up) are true.