General Consensus of Vista and Gaming on PC?

[ncage]

Guys i've just started to get back in gaming. I just upgraded my video card from 6600GT to a 8800GT thats on its way. What is the general consensus on gaming with Vista? Do games that use DX10 (Crysis, UT3 Maybe?) look better or run faster on Vista? I know a lot of talk way back when was it slowed a lot of DX9 games down. Is this still the case? If i get vista i will probably get the x64 bit version since it has some non game related advantages and since i have 4GB or ram. Any reason not to choose x64?

thanks,
Ncage

 

[Xavier434]

There have been a lot of mixed opinions on that and it seems that it is completely dependent on the combination of your hardware, how good its Vista drivers are, and which games you are playing. Considering that Vista SP1 will be out extremely soon, I would wait to see if any benchmark testing proves that Vista SP1 is superior for gaming or not. No one knows for certain right now.

If you don't want to wait, then you always have the option of trying Vista out and switching to XP if you are not satisfied.

 

[Aikouka]

I've been having some bad driver issues lately with my nVidia cards as something to note. It's probably some nVidia issue as their drivers have never been top notch for Vista. I remember in WoW that going into a certain type of area would always cause my PC to freeze. Now, the display drivers crash at some random time whenever I have two open at once when it never used to do it.

But speed-wise, I have no issues with Vista and I'm running Ultimate x64 for reference.

 

[maxster]

Works fine for me. Every game I tried has worked so no complaints here. I don't know about the speed difference vs. XP. I heard that Vista is slower than XP by 10-15%.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Works fine with me also. 64-bit Vista, Q6600, 8800GT, and no problems. Can't compare to XP, but haven't noticed any slowness/stuttering so far.

 

[JBT]

SP1 is comming out for Vista soon. It is said to contain a number of speed improvments and bug fixes.

 

[KeithTalent]

I've not had a problem with any games on my rig using Vista 64. I expect the speed difference between XP and Vista to lessen after SP1 is released.

KT

 

[Skott]

IMO Vista has gotten better but not quite there yet. If I were to get Vista I think I'd do it with a new build. New components and all that and a full install of Vista and not an upgrade of XP. Thats how I'd do it anyway right now if I were to go Vista today. I probably wont upgrade to Vista though until next year since I dont plan to build anything new this year. I can happily game with XP Pro until then.

 

[skace]

I'm running Vista 64 and I game a ton.

Problems so far:
- Lotro causes my machine to crash after long spurts, have not been able to narrow it down to a heat issue or what.
- Gametap doesn't support 64bit OSes for their PC games (huge let down)

Other than that, it's been pretty smooth sailing. I play lots of Steam games, played Crysis, CoD4, Witcher, all of the recent games. Haven't gotten around to playing any old stuff yet (outside of EQ) so that may be a huge let down that I just haven't run into.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: skace
I'm running Vista 64 and I game a ton.

Problems so far:
- Lotro causes my machine to crash after long spurts, have not been able to narrow it down to a heat issue or what.
- Gametap doesn't support 64bit OSes for their PC games (huge let down)

Other than that, it's been pretty smooth sailing. I play lots of Steam games, played Crysis, CoD4, Witcher, all of the recent games. Haven't gotten around to playing any old stuff yet (outside of EQ) so that may be a huge let down that I just haven't run into.

I never had any problems with LOTRO,I have about 60 games installed in Vista x64 and have no gaming issues(stability or performance wise).

 

[Piuc2020]

From my personal experience I can say that Vista does a lot to improve gaming experience, it has good memory and disk management, it has that neat Games explorer and it has DirectX10, the only problem though is, actual performance is slower than XP (not by much though).

However, in my opinion, that small difference in performance (which isn't that big a deal if you have a high end rig) is worth it for all the other stuff Vista has that makes it superior to XP.

If you have to choose one, then you should go with Vista.

 

[TheSlamma]

I wonder the same thing... but for older games.

I like to play Empire Earth part 1, Age of Empires Rise of Rome, Thief 2, Dungeon Keeper 2.

I also like new games too, but some older games I just really enjoy revisiting.

 

[karioskasra]

I've been using Vista x64 for a while and the vast majority of games that I had problems with didn't have a problem with x64 (runs fine in x86 emulation wrapper), but with the OS itself. In 3dmark it's a lot slower on Vista than it is in XP, but in games I think Anand had an article that showed Vista to be only marginally slower. I also hate how Vista manages the folder UI, but it has nice memory management and I'm too lazy to go back to XP and I have 4 gigs of ram anyway. Direct X 10 is virtually nonexistent in gaming right now save for a few titles and Vista drivers also blow in general. In short, this is not an impressive gaming OS at the moment.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: TheSlamma
I wonder the same thing... but for older games.

I like to play Empire Earth part 1, Age of Empires Rise of Rome, Thief 2, Dungeon Keeper 2.

I also like new games too, but some older games I just really enjoy revisiting.

You will always risk performance issues with a newer OS on older games. Thankfully, there are usually workarounds to them all too. If I am not mistaken, there are even some easy ways to get DOS based games working fine with Vista. Don't quote me on that though.

 

[KeithTalent]

Originally posted by: TheSlamma
I wonder the same thing... but for older games.

I like to play Empire Earth part 1, Age of Empires Rise of Rome, Thief 2, Dungeon Keeper 2.

I also like new games too, but some older games I just really enjoy revisiting.

There is someone around here (maybe Mem? can't remember) that has a laundry list of old and new games that he personally has tried and had work under Vista.

KT

 

[Aikouka]

Does anyone here actually tinker with their Vista installs? Do you shut down services that you won't need? Turn off the purdy interface? I know I did both of those in XP but I don't do it at all in Vista.

Oh and is anyone running an 8800GTX (or GT) with the latest 169.25 (I believe that's the proper number) driver with Vista Ultimate x64, 4GB of ram on a P35-based motherboard and not having issues? I'm wondering if my problems are simply driver related and that I should just stick my GTX back in (I replaced it with a GT to see if that'd help) and downgrade to pre-8800GT drivers (as I believe they started happening with them).

Note that my symptoms are:
1) Games tend to pause intermittently for a second and then come back. It's kind of like the PC has a chug spike and the frame rates drop to 0 for a second and go back to normal.
2) When running two WoW's at once, the game will freeze and the drivers will crash. Vista will attempt to bring them back twice and the machine will eventually bluescreen with the nVidia display driver being listed as the faulting DLL. One time when this happened, I ALT+TAB'd and everything went back to normal, but I'm not sure if that's a different issue.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: Aikouka
Does anyone here actually tinker with their Vista installs? Do you shut down services that you won't need? Turn off the purdy interface? I know I did both of those in XP but I don't do it at all in Vista.

Oh and is anyone running an 8800GTX (or GT) with the latest 169.25 (I believe that's the proper number) driver with Vista Ultimate x64, 4GB of ram on a P35-based motherboard and not having issues? I'm wondering if my problems are simply driver related and that I should just stick my GTX back in (I replaced it with a GT to see if that'd help) and downgrade to pre-8800GT drivers (as I believe they started happening with them).

Note that my symptoms are:
1) Games tend to pause intermittently for a second and then come back. It's kind of like the PC has a chug spike and the frame rates drop to 0 for a second and go back to normal.
2) When running two WoW's at once, the game will freeze and the drivers will crash. Vista will attempt to bring them back twice and the machine will eventually bluescreen with the nVidia display driver being listed as the faulting DLL. One time when this happened, I ALT+TAB'd and everything went back to normal, but I'm not sure if that's a different issue.

In short, unless you get a very reliable source on what to tinker leave it alone.

I believe there is a thread somewhere in one of these forums which goes into excellent detail about what to tweak and what not to tweak in Vista. I can't find it though. One of the main things I remember about the post is that while you can get some good performance benefits by tweaking and turning off lots of features in XP, it is not the same with Vista. In fact, a common mistake people make is that they read about how turning off a feature will increase performance for XYZ reason when the truth is that there is an underlying reason why turning off said feature actually decreases performance.

 

[KeithTalent]

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: Aikouka
Does anyone here actually tinker with their Vista installs? Do you shut down services that you won't need? Turn off the purdy interface? I know I did both of those in XP but I don't do it at all in Vista.

Oh and is anyone running an 8800GTX (or GT) with the latest 169.25 (I believe that's the proper number) driver with Vista Ultimate x64, 4GB of ram on a P35-based motherboard and not having issues? I'm wondering if my problems are simply driver related and that I should just stick my GTX back in (I replaced it with a GT to see if that'd help) and downgrade to pre-8800GT drivers (as I believe they started happening with them).

Note that my symptoms are:
1) Games tend to pause intermittently for a second and then come back. It's kind of like the PC has a chug spike and the frame rates drop to 0 for a second and go back to normal.
2) When running two WoW's at once, the game will freeze and the drivers will crash. Vista will attempt to bring them back twice and the machine will eventually bluescreen with the nVidia display driver being listed as the faulting DLL. One time when this happened, I ALT+TAB'd and everything went back to normal, but I'm not sure if that's a different issue.

In short, unless you get a very reliable source on what to tinker leave it alone.

I believe there is a thread somewhere in one of these forums which goes into excellent detail about what to tweak and what not to tweak in Vista. I can't find it though. One of the main things I remember about the post is that while you can get some good performance benefits by tweaking and turning off lots of features in XP, it is not the same with Vista. In fact, a common mistake people make is that they read about how turning off a feature will increase performance for XYZ reason when the truth is that there is an underlying reason why turning off said feature actually decreases performance.

Here is the thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...&keyword1=vista+tweaks and I found it very helpful when I first got Vista.

KT

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: KeithTalent

Originally posted by: TheSlamma
I wonder the same thing... but for older games.

I like to play Empire Earth part 1, Age of Empires Rise of Rome, Thief 2, Dungeon Keeper 2.

I also like new games too, but some older games I just really enjoy revisiting.

There is someone around here (maybe Mem? can't remember) that has a laundry list of old and new games that he personally has tried and had work under Vista.

KT

You mean this one of mine below(most of my Vista x64 games).

BG+exp pack
BG2+exp pack
Icewind Dale
Icewind Dale 2
Master of Orion 3
Stalker
KOTOR
KOTOR2
UFO-Afterlight
Morrowind+exp packs
Oblivion + Shivering Isles
Spellforce 2 Gold with Starforce drivers(even Starforce can't put a dent in my Vista x64 stability ).
Space Rangers 2
Prey
UT2004
Hellgate London
Two Worlds
Painkiller Overdose
Sid Meier's Pirates
Steam games(CS,DoD,TFC etc..)
Bioshock
Might & Magic 8
WoW+exp pack
Silverfall
Mythos(beta online game)
Jericho
UFO-Extraterrestrials
Jedi Academy
Jedi Outcast
Starcraft + Brood wars
SWG
DarknLight
LOTRO
Vanguard
9 Dragons
Archlord
Deus EX
Deus EX 2
Dungeon Runners
Jade Empire
The Witcher (uses TAGES drivers)
XCOM-Enforcer
UFO-Alien Invasion
NWN + all exp packs
NWN2 + MoB
NFSU2
SpaceForce Rogue Universe

 

[AdamK47]

Actually, I think he may be referring to me.

I've been ordering games off of Amazon left and right the past six months and have about 350 games installed on Vista x64 with SP1. They all run great. Only a few have some graphical problems, but that's more of an nVidia driver problem than a Vista problem. The DOS games run great in DOSBox after some tweaking. The games with the 16-bit installers run fine as well. I have to install them on XP and then move them, along with some registry settings, over to Vista. I'm running out of space on my 750GB drive though. I have a Samsung 1TB on order.

 

[KeithTalent]

I meant both of you actually.

KT

 

[skace]

Damn you 2 have tested a whole lot more than me w/ Vista That's really great to see though, I see a couple games I'm planning to play in there.

 

[ncage]

Wow guys i posted this today and then just check the thread. I had no idea the thread would blow like it has . I have lots of good info here. The system i am using is would consider pretty fast. As you know im getting a 8800gt. I also have a p965 MB + e6400 OC @ 3.6ghz + 4GB Ram. I think ive decided what i'm going to do. I am going to wait until SP1 and the reviews starting coming out. It shouldn't be long since SP1 is currently in RTM. Also SP3 for XP will be out soon and there is supposed to be some pretty good speed improvements with that too

Ok i used Vista x64 when it was RTMd last year. I did like it but i just got sick of hte compatibility problems. I didn't fault microsoft but instead the software/hardware manufacturers. For example microsoft came with the default drivers for my printer but they SUCKED and i lost a lot of functionality. Also i had a few applications that would just crash. I got sick of loading VirutalPC/VMWare every time i wanted to use these apps. Hopefully SP1 will improve the app compatability.

Ncage

 

[apoppin]

We already tested Vista32 vs. XP32 back in Summer for Video Forum ... Vista was no slower .. Post Number 6 has the XP vs. Vista results:

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...062057&highlight_key=y

at this point Vista is probably a little faster ... certainly no slower than XP

and it is pretty Awesome playing Hellgate:London at 16x10 in the DX10 Pathway, with every setting at 'ultra' or 'extreme' ... it runs good on my CrossFire rig and looks a hellofalot better then DX9.

. . . and we are testing Vista32 vs. Vista 64 right now ... at this point Vista32 is a bit faster in FPS tests:

Vista32- vs. Vista64-bit OS Showdown *Pt 1 Done!*

 

[imported_spike99]

OK,

I have VISTA 64bit running for a couple of months, and from my experience... I would recommend VISTA but stick with 32bit version not the 64bit version. I wouldn't recommend XP, since XP will be phased out soon.. maybe a year or two...

Although I have been able to resolve some game crashes... I have had alot of compability issues with 64bit version.

Most companies support VISTA but most don't support 64bit version. When I'm interested in buying a software/hardware and company says it's VISTA compatible... When I double check with them... They don't support 64-bit version...

I still don't understand why companies say their software is VISTA compatible but don't disclose that it doesn't support 64bit version. So don't assume that just because you see a VISTA label means that it supports 32 & 64 bit versions...

If you don't want the hassle of software not supporting 64bit version... Or wait until they come out with a 64bit version... I would stick with 32bit version.

If you have 4GB of memory... who cares if 32-bit doesn't utilize all 4GB... at least it will use over 3GB of memory... I currently use 4GB of memory... and I have never seen my PC memory utilization over 3GB.... but I guess it depends what you run on your PC... but I don't think most people use that amount of memory...

Hope this helps...