DH Article: Vista Gaming: Yay or Nay? Part 1: ATI

Zardon · Mar 2, 2007, 12:34 AM

Read the article here
_____________________

Microsoft would have you believe that the future of PC gaming lies with Windows Vista, and with the advent of DX10 gaming there is some truth in these claims. The real question however should be, “is Vista ready to become the primary gaming OS?” After noticing that (the rig killing and impressive) THQ’s Supreme Commander frame rates seemed smoother in Vista we decided to investigate. Hopefully you will find this as interesting to read as it was for us during testing, as many myths are circulating about just how “useless” Windows Vista is.

Judas · Mar 2, 2007, 01:32 AM

hmmm

It "does" seem to depend on several things, specifically system setup and system component wise.

My results semi contradict his.

Course i don't have all the latest games, but jumping back and forth from xp pro to vista 32bit, with about 10+ games, i'm noticing across the board, major improvements, while OpenGL games are still kinda "iffy" at best under vista, i'm sure this will change quickly.

Only a few games, i can only name UT2004 and Serious Sam 2 have some oddities, Serious sam 2 plays poorly (frame rate wise) and Ut2004 plays great when the FSAA settings are maxed, but turns to crap when it lowered, i can only fathom it being a driver related issue.

The 7.2 cats improved a number of things though (performance wise, specially OpenGL) in relation of Crossfire however, still some work needs to be done.

However, the last weekend, i got to sit down and play around with SLI 7900's on vista, at my suppliers, with a beta driver that was "saposed" to enable SLI and work much better, the result still isn't all that pretty.

From what i've seen personally, Vista and Crossfire were ment to work together, enable crossfire, and the experience is completely opposite to that of XP. The entire system is much much smoother and quicker.

Maybe i should post up my own Figures with the 7.2 drivers.

Vikingod · Mar 2, 2007, 02:39 AM

Great article guys. I am actually pretty surprised by the results.

I can't wait to see the Nvidia performance. My experiece with the NV drivers on Vista is not a great one.

Mazuko · Mar 2, 2007, 03:48 AM

I love the article but one of the things I didn't notice mentioned was any real info about sound other than "pops or small issues gone".

I have a dual boot XP Pro/Vista Home Premium and I have to say the audio drivers by creative are not good in Vista. There is no mic support, and the configuration options are cut in half.

I know you can say that Creative has become well known for crappy driver support but one would think that with such a new OS they would release something.

I would LOVE to see an article on audio/driver performance and support in Vista.

On another note the fact ATI brought their drivers out of "beta" and having run both the beta and the knew ones, man the "official" drivers are soooo much better in my opinion!

WTG ATI! I've run those games with and without crossfire enabled and let me tell ya with crossfire on it is like turning on the lights in a dark room and seeing everything before you trip. Big difference and I would love to see some other peoples #'s!

FYI my setup:

AMD 64 3500+
Dual ATI X1600 Pro 512MB
4GB Corsair XMS
1000GB HDD space
Creative X-Fi Platinum

Supreme commander still brings me to a CRAWL when running for a long time but that is with things all on max, turning down the eye candy a bit and it runs as smooth as slow churned margarine.

jasonbourne · Mar 2, 2007, 08:45 AM

great article!! i always knew vista was great lol

Zardon · Mar 2, 2007, 09:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mazuko

I have a dual boot XP Pro/Vista Home Premium and I have to say the audio drivers by creative are not good in Vista. There is no mic support, and the configuration options are cut in half.

Yes I know, I had a machine dual booting with an audigy 2 NX and to this point they still havent updated the drivers for Vista. Creative's handle on Vista has been utterly appalling, nothing else to say about it. And if you look on creatives forums, there are so many people complaining that im surprised they havent sorted it out.

Im sure Peter can elaborate on the sound issues with Supreme Commander, but I too had read that many people where having audio popping on Windows XP, which hasn't carried over to Vista. Not sure of the exact hardware configurations mind you, but I think its more a "generalised statement" for that particular game, rather than anything specific relating to advantages within either operating system.

jasonbourne · Mar 2, 2007, 09:19 AM

i was really surprised to find out that vista came out first specially with those games that uses more memory such as oblivion and supreme commander.and like zardon said creative`s handle on vista has been poor .i have an xfi soundcard but im unable to use half of its features.i downloaded crative alchemy but its too much of a hassle.

**temeteus82** · Mar 2, 2007, 09:37 AM

Good article from Peter. I seems that in Vista games runs as fast as they do in XP. And that is a good thing. The only down sides of Vista for me are Creatives drivers and Vistas price...

Erroneus · Mar 2, 2007, 09:42 AM

I'm not that suprised, that ATI does well in Vista. Their driver quality has been great the last year now and other tests has showed they made the transition to Vista much much better then Nvidia.

Zardon · Mar 2, 2007, 09:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by temeteus82

The only down sides of Vista for me are Creatives drivers and Vistas price...

I think we had a chat about this before, but I can't remember the details, what price are you guys paying for vista ultimate over there? It is quite competitively priced here, with the OEM version selling for £130 via online stores such as overclockers.co.uk.

**temeteus82** · Mar 2, 2007, 10:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zardon

I think we had a chat about this before, but I can't remember the details, what price are you guys paying for vista ultimate over there? It is quite competitively priced here, with the OEM version selling for £130 via online stores such as overclockers.co.uk.

Yes we had this conversation in another thread. But I would have to get the full retail version since I'm not going to get any new hardware. And when I do upgrade my system then I would have to reactivate vista, and since oem's license policy don't allow it the safer bet is to get the retail version. And that's around 500€ in here right now. I think that I go to Vista in xmas this year... Drivers are then better and program support is better. At least I hope so.

btw. Is there difference between x86 and x64 versions in games in terms of performance?

Zardon · Mar 2, 2007, 11:01 AM

no. none of the games have anything in them to take advantage of 64bit vista. I don't advise going to the 64 bit version, the driver support is appalling (regardless of what Judas posts) as it lags months behind the 32bit version with some companies not even giving a time frame for driver development. Same thing with 64bit XP, although obviously with years of development it is in a better state of affairs.

WhO_KnOwS · Mar 2, 2007, 01:38 PM

To elaborate on the sound issues with Supreme Commander:
Under Windows XP a lot of sound cards (especially on-board solutions which are the most widely spread) seem to suffer from sound popping and generally reduced sound quality when playing on larger maps (I think this has something to do with the larger number of units -> more sounds).
Under Vista none of these generic sound issues exists. Sure, if the driver for Vista sucks there is not much you can do about it, but Supreme Commander definitelly makes better use of Vista's sound interface that it does of the one found in Win XP.

This can probably be acredited to the fact that in Vista MS has a faster audio engine and some pretty tight requirements for audio buffer position accuracy (this is also the reason Creative has major problems porting their drivers over, as there are bugs in it that didn't matter with the more relaxed rules in XP)

germanjulian · Mar 2, 2007, 04:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by temeteus82

Yes we had this conversation in another thread. But I would have to get the full retail version since I'm not going to get any new hardware. And when I do upgrade my system then I would have to reactivate vista, and since oem's license policy don't allow it the safer bet is to get the retail version. And that's around 500€ in here right now. I think that I go to Vista in xmas this year... Drivers are then better and program support is better. At least I hope so.

btw. Is there difference between x86 and x64 versions in games in terms of performance?

i paid $260... though I live in Germany. Get someone friend to send you the full retail version. you might have to wait a week for shipping but the price difference is huge

**temeteus82** · Mar 2, 2007, 05:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by germanjulian

i paid $260... though I live in Germany. Get someone friend to send you the full retail version. you might have to wait a week for shipping but the price difference is huge

Full retail Ultimate in English???? Hmm... I have two second cousins living there

Judas · Mar 2, 2007, 05:13 PM

hey since using vista 64, i'm familare with the driver state, it's no where near perfect, or as reliable as 32bit, but it isn't horrible either.

Zardon · Mar 2, 2007, 06:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Judas

hey since using vista 64, i'm familare with the driver state, it's no where near perfect, or as reliable as 32bit, but it isn't horrible either.

Excellent, well if anyone wants a "not horrible" experience which is worse than the 32bit version then take Judas advice.

Everyone else who is sane, stick with the 32bit version unless you want a year of massive hair loss

Dark Lord · Mar 2, 2007, 07:05 PM

something ive been wondering for awhile now, does vista still have that gameing mode they had talked about?

it was supposed to shut off all other non essential processes running so almost 100% of the hardware could be dedicated to gameing. or was this one of the many other things that got scraped along the wya?

WhO_KnOwS · Mar 2, 2007, 08:17 PM

Well, aero gets shut down and most of the memory caching operations are stopped when you launch a game, so it is kinda included...

**temeteus82** · Mar 2, 2007, 08:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zardon

Everyone else who is sane, stick with the 32bit version unless you want a year of massive hair loss

I'm insane

and ready to massive hair loss if some one gives me Vista Ultimate x64

legal version of course...

Sonata · Mar 2, 2007, 10:51 PM

I'm using Win x64 and still have a full head of hair. I will use the x64 bit version of Vista Ultimate when I get around to installing it. Of course if I just want a windows OS that can at this present time play any game or do everything, my USB 2.0 external drive with plain old 32 bit XP that MS claims isn't possible to boot off takes care of that!

Vikingod · Mar 2, 2007, 11:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sonata

I'm using Win x64 and still have a full head of hair. I will use the x64 bit version of Vista Ultimate when I get around to installing it. Of course if I just want a windows OS that can at this present time play any game or do everything, my USB 2.0 external drive with plain old 32 bit XP that MS claims isn't possible to boot off takes care of that!

I run x64 Xp as well, and I can conclusivly say that x64 Vista is a whole different ball of wax... a ball of wax made of shit.

Zardon · Mar 2, 2007, 11:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vikingod

I run x64 Xp as well, and I can conclusivly say that x64 Vista is a whole different ball of wax... a ball of wax made of shit.

As was 64bit XP when it was initially released. i think people are misinterpreting what I said, in that 64 bit windows is "useless" - I didnt mean that. 64 bit Driver development and support is months behind, thats the issue. I have an MSDN account with MS and I dual boot both on another system - have been doing so since august 06.

WinXp 64 bit is a lot better now after years of development, but Vista? I dont think it will be a viable solid OS until at least 2008. Same kind of time frame as XP - maybe a little sooner.

Necrosis · Mar 3, 2007, 12:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zardon

As was 64bit XP when it was initially released. i think people are misinterpreting what I said, in that 64 bit windows is "useless" - I didnt mean that. 64 bit Driver development and support is months behind, thats the issue. I have an MSDN account with MS and I dual boot both on another system - have been doing so since august 06.

WinXp 64 bit is a lot better now after years of development, but Vista? I dont think it will be a viable solid OS until at least 2008. Same kind of time frame as XP - maybe a little sooner.

Another way to say it is this.

XP 64 has way better driver support compared to 64 Vista.

Mazuko · Mar 3, 2007, 06:37 AM

Ultimately I think it is safe to say that even without proper driver support from hardware manufactuers at this point it is, surprisingly, a viable option to play games on Vista.

I think it would be advantageous to do the same kind of comparisons with Vista say 6 months from now, when proper drivers are released for most hardware, and the current comparisons done here in this article.

Makes one wonder doesn't it?

MrSpock2002 · Mar 5, 2007, 03:02 AM

Me having a laptop it's difficult to decide if I want to upgrade to Vista. Besides what's the point of Vista other then DX10. I have an x600, so no point in DX10 now. In a year when I decide to get a new machine, then it will be different. Besides I'm not to keen on the DRM crap with Vista.

Intelman · Apr 9, 2007, 07:28 AM

First of all, I loved the article, nice reading, and lots of fancy eyecandy!

My FEAR performance has been hurting me on Vista. It just doesn't feel as smooth as it did on XP, even if it is about 30 FPS. (I am sure it doesn't matter that I'm using FEAR Combat, the free multiplayer) I suppose I can lower my res and turn off AA and AF and see if I get my smoothness back.

Supreme Commander is pretty darn smooth on Vista, I never tried it on XP. I can confirm that Oblivion feels smoother in Vista, at least smoother than it felt in XP.

Can DH contact ATI and express some concern for F.E.A.R. performance? I would really love to see this improved!

WhO_KnOwS · Apr 9, 2007, 11:08 PM

I've dropped ATI an email and they've reassured me that their tests show little to no difference between XP and Vista performance, especially with the newer driver suites.
If you have any actual benchmarks (other than the ones we posted) and if you would post your system configuration alongside ATI could try and reproduce the issue you are having (if you are in fact not a lone case).
Again, keep in mind that there are countless factors that could be affecting your results, and even our own results would probably be different in a slightly altered system.

Mar 2, 2007, 12:34 AM	#1
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	DH Article: Vista Gaming: Yay or Nay? Part 1: ATI Read the article here _____________________ Microsoft would have you believe that the future of PC gaming lies with Windows Vista, and with the advent of DX10 gaming there is some truth in these claims. The real question however should be, “is Vista ready to become the primary gaming OS?” After noticing that (the rig killing and impressive) THQ’s Supreme Commander frame rates seemed smoother in Vista we decided to investigate. Hopefully you will find this as interesting to read as it was for us during testing, as many myths are circulating about just how “useless” Windows Vista is.

Mar 2, 2007, 02:39 AM	#3
Vikingod Int'l Fish Liaison Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: By the light of lamp I sit and type... Posts: 16,187 Rep Power: 109 System Specs	Great article guys. I am actually pretty surprised by the results. I can't wait to see the Nvidia performance. My experiece with the NV drivers on Vista is not a great one. __________________ *How You Can Help DriverHeaven By Using Digg*

Mar 2, 2007, 03:48 AM	#4
Mazuko DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Fredericksburg, VA Posts: 1,008 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	I love the article but one of the things I didn't notice mentioned was any real info about sound other than "pops or small issues gone". I have a dual boot XP Pro/Vista Home Premium and I have to say the audio drivers by creative are not good in Vista. There is no mic support, and the configuration options are cut in half. I know you can say that Creative has become well known for crappy driver support but one would think that with such a new OS they would release something. I would LOVE to see an article on audio/driver performance and support in Vista. On another note the fact ATI brought their drivers out of "beta" and having run both the beta and the knew ones, man the "official" drivers are soooo much better in my opinion! WTG ATI! I've run those games with and without crossfire enabled and let me tell ya with crossfire on it is like turning on the lights in a dark room and seeing everything before you trip. Big difference and I would love to see some other peoples #'s! FYI my setup: AMD 64 3500+ Dual ATI X1600 Pro 512MB 4GB Corsair XMS 1000GB HDD space Creative X-Fi Platinum Supreme commander still brings me to a CRAWL when running for a long time but that is with things all on max, turning down the eye candy a bit and it runs as smooth as slow churned margarine. __________________ E-bay feedback: http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAP...me=STRK:ME:UFS

Mar 2, 2007, 08:45 AM	#5
jasonbourne DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: great yarmouth uk Posts: 1,082 Rep Power: 0	great article!! i always knew vista was great lol __________________ http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y28...asonBourne.jpg

Mar 2, 2007, 09:19 AM	#7
jasonbourne DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: great yarmouth uk Posts: 1,082 Rep Power: 0	i was really surprised to find out that vista came out first specially with those games that uses more memory such as oblivion and supreme commander.and like zardon said creative`s handle on vista has been poor .i have an xfi soundcard but im unable to use half of its features.i downloaded crative alchemy but its too much of a hassle. __________________ http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y28...asonBourne.jpg

Mar 2, 2007, 09:42 AM	#9
Erroneus Get off my lawn! Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Denmark Posts: 13,342 Rep Power: 114 System Specs	I'm not that suprised, that ATI does well in Vista. Their driver quality has been great the last year now and other tests has showed they made the transition to Vista much much better then Nvidia. __________________

Mar 2, 2007, 11:01 AM	Thread Starter #12
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	no. none of the games have anything in them to take advantage of 64bit vista. I don't advise going to the 64 bit version, the driver support is appalling (regardless of what Judas posts) as it lags months behind the 32bit version with some companies not even giving a time frame for driver development. Same thing with 64bit XP, although obviously with years of development it is in a better state of affairs.

Mar 2, 2007, 01:38 PM	#13
WhO_KnOwS The Knows Mister Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Slovenia, Europe Posts: 409 Rep Power: 55	To elaborate on the sound issues with Supreme Commander: Under Windows XP a lot of sound cards (especially on-board solutions which are the most widely spread) seem to suffer from sound popping and generally reduced sound quality when playing on larger maps (I think this has something to do with the larger number of units -> more sounds). Under Vista none of these generic sound issues exists. Sure, if the driver for Vista sucks there is not much you can do about it, but Supreme Commander definitelly makes better use of Vista's sound interface that it does of the one found in Win XP. This can probably be acredited to the fact that in Vista MS has a faster audio engine and some pretty tight requirements for audio buffer position accuracy (this is also the reason Creative has major problems porting their drivers over, as there are bugs in it that didn't matter with the more relaxed rules in XP) __________________ How you can help DriverHeaven by using Digg!

Mar 2, 2007, 07:05 PM	#18
Dark Lord HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Grand Rapids, MI Posts: 5,945 Rep Power: 124 System Specs	something ive been wondering for awhile now, does vista still have that gameing mode they had talked about? it was supposed to shut off all other non essential processes running so almost 100% of the hardware could be dedicated to gameing. or was this one of the many other things that got scraped along the wya? __________________

Mar 2, 2007, 08:17 PM	#19
WhO_KnOwS The Knows Mister Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Slovenia, Europe Posts: 409 Rep Power: 55	Well, aero gets shut down and most of the memory caching operations are stopped when you launch a game, so it is kinda included... __________________ How you can help DriverHeaven by using Digg!

Mar 2, 2007, 10:51 PM	#21
Sonata DriverHeaven Addict Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Hot as hell in summer Posts: 284 Rep Power: 0	I'm using Win x64 and still have a full head of hair. I will use the x64 bit version of Vista Ultimate when I get around to installing it. Of course if I just want a windows OS that can at this present time play any game or do everything, my USB 2.0 external drive with plain old 32 bit XP that MS claims isn't possible to boot off takes care of that!

Mar 3, 2007, 06:37 AM	#25
Mazuko DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Fredericksburg, VA Posts: 1,008 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	Ultimately I think it is safe to say that even without proper driver support from hardware manufactuers at this point it is, surprisingly, a viable option to play games on Vista. I think it would be advantageous to do the same kind of comparisons with Vista say 6 months from now, when proper drivers are released for most hardware, and the current comparisons done here in this article. Makes one wonder doesn't it? __________________ E-bay feedback: http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAP...me=STRK:ME:UFS

Mar 5, 2007, 03:02 AM	#26
MrSpock2002 Because I said so! Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Watkins Glen NY Posts: 542 Rep Power: 0	Me having a laptop it's difficult to decide if I want to upgrade to Vista. Besides what's the point of Vista other then DX10. I have an x600, so no point in DX10 now. In a year when I decide to get a new machine, then it will be different. Besides I'm not to keen on the DRM crap with Vista.

Apr 9, 2007, 07:28 AM	#27
Intelman DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 15 Rep Power: 0	First of all, I loved the article, nice reading, and lots of fancy eyecandy! My FEAR performance has been hurting me on Vista. It just doesn't feel as smooth as it did on XP, even if it is about 30 FPS. (I am sure it doesn't matter that I'm using FEAR Combat, the free multiplayer) I suppose I can lower my res and turn off AA and AF and see if I get my smoothness back. Supreme Commander is pretty darn smooth on Vista, I never tried it on XP. I can confirm that Oblivion feels smoother in Vista, at least smoother than it felt in XP. Can DH contact ATI and express some concern for F.E.A.R. performance? I would really love to see this improved!

Apr 9, 2007, 11:08 PM	#28
WhO_KnOwS The Knows Mister Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Slovenia, Europe Posts: 409 Rep Power: 55	I've dropped ATI an email and they've reassured me that their tests show little to no difference between XP and Vista performance, especially with the newer driver suites. If you have any actual benchmarks (other than the ones we posted) and if you would post your system configuration alongside ATI could try and reproduce the issue you are having (if you are in fact not a lone case). Again, keep in mind that there are countless factors that could be affecting your results, and even our own results would probably be different in a slightly altered system. __________________ How you can help DriverHeaven by using Digg!