Gaming with Vista?

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask.

My laptop came with XP-Pro installed as well as a Vista-Business edition upgrade disk (which arrived later in the mail.)

My question is that, seeing as my laptop only has a DX9 video card, (7950GTX + not upgradeable) is there any benefit in upgrading to Vista from a gaming perspective? (Frame rate, image qty, game reqs, etc)

Or would upgrading actually lower gaming performance?

 

Uh typically in most games you will see a slight decrease in performance but that gap will eventually close. It has shrunk drastically with the new drivers these last couple of months.

Nope, no real reason for you to upgrade. Only reason for vista for gaming would be DX10 and your card doesn't support it. You have a beast of a video card though so you can probably run most games totally maxed out which would compare fine to dx10 versiosn such as bioshock. I think crysis would be the first game dx10 vs dx9 visuals will have a signifigant effect.

 

My laptop came with Vista Home Premium installed on it. I had to switch to XP because I thought it'd get rid of my stuttering issue in Oblivion (which it didn't). However I did notice that my FPS improved drastically when I switched to XP. In Vista outside I had an average FPS of 25 this is with 1280x800 res/Vsync/Distant Trees/Distant Landscapes/No distant buildings and Bloom Lighting (medium settings) when I switched to vista I can now play Oblivion on Ultra High settings and HDR lighting all three "distance" options selected with an average fps of 40 outside. Big difference if you ask me .

 

Weird. So a true DX10 card (your 8600M GT) is faster in XP despite the DX9 limitation? --Could this be from Oblivion being a (designed for) DX9 game? Or would DX9/10 games like Bioshock also be faster in XP?

Sorry for all the questions, but is this a driver issue, or is Vista simply a more "bloated" OS that'll never be as fast?

Lastly, thanks to all for the FAST responses!!

 

Well no oblivion is an older game. On newer games especially bioshock tests done with the 8 series cards showed that xp vs vista had minimal differences. I think at most it was 5-7 fps difference but most of the time it was 1-2 or even no difference. The newer games are more optimized for vista and older games, and of course like I mentioned before the drivers make a big difference. In Odins case I think it was because of oblivion.

 

Remember that DX10 does not play an issue unless you're using a DX10 card in Vista on a game using the DX10 codepath. So far no game made has produced better image quality at the same framerate in DX10 mode versus DX9 mode.

And yes, Vista being a more bloated OS has something to do with it. However with newer Vista drivers the performance difference with new games and new cards is minimal.

 

I believe that after Vista SP1 is released Vista will become better for gaming. Actually it's what I'm counting on. I am looking forward to playing Hellgate London in DX10 mode later . Soon Vista should be just as good (most likely better) than XP. So hopefully Q1 of next year I'll be reinstalling Vista.