Is Vista really worth it.

[egghead]

I hear vista prevents soundcards from direct access to the system so no more direct hardware acceleration and only software emulation from now on.....

edit

here is the proof....

Australia, January 29, 2007 - "Windows Vista and DirectX 10 signal a new era in gaming," so says Mark Walker, Microsoft columnist and gaming evangelist. And he's but one of a chorus of voices from within and without Microsoft touting the merits of the next generation of Windows when it comes to gaming.

So imagine your surprise when you fire up one of your favourite games in Vista - say World of Warcraft or Prey - only to find your fancy EAX-endowed soundcard and 5.1 surround speakers are dribbling out flat, unenhanced stereo sound. Then, in a vain attempt to spruce up the audio by enabling EAX, you get a nice taut error message saying EAX is not detected on your hardware. What's going on?
Welcome to the world of Vista audio. And a brave new world it is.

The root of all these problems? Microsoft's Windows team made the bold decision to rewrite the Vista audio stack from the ground up, and in doing so they removed hardware acceleration for DirectSound. That's right. They took hardware support away from the most ubiquitous sound API implemented in games over the past several years.

As a result, in many of today's games, all those feature-laden sound cards, with their multiple channels, audio extensions and hardware accelerated processors, become little better than common garden variety on-board sound running in software mode. Naturally, Creative Labs (amongst others) is pissed.

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now we only need to find some security state backdoors and we can see why billy bought ownership in the four seasons hotel chain...lol