Opinion's on Vista and gaming

After almost one year since the initial release and new 64 bit Vista, what are your opinion's on gaming in Vista compared to XP? Virtually every benchmark taken between January through May 2007 that I saw definitely placed Vista behind XP as far as performance and compatibility were concerned. But that was roughly 8 months ago or more, and now I am curious as to how far patching and updates have taken Vista from it's previous state. Personally I think I would stick with XP Home and simply upgrade to Vista when the time comes without having to reinstall or lose any files. But from what I have seen so far, most members of this forum tend to use Vista.

 

I like Vista just fine. My games are great and run great too. Plus, since DX10 is somewhat prevalent now, it looks much prettier

 

I use the 32bit versions of Vista on all of my PCs, I found that the newest NVIDIA drivers had it so close I moved to Vista only rather than dual-booting with XP.
I think that there probably is still some room for improvement though, and hopefully in another 6months the Vista drivers will as good if not better than the XP ones.

 

Yea after I switched back to xp i realized there was no point so deleted it faster than I installed it and back to just vista .

 

Using 32bit Vista, only problem is the general functionality.
For example XP never hung up on me doing something like surfing and browsing folders.
Vista has done that a couple of times, but it's probably something that will be fixed in the updates.

There's really no point to turn back to XP now, if you don't really REALLY need that boost in performance. Finding drivers to your laptop's probably huge pain in the donkey.

 

Vista has a significant negative impact on games with the weaker GPUs, especially if you play games in windowed mode with Aero running.

 

I have Vista 64-bit, and it's fine as an operating system, but for games I'll be the first to admit there's problems there. No crashing (much), but performance does take a bigger hit than XP and DX10 is a joke at the very moment. Still, I'm glad I "future-proofed" as developers ARE still adapting.

 

But that's a problem with Vista in general, not 64-bit specifically, right?

You can call it that if you like, yes. Developers are doing what they've always done, focusing on the most widely available platform. Which is DirectX 9. And they won't drop support for that in the next 5 years. So I don't know if "future-proofing" is the word I'd use. Will you even be using this computer to play games 5 years from now? If not, there's not much future-proofing about taking a performance hit from Vista, is there?

 

Erm, about that five years bit I don't think so. DX 10 is starting to spread into all the big name titles. Hell two mmos have it (age of conan and LOTRO), I believe WoW may be updating to it soon, Crysis, bioshock, etc. If anything by the end of next year we should see most companeis switching or already switched over.

 

Just because DirectX 10 is included doesn't make it necessary. So far only thing DirectX 10 has done for me is slow my performance, and see very little difference in graphical quality. DirectX 10 features are nothing but a performance hit.

Considering WoW is catering to the lowest common denominator PC, I doubt DirectX 10 will be required or even improve the overall "experience" much.

DX10 is too far ahead of the hardware curve, and considering AMD/ATI isn't challenging nVidia much, it will be some time before we see massive hardware improvements to make DirectX 10 graphics in games playable the way it is intended.

That being said, I have dual boot Vista (64-bit) and XP on my desktop machine and haven't booted to Vista since I first installed it. Actually I didn't plan on installing XP on my desktop but Vista annoyed me so much, and had so many issues, I bought a new copy of XP. So M$ wins either way, and got money for both OS's.

I've always been an advocate for new tech and even new OS's, as god knows I bought 95, 98, 98SE, ME, XP Home, XP Pro. But Vista has been nothing but a pain so far.

 

I've posted my thoughts on Vista, along with comparative benchmarks taken using my system, in several such threads. Suffice it to say that I experience a 20-30% average performance hit in Vista on my desktop. I would argue the lower-end cards seem to take less of a hit - on my T61, the difference is on average about 10%. Nonetheless, Vista was a disaster on my laptop - Aero eats battery like no tomorrow, and the constant hard disk grinding for 15-30 minutes after boot was a) bad for battery life, b) bad for the disk, c) bad for disk I/O intensive application performance, and d) inexcusable since I have 4GB of RAM and 1GB of TurboMemory. On every machine I've used it on, Vista boots slower, runs slower, shuts down slower (except when it just bluescreens or hard locks, which is frighteningly often), and seriously hampers performance of all games and applications.

 

Vista is 5-10% performance difference (less than XP) in games.

Vista has better file control, permission control, user control, and is less likely to be infected by trojans, worms, or viruses.

Vista still has some glaringly annoying "features" especially when it comes to older hardware.

My laptop with Vista is rock solid... moreso than any XP machine I have ever maintained. (we have over 100 at work)

XP requires wipe/reinstalls every 3-6 months to maintain performance... Vista does not.

 

Some games are starting to *add support for* DirectX 10, yes. (So far, they've all disappointed though, with mediocre performance for little to no visual improvement)
But they are not going to drop DX9 support for the next 5 years.
That is still by far the most common platform, and one that will be supported for *a long time*

 

Odd... I find my bootup quite faster than XP, and I have to say it's more user-friendly.

Jalf, you're quite pessimistic about the whole thing and to me it seems like you're only trying to defend a purchase (or lack thereof). I'd say DX10 will reveal its strong benefits in a year tops.

There's a reason why DX10 is still being constantly implemented and not ignored by the developers; there really is potential. There's a reason why NVidia is tossing out 100 drivers per minute (specifically ones for support of DX10 games) because it still can be definitely worked on and improved to achieve the developer's vision on the technology.

 

"Defending a purchase"? Hah, I'm happy with what I bought. My desktop is close to 3 years old now, DX10 hardware wasn't an option back then. So no regrets there.
With my laptop I specifically opted for low-powered graphics, so no need for DX10 there.
I'm not the one trying to defend a purchase. I'm just a graphics programmer looking at the state of graphics programming today, and extrapolating for tomorrow.

There are two parts to what I said.
1: So far, DX10 has been a disappointment. That might change, or it might not. I don't know that. It seems to me that DX10 itself is fine (there are no great blunders in the API that make high performance impossible. On the contrary, they've eliminated some bottlenecks that plagued DX9 and earlier)
On the other hand, Vista is slower. Those are the two main factors. Vista is, and will always be slower. (The difference might lessen over time, but it'll always be slower than XP), and DX10 is in itself *potentially* more efficient than DX9. Driver maturity might be holding DX10 back now, and if so, it's only a temporary obstacle.
Perhaps DX10 will look better a year from now. The potential is definitely there. I was simply pointing out that so far, DX10 games have disappointed.

On to the main part of my post:
2: We won't see DX10-exclusive games for the next 5 years.
That's actually fairly simple. Pretty much every game being sold now supports shader model 2.0 I can't think of a single game requiring 3.0.

Shader model 2.0 became available with Windows XP in 2001!
That's 6 years ago.

Now, if 2.0 hasn't been eliminated in 6 years, I see no reason why 4.0 should be able to take over in less than 5.
Let's be optimistic and assume that during 2008, 3.0 will finally become a minimum req.
From then on, we can start counting down to 4.0 which comes with DX10.

Before I bought my current desktop computer, I had an ancient system with a Geforce 2. That was just around 5 years old when I upgraded. And that was just around the time when the requirements exceeded my card's capabilities. (GF2 was the last GPU with no shader support at all, and it took roughly 4-5 years before shaders became *required*)

So it's not just something I'm making up. It has always taken roughly 5 years for new hardware to really break through and become the new minimum requirement.

DirectX 10 might suddenly turn out to be awesome. But that won't change a thing. Game developers don't target awesome hardware, they target popular hardware. At the moment, less than 10% of the market has DX10 hardware.
Something like 4-5% have Vista + DX10 hardware.
They need to reach *at least* 90%, possibly even higher before they'll even *think* about making DX10-exclusive games.
That means that something like 95% of all gamers must be running Vista, and they must have had time to upgrade to a DX10 class GPU.

That won't happen soon. DX10 support will gradually get more common, of course, but DX10 as a requirement won't happen any time soon. My guess is 5 years. I might be able to agree to 4 years, but no less than that.

 

I own a Vostro 1500 with 8600m GT (Dx 10 Card) and *OPTED* for XP after spending good money on Vista for my desktop and it was nothing but annoying and a hassle. Couldn't get half my games to run on it or would install funky so had to scour through just to find the shortcut to the executable.

Core GUI functions that have been in Win9x, 2k, and XPfor over a decade have been changed for no good reason in Vista.

As far as DirectX 10, it is definitely a needed advancement, but it is not ready for prime time. I say it needs another year to year and a half for hardware to catch up before it can even ben considered "mainstream" let alone a requirement for a game. Typically technology 2-2.5 years old is considered middle of the road and what developers usually target for big title games.

 

If you head over to megagames.com (i think that's it, i cant get into it from work..it's blocked...they have a good article on the new patches that are going to come out soon for XP (SP3) and Vista (SP1)

They said that under testing, Vista performance only improved 1% with the changes.....
So there's the big improvement everyone is waiting for....a whopping 1%, woohoo!

On a more pleasant note, XP improved 10% with SP3...which I think is awesome for a platform that is already over 5 years old.

On a side note, they said in general, before and after the changes, XP scores 100% higher than Vista does...

 

100% higher in what???

 

I don't remember the details lol, I have to read the article again, and my work blocks all the 'good' websites..

I just remember it saying XP was 100% faster...possibly in performance or speed, etc...

 

100% in performance or speed of XP over Vista?? Give me a break... XP is faster but I think those numbers over-exaggerated...

 

Specific to gaming there isn't much I can add on Vista vs. XP. All I can say about Vista is that I've had my HP dv6000t for about 8 months now, and I've had to do a complete re-install of the OS twice. This is because the box becomes unstable and Explorer (the process not IE) fails to successfully spawn sub-processes. After about 4 months of usage this starts to happen and get progressively worse until I have to do a re-install. Having to do this really helped highlight M$s failure to implement a functional backup scheme for Vista.

Vista is crap and has given me nothing but headaches. XP was never this bad. I should have bought a Macbook.

 

100% faster... only when they used the wrong version of office and compared the wrong things...

Yes, people, the comparison was between Vista/Office 2007 and XP/Office 2003.

The comparison was quickly discredited.

Oh noes! Office 2007 under Vista takes 4 milliseconds to load and Office 2003 under XP takes 2!

Office runs faster than most humans can interact with it on the hardware people are using.
"Performance" tests in office are pretty silly.

 

It seems to me that if you want maximum performance, you go with XP. If you want snazzy eye candy and neat interface utilities you go with Vista. The argument of future proofing by getting Vista isn't necessarily practical since one could upgrade directly from XP Home to Vista without having to reformat. I think some may be overtaken by the appeal of Vista from the outside, rather than focusing on what it offers from the inside or performance wise. But honestly, if you aren't using your laptop for gaming, then there's no reason not to get Vista.

 

There are plenty of reasons not to get Vista, gaming or no.

As has already been mentioned, Vista's most noticeable "innovation" seems to have been renaming everything in the control panel to make it harder to find what you need. I don't need that. They have made a lot of user interface decisions that yes, make it look prettier, but also slow you down or get in your way when actually *using* the OS. (where is my 'back' button in Explorer?!?) If I'm less productive under Vista than I am under XP, that's a significant disadvantage to Vista.

Then there are the technical issues, such as the shaky stability, overall performance in various areas, and inflexible all-or-nothing security model, the excessive activation scheme?

I can think of plenty of reasons for non-gamers not to get Vista.
There are also valid reasons to *get* Vista, yes (I can think of two, of which one interests me. All the pointless eyecandy impresses some people, and the improved search is actually useful)

But geez, claiming that "there's no reason not to get Vista" just gets you nominated for the silliest post of the week.

 

It makes me laugh how the addins that Vista gives you can be found for free with just a few downloads off the internet from yahoo, google, etc...

i think if you have the option to get vista on your computer without paying extra that's a basis for an argument, but anyone who spends 200+bucks to upgrade is wasting their money..

 

If you aren't seeking top performance for anything including gaming, why would there be a problem in using vista? Tons of people here use it and would disagree with you I'm sure. Personally I wouldn't use it right now, gaming or not. But if I wasn't interested in performance then I may of considered otherwise.

 

I'm waiting for a SP1 before I'd even consider Vista 64 bit on my next new laptop.

 

The only problems I've had with gaming in Vista x86 are sound issues (usually solved by running in XP SP2 compatibility mode) and a few random crashes. Aside from those problems, I believe Vista is much like XP---it'll only hold you back if you don't know how to adapt.

 

I agree with nunka, after tweaking vista mine runs just fine and usually only uses 20-25% of the ram when running everything but just games which usually goes up to about 60%. I experience minor things very rarely, but on the whole I get nice OC speeds, good performance, and a solid OS.

 

@Nunka: Hey, two quick questions: what kind of sound issues you had? and how do you run the SP2 compatibility?

Thanks beforehand.

 

Exactly right, well said!!!

 

I've found that the faster and newer the hardware is that people use to run Vista, the smaller the performance and reliability margin becomes compared to XP.

On my MBP Vista runs from 4-7% slower in Vista than XP. In my experience, stability has been greatly improved. What it has taken me a long while to understand is why other people have such issues with Vista and stability. Finally I realized it is because I am running Vista using the most ideal Windows mobile hardware available, the Macbook Pro!

I really feel bad for anyone else who has to use Vista on "PC" hardware...they don't have any fun with it like I do.