Vista stinks at gaming - apparantly

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/17/gameplay-only-gets-worse-with-vista/

Luckily I will never be affected by this as when I do buy Vista I will be buying a brand new gaming machine - so I can keep my XP DX9 gaming rig and have a Vista DX10 gaming rig.

I win either way.

I need the Vista users out there to redo the benchmarks - I want full reports of gaming tests.

I read somewhere that Microsoft mandates all video moving around a video card must be encrypted if it's to be Vista certified.

If that's true, it's not surprising that legacy cards are processing video horribly as that encryption/decryption is probably occurring in the driver rather than on the card itself.

I've noticed an improvement in fps on World of Warcraft.
On the beta version, Vista performed about 1/2 as good as XP, now with official drivers it is better.
I used to average 50-60fps @ 1920 x 1200 everything at fullest detail, now I'm getting 60-90fps.

No. But it degrades the HD video signal if sent over an "unsecure" connection (like DVI).

MSoft = money generation tool... oh,.., but its all for security right LOL

If you need some stats and various game tests then look no further than here:-

http://uk.gamespot.com/features/6164940/index.html

Which shows Vista to be worse than XP in over 90% of all the tests performed.

In the next 6-12 months, computer technology will have advanced enough for it to not matter anymore. As long as Microsoft doesn't hike up the resources the OS ties up between now and then, who cares?

let me see... the last new hardware I bought was about 2 years (ish) ago.., I don't intend on buying new hardware just to run vista - some saddos might but some people have money to burn...

Like I said: MSoft = (daft consumers * hardware requirements) therefore MSoft = money. {;-)

I had to buy a new PC as my old one was near Death. It was 5 years old and had served me well. The good thing is My New PC is meaty enough to run Vista so it wasn't like I bought a new PC to run vista. I had to get one anyway.

Gaming has always been worse in general under Vista, that should be common knowledge by now. But as I've said, results are not so poor to be worthwhile considering. I know the average spotty braindead overclocking first person shooter kid might care deeply about 1 or 2 (or 5) frames per second, but seriously...

WRT the DRM/HD processing crap, turns out that it's actually up to the application to decide whether Vista should degrade quality or not - you can probably expect good programs like Media Player Classic to enjoy HD-DVD and BluRay processing in the future with no quality loss (hardware permitting).

THings improved a lot in the latest build with latest drivers. The biggest problem is that Vista uses openAL for audio which most sound cards don't currently have hardware drivers for.

All the high end D3D games seem to be equal or 2-3 FPS slower on vista with a modern system that has the right ammount of system ram.

Darn, they caught me.

I didn't know that Vista was supposed to be bad for gaming.... that's bad.
Just like Windows ME, which I didn't even know existed intill 3 weeks ago.


Bye all
-the average spotty braindead overclocking first person shooter kid

Vista is mostly just windows dumbed down to suit people who know nothing about computers.

"Vista is mostly just windows dumbed down to suit people who know nothing about computers. "

windows/osx and others by definition is an operating system dumbed down to suit people who know nothing about computers! :P

If people saw the 'under the hood' stuff going on (or had to use a actual base 'OS' like Linux/Unix/VMS or even good'ol DOS), most people would run a mile.

Right, and it's always interesting to hear 'hardcore' users discuss simplification as if it was a bad thing. Surely the aim of a graphical operating system is to be useable by people who know nothing (or at least very little) about computers?

@ JustLuke... here here {;-)

I hate to break it to you, Dan, but OS X under the hood --IS-- a Unix... :)

what's there?

http://www.break.com/index/how_to_properly_load_vista.html

Actually, Vista uses it's own software renderer for audio, with no hooks for hardware acceleration. OpenAL, however, is allowed to pass right through. This really only screws over Creative and EAX, who have created a DX-->OpenAL workaround for now.


In the case of Vista, simplification often means 2 or 3 more clicks than before, coupled with new paths to get the same info, some of which are NOT sensible, wether you're new to computers or not.

Stop complaining!! You know very well you'll all be using Vista in a few months from now. Exactly the same moans when XP came out, now everyone uses XP. Vista is the best.

XP is dead, long live Vista!!!

...

what extra clicks though, I noticed nothing different than XP. It's true that the early builds avaliable like beta 2, pre RC1 were a nightmare. I'm using the last RC before release and have very few problems or nags whatsoever.

The only place being IE7, which seems to be the same as IE7 warning you in the bar at the top. Something I don't mind at all.

Well, sure, I am using Vista, but however, the only upgrades that I made to run it, are the only ones that my laptop will allow for. So, I don't see myself doing any DX10 gaming anytime soon, or at least not until I go back to a desktop, which won't be until SP1 comes out. Up until then, I got my X360 and PS2, and I'm doing mainly internet and some light application development on this bad boy up until then. On top of that, Microsoft doesn't seem to believe in backwards compatibility, apparently, so none of the DX9 games from Win XP will work on here, I don't believe.

"I hate to break it to you, Dan, but OS X under the hood --IS-- a Unix... :) "

its not, exactly, and its not exactly my point either (ie. "saw the 'under the hood' stuff going on") however, thats like saying KDE/gnome IS linux, Its not. (little off the mark but you get my point ie. if the average mac user sat at a stadard unix CP, they would think the thing had not booted properly and wonder where the icons and arrow had gone.)

@justluke/ blitzplotter: considering i never said "simplification was a bad thing" at all. I actually enjoy using windows when its behaving itself.
Its great, even my mum (who cant work the video) can actually use a computer now to send me an email!

It does however waste a lot of resources (all the pretty, user friendly stuff and im not talking about a gui, that is a good thing, i mean all the other crap like animated fading menus & sniffing dogs etc.)


My original point still remains:

windows/osx and others by definition is an operating system designed for people who know nothing about computers

But i will add; but is used and tolerated by millions of more advanced users too, including me.. and almost everyone here.

Is that better :P

IIRC it's uses the GNU Mach microkernel. So which parts are Unix?

I think he's trying to say shares or is based on unix&BSD technology,
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/

I'm getting sick of saying this - THEY ALL WORK FINE. Hell, I play DX6 games. Backwards compatibility is there.

I sorta just skimmed over this conversation (I'm meant to be studying).... But I'm aposed to vista. From what I've read I think Microsoft is being over controling... I can sort of understand why... but I still feel annoyed by it.
(I'm refuring to how they want the only security to work with it is inbuilt microsoft security software, and the fact I read that DX10 will only be compatible to vista).
I'm finally getting around to c++ development (finally! Currently doing alot of study and typing.)
and I know it doesn't make any differance to anything at all, but I've decided to focus more work with openGL and SDL (both multi-format).
Oh, and I agree with "The ho hum nick"... I can't see why directX 10 would have problems with earlyier versions...
I'm annoyed at how they seem over-controlling... but I won't ever say that the team who work on directX aren't an amazing team of people who have created groundbreaking technology, and being uncompatable with earlier versions would just be bad coding... (in my mind) so I doubt it.

directx 9g (or whatever the latest version is) is supposed to have rudimentary dx10 support for xp.

You'd certainly think so, wouldn't you? Much like you would think the same for, say DirectX 9? However the truth of the matter is that it simply doesn't.

Here is another test of Vista's gaming ability. It comes off working very very well considering how long vista has actually been out. (it does have the top of the line Nvidia graphics card though)

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2090572,00.asp

That's bullcrap. MS have simply forced the way security programs should work - by not patching/bypassing the kernel and other core system files. Symantec et al are only having a spew because THEY don't have ultimate control over your system anymore and are forced to rewrite most of their routines to suit a different (more reliable) integration method.

Judging by all the stuff being said about Vista, It don't seem like it stinks at gaming, Vista just stinks full stop. When MicroSoft stop supporting Win XP in year 2011, Im seriously thinking about an alternative to Windows.

[EDIT] I think Vista will go down the pan just like Win 2000 due to a lot of apps not running properly. I tried Win 2000 once and could'nt even get BlitzBasic to run on it, and I've heared stuff like Blitz3D is not compatible with Vista. [/EDIT]

> I tried Win 2000 once and could'nt even get BlitzBasic to run on it

Interesting, I've only had a couple programs not run on win2K. One was an old Dos program and the other said it was for XP (the XP one I just thought I'd give a try, since many other XP programs did work on 2K)

Blitz was easy - just copy it to the drive and go.


[EDIT] Windows ME, that one was a turd.

Yeah... and it looks like Vista is going to be the diarrhea !.

That's odd. BlitzBasic worked on my Win2K machine since version 0.27.

It works fine and always worked fine. I'd have blamed your graphics drivers.


The rumour mill is wonderful, isn't it... you can start a rumour to suit and/or enforce any old demented viewpoint.

B3D/Max work fine.

Come to think of it though, it was quite a low end machine that I tried Win 2000 on. BlitzBasic worked fine with Win 98, so I went back to Win 98. I have a Pentium 4 @ 3GHZ at the moment, it has 512MB memory, 120 Gig HD, 128 Geforce 5200FX graphics card, DVD-RW, and it is running Win XP Home Edition. Not a bad machine I suppose, but will I have and imcompatibility issues if I cross over to Vista ?.

wasn't 2000 unoficially NT5.. (or NT4 rewrapped)?

I remember a few problems with compatibility (dos stuff mainly), but it was a lot more 'solid' than 98 and didnt crash unrecoverably quite so much.

Just thought I'd pop in and say that I have finally installed all my games. Everything works and runs fine. I'm not noticing any slowdown or FPS drop.

These are the games I have installed.

Alien VS Predator 1 & 2 + Primal Hunt Expansion
Quake 4
Doom 3 + Expansion
Prey
Age of Empires Gold
FarCry
F.E.A.R
Rise & Fall
Age Of Empires 3
Giants - Citizen Kabuto
Elite Fore 1 + 2 + Expansion
Call of Duty 2
United Offensive
Area 51
KingPin << Still my fav FPS.
Star Trek Klingon Academy
Birth Of the Federation
Starfleet Academy 3
StarTrek Armada 2
Pro Evo 5
Need For Speed Carbon
Dominion Wars
Half Life & Source
Half Life 2
Counter Strike
Virtual Pool 3
World Of Warcraft
Bridge Commander
Mame 32 111.0 Roms and CHD's << Thanks to pleasuredome.org.uk

All work except for Rise & Fall which works but when I try to remove the DVD from the drive, the Drive doesn't open unless I reboot. I can't figure out why it does that.

LOL, not suprised with that hardware setup :)

Probably. Everyone does. I'd be more worried about the performance. Your 5200 won't be getting Aero Glass if you wanted the pretty effects and your P4 and 512MB of RAM just won't cut it. You'll either need to upgrade to a dual core processor, or put another 512MB in. Minimum.


Yes. And XP is unofficially NT5.1. 2003 is unofficially 5.2 and XP64 is unofficially 5.3. Vista really SHOULD have unofficially been 5.4 or 5.5, but I guess MS think they can fool people by jumping to 6.0 (or, the 6.0 tag might be a remnant from the days when MS were actually coding a new OS, before they dumped it to just tack on more stuff to 2003).

Actually I guess not naming it 6.0 would have been messy, since it is an upgrade from 2003, NOT an upgrade from XP64, which is not great like 2003 is.

I guess the problem with windows and most OSs is the whole legacy problem, (like the way NT kinda lost DOS) mabe thats why everyone is having problems with vista on loads of relatively new hardware.
Prehaps theyve cut off loads off it for 'support-no-legacy leave-no-legacy' reasons, thats the only reason i can see or it causing so much bother (unless its just horendous design or very rushed producition).

I just figured out why Rise & Fall locks my dvd drive. Rise & Fall uses starforce to protect the game from being copied.

:/

Since the Vista GUI is rendered using 3D Acceleration I've found that windowed games really suck. Just think about it, the windowed game has to be rendered off screen to a texture and then rendered on screen - this makes games that use DirectDraw 2D - look kinda nasty and really slow.

Since the Vista GUI is rendered using 3D Acceleration

Oh for F(beep)'s sake, WHY!

why is it everytime a computer gets more powerful, the extra power gets munched by windows and pointless stuff like this? All a gui needs to do visually is render a few windows and icons and let you point at them! (plus the other things that are actually useful)

Oh and it makes use of v2.0 Shaders - no idea why!

At least we know where the next biggest co2 producing nightmare will be, all those power stations trying to keep up with windows vista machines sucking the watts from the PSUs just to render their GUIs :)

The good : If done correctly using the GPU which is idle for windows GUI operations will free up CPU cycles, apparently.

The bad : You need a more powerful PC to do exactly the same things you were doing before. The 3D GUI features are pretty pointless until some real innovation happens, hopefully in the next version of Windows.

> Oh for F(beep)'s sake, WHY!

Mostly to allow the display to be resolution independant. It has the least hit on old programming habits - things like using pixels, etc...


did they go a little overboard, maybe.

You ever plastered a single texture of 1600x1200 pixels to screen as a background - man what a fillrate killer! Shame on you MS, wtf happened to good old dirty rects!

Isn't there a fallback theme that uses the CPU though (and kills all the eye-candy)?

Something I recall for it to be able to work better on older systems and/or laptops?

Sure, but then why buy Vista in the first place?

simple because every new non-Mac is going to have it pre-installed.

If it's SF v3 or later, you can download newer drivers from Sf's site which are compatible.


I'm equally baffled by that, when Vista does nothing more advanced than Mac OS X and OS X works fine on my GeForce 3.


The Vista GUI is still 100% resolution dependant.


Yes, standard Aero is just an XP Theme (although they're not called that anymore).

Sure. But presumably every new non-Mac that ships with it, is going to be powerful enough to actually run it?

Actually, you can bet your buttox any machine shipped with Home Basic edition is NOT 'powerful enough' to run it... the only other reason would be a small price drop (and when you're buying a new computer, would you really notice that small a drop?).

Hum i've just played around with it a bit and i'm quite dissapointed by Aero in terms of the effect which should make the see-blurred-through-effect for the window borders as you can't get it that it looks like a glass with somekind of a tiny natural distortion. Also if you tweak it towards this the status bar gets also altered which obviously isn't what you want.

Anyway what i've liked are some of the included games and how they resample the graphics according to the windowsize. This looks pretty good.