Windows Vista a problem for gaming?

Okay, i am going to be purchasing a new laptop, for light gaming, and media purposes. I am asking if Vista will cause problems for the gaming, I hear people saying that gamers should get XP instead. I have never tried Vista so I wouldnt know, so please explain why i should get XP again.

 

XP will offer you slightly higher frame rates than Vista will. However on the other hand (although pretty much totally useless right now) Vista has DX10, which will be used and optimized more in the future (well.. chances are). DX9 right now though provides much better performance, and DX10 right now kills performance and doesn't give enough of an eye-candy-increase to be worth it.

 

Not to mention that he doesn't have DX10 hardware.

 

Well, i wont be playing any extreme games, will be playing games like WoW, CS:S, maybe up to CoD4, but thats about as extreme as i will go. Will vista still be a problem with those kind of games?

 

No. If you don't use anything to display the FPS onscreen, chances are you won't see any difference

 

I don't feel that there is a noticeable difference with Vista and XP in the games that I run.

 

I like vista , it runs my games well and I never have problems, as soon as the drivers become more and more mature vista will be very game "ready"!

 

Personally, I like Vista just fine too and haven't had any trouble gaming with it. Just to give something concrete, my 3dmark06 benchmark went down from about 4110 on XP to around 3800 when I first went to Vista, but with the most recent drivers it's back up to about 4080 (not that there was ever a noticable performance drop in practice).
The only caveat I'd have is if your system is near minimum specs for Vista you're better off with XP.

 

Some games have problems running in Vista, but the games in the OP's list will run fine on Vista depending on hardware.

 

Vista will run these games easily with no problem. Providing you have at least 1.8ghz and 2gb ram and a 32mb dedicated card in your spec list

 

On those specific games, Vista will give you no problems.
It`s newer games where Vista lacks a lot of optimization towards better performance.
As somebody who used both Xp and Vista, Xp is still the best for gaming.Vista is however futureproof and may become better with updates and service packs.

 

I only recently got my laptop a couple weeks ago. It was my first time with Vista and to be honest I wasn't looking forward to the experience. I have a whole load of older games which I assumed I would have trouble running. However I must say I am pleasantly surprised by Vista. I have installed quite a few games (not done all of them quite yet) and not one problem so far. Everything runs ok, I even got red alert 2 online running! I haven't tried my copies of Quake 2 & Quake 3 Arena yet, has anyone got these running on Vista ok? I am worried I may have problems because of open gl. I assume my graphics cards don't support it or I may have to download something?

Only thing I am dissapointed by (I don't know if Vista is to blame or the drivers) is 3d mark 06 score. I have 8800m GTX sli (dell xps m1730) and only get 10750 ish (1280 * 1024). I know it's a great score but I think the sli should produce better. I read I should expect more like 12500 from my set up. Anyway I tried other drivers and get similar or in 174.16 case it went down a few hundred. So I am not sure if Vista is pulling the performance down or drivers are just not mature enough. Under single gpu set up 3d mark is about 8,700.

 

Not all video drivers support OpenGL. I had problems running cs 1.6 because only certain drivers had openGL support. This was back when it was 156.xx from lv2go.com

 

I ran quake 2 and quake 3 on vista, and they ran perfectly. I think you need better drivers though, about 12k is what you should expect...although the single 8700 sounds about right.

 

Xp vs. Vista = No Difference

It's not Vista that's causing problems with gaming.

It's the lousy video cards that they're putting into most of the laptops out there, combined with people playing newer/more graphicially demanding games with those same crummy cards that's causing the problems.

(P.S. Keep your flaming down to zero Arq's, I'm trying to be civil but knowing your demeanor ... I've already reported you to the mods. Watch Your Manners)

 

Dude, you obsviousely are either an ignorant or a vista fanboy.
Xp is 10-15% FASTER than Vista in pretty much any game.Give it a rest.

 

Ok based on that calculation...

Let's say in XP you get avg 30 FPS at a given resolution. Then in Vista you might get 26-27FPS at that same resolution.

Or say in XP you get 40 FPS at a given resolution. Then in Vista you might get 34-36 FPS at that same resolution.


So in real world practical terms, minus FRAPS or other benchmarks, you wouldn't really notice the difference except if it were to drop down to the point of choppiness or sluggishness.

And if it's an older gamer where you would get much higher frame rates, it becomes irrelevant since you truly wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

 

If you`re a light gamer and prefer to play on low details and resolutions sure.
But when you pay 2500$ on a laptop with a new gen OS , and that is a premium, you expect nothing but premium performance. From both the laptop AND THE OS.

 

Well, truly, if one is a bonafide, died in the wool, gamer, they wouldn't be buying a lappy at all. Lappy equals compromise. However, the reality is with newer Vista GPU drivers, that gap between XP and Vista performance is closing. That 10-15% difference is a year old claim. If you look at Crysis benchmarks for Vista versus XP make sure that they are comparing DX9 render mode for both. They are about even on both OS's with Crysis 1.1 patch and recent Nvidia drivers. DX10 versus XP's DX9 gives XP the advantage since there's less to render.

And when Montevina comes out later this summer, along with next gen video cards from ATI and Nvidia, possibly even Vista's SP1 contributing to enchancement, that Vista gaming gap, which mostly shows up in benchmearks and not real world experience, will be mostly gone.

Besides, it's becoming all the more pointless to even discuss XP for gaming because many new systems will not even run XP as there is no driver support for it. Not to mention that one will not be able to legally obtain a copy of XP soon given that its sales are set to end. And DX10 code will become all the more efficient as developers become more adept at implementing it.


I'm not a Vista fanboi as I do not even own or use anything with Vista on it. I'm XP all the way right now. Just trying to drop a rational perspective.

 

Put your shields back up, the war is on!

Personally ive found XP to be faster overall, but i still like vista.

 

The only game I have that I could not get to run in Vista was LOTR: Battle For Middle Earth. No matter what I tried, it would not run without kicking in the anti-piracy abort EA meshed into the game. Obviously Vista does not give the program the control that it likes......

NFS: Most Wanted, Red Alert 2, Bridge Commander, Elite Force 2, etc, etc... have all run fine on Vista (as my gpu is a tad better than what is on my XP machine)......

 

By your P.S. I can obviously see you're just trying to get into an argument with me, so I'll just ignore it. As for Vista and XP not having a difference, there is a difference, and as I said it's slight, but it's there. Just thought I'd point it out instead of flat out lying to the guy.

It's not totally DX10s fault per se, that the frame rates in games take such a huge hit when running in it. Apparently Assassins Creed will run exceptionally well under DX10, so DX10 games just need to be optimized to actually perform well in DX10 (yes, even on those "crummy" notebook cards). But as of right now, it's really the only game that can run well in DX10 on a notebooks graphics card other than the 8800m. If you have an 8800m, however, there's enough power being pumped out of that GPU that you won't notice a visible difference in frame rates. Even if you have an 8600 chances are you won't notice the hit between Vista and XP unless you have FRAPS running.

Vista *is* getting better though and *can* run DX9 anyhow. DX9 will be what you want to play most modern games in right now, until games start using DX10 better.

Just be aware some older games will not run or will have many errors on Vista.

 

go with vista and wait for the future drivers...good luck

 

get vista, get new drivers, its prettier than xp and you wont notice the difference.

 

One of my friend is playing on Vista no problem. Have tired using a no-dvd patch? That often solve those problems.

 

Has anyone here had cs 1.6 running ok on vista?

 

Used various patches to no effect. Some say it is corrupted install files causing the problem (due to a bad disc), but the XP machine has no problems with it........

 

As much as I like Vista, there is indeed a performance hit in games as compared to XP.

For me that difference is avg 5-10% with the laptop in my sig depending on game. (note I already have SP1, and I am still using 169.28 drivers)


I'd still recommend Vista for most people (especially with SP1), but if you REALLY must have that 3-6 extra FPS to make you feel better about your additional "car payment" for a laptop then use XP for better FRAPS readings.

 

There's definitely a difference between XP and Vista when it comes to gaming. It's especially easy for me to notice since I have such a weak GPU (ATI x1400). Vista Aero is a big contributor, but even with "Classic" theme there's a difference. For this reason, I solely game in XP except for Half-Life 2 games.

However, the better the GPU the less noticeable this difference is. So whether you should get Vista or XP, depends on which video card your laptop comes with.

 

I couldn't even run the original Neverwinter Nights in Vista-64...

 

Using both XP on a workstation & Vista on my Toshiba Satellite P200
(with ATI HD2600 mobility ), I've experienced no performance issues in any of the following games ( All Orange Box games, Crysis, Oblivion, F.E.A.R., Medieval Total War 2, Rome TW, Company Of Heroes, all on full settings at 1280 * 960 )

The only game I've had issues with is Bioshock crashing at the beginning when you enter the Bathysphere
( A working solution is to access Game Explorer, right click Bioshock icon & select DX9)

Really can't put this down to vista though, & I reluctantly have to say that it is now a viable gaming platform, but you may have to put in a little work if you can't get a game to run as expected

 

probably a 64-bit issue...

Not a single thing I cannot run in Vista32 yet... although some things must be run in compatibility mode or with sound turned off. (they got rid of Directsound and the HAL, so some sound routines just won't work)

 

Classic!

 

yes it works on vista. if you do run into issues, its probably gfx drivers