[EnzoFX]

Sorry, But I hate comments like "That's why you get a console" or "That's why you need a Console to go with a PC"

It just feels so damn ignorant...

[Mantrastic]

I dont care what people say, I love my vista, I run it since it came out without any problems, gaming is smooth, my computer runs twice faster than running it with XP. long live Vista.

[LTD]

But I thought OS X was the "non-gamer" OS . . . ;)

[Smigit]

This is why you buy a games console & a pc. I think the only gaming issues are to do with incomplete drivers and shoddy coding and optimization of games cough *crysis*

Crysis seems pretty optimised to me based on the benchmarks I've seen. Granted I havent run it myself yet. But it seems to me to have a fair bit more going on than alot of the other games people compare it to such as Bioshock, UT3, HL2 EP2 ect. For one the worlds ALOT more open than those games which has always been an issue for games (see Oblivion at launch) and add to that the fact so much of the environment is destructable including some of the lighter buildings ect. It's definetly demanding, no argueing that. But people can still play it on 7 series NVidia cards which are 2+ years old now not to mention pretty much all the 8800 range which in itself are fairly old and cater for mid to high end market so it reaches a large audience. Sure not many systems can run it maxed at high res, but that doesnt stop it looking good at lower res.

With it working quite well on 8800GT's and the like too if your not trying to push it at too high a res it also shows that you don't need to spend thousands to run a PC games.

[Beastage]

Where do you people come from?! stop trying to play games on your geforce 6200fx! serious... I see people whine and moan about their lousy computers with vista and latest games...

I played Crysis very high on Dx10, I play all my games on full settings, I have vista and I have no performance loss, if anything I have a gain, anyone claiming otherwise is lying or stupid.

Were people under some crazed impression that vista makes their games faster?!

Everything I use on my main PC (Q6600 overclocked, Crossfired Radeon 3870s overclocked, 4gb of RAM) with vista is a hell faster experience than when I used to dual boot into XP when I first built this PC to compare.

I know vista is a better OS and none of you can claim otherwise

[gunnerhkjp]

I think you can't single out intel for crappy IGP. Both Nvidia and ATI IGP solutions suck ass too.

I hate Vista in its current state, but I'm not really bothered since I can continue to use XP.

And by the time I really have to move on to Vista, it would probably be fixed.

[ViperAFK]

Totally agree. And if i've said it before, i'll say it again.

(so far) DX10 has given no tangible benefit to the user's experience in gaming that DX9 or OpenGL hasn't already had.

Why should I splash out for Vista and suffer <insert excuse here>, to gain, well.... nothing really.

"Crysis is better on dx10!" - like hell it is. I can already do very high on dx9!

Let's not go there with Hellgate.... and I could name more

Anyway, rant over.

That's because there's been no games built from the ground up with directx 10 in mind. THey've all really added it at the last minute and put in some extra effects.

[tsupersonic]

You forgot Vista

The bloat remains.. and IGP's aren't enough..

I believe you are speaking out of your ass. If you don't know much about IGP's or have ever used one, then you need to shut up.

I have an older generation ATI X200 (based on the X300) in my laptop, and it runs Aero just fine. I can set the RAM shared from 32MB - 128MB. I have it set to 32MB, and the Aero interface works just as good as say an 8800GT will do. The Intel GMA 950 was certified to run Vista's Aero interface. What makes you think a later generation of the product can't run Aero?

Intel GMA graphics card are probably the worst among IGP's, but they don't advertise you can play the latest and greatest games, do they? No. IMO, AMD/ATI make the best IGP's, since they base them off dedicated gfx cards.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

I currently use Windows Vista Ultimate x64 and gaming hasn't been an issue with me. As far as I know my games run just as good as they did on Windows XP, if not slightly better in some titles like Call of Duty 4 and Unreal Tournament 3. The only game that hasn't performed too well is Crysis and that's because my current hardware. As powerful as it may be, it simply isn't enough for Crysis. I dare say it's the most hardware demanding game on the market.

I don't agree with Alex St John on the issue of Vista being too "bloated" for gaming. Though I must agree with him about the IGP. I guess what he means is that so many computers on the market have these poor graphics solutions and that limits the number of PC gamers. If more people had capable hardware then more people would be playing those wonderful PC games. Sadly that won't be the case because many electronics retailers (Best Buy, Circuit City) sell computers with low-end hardware. It's ironic that they would do that too seeing as they sell the latest PC games.

Edited March 28, 2008 by Anaron

[jago_lfn]

Like a processor???

tl;dr? ---> And so if you see a PC that is not denuded by things interfering with it by Microsoft and Intel, in many cases like an Intel crappy graphics chip, or a bloated Vista operating system

[Argi]

That's because there's been no games built from the ground up with directx 10 in mind. THey've all really added it at the last minute and put in some extra effects.

And they never will be as long as the XP install base is significant, or DirectX 10 is back-ported somehow.

[Drakesh]

Quick, tell me one thing Alex St. John has done in the past 5 years...or anything, for that matter, since he was a contributing author for 'boot' magazine?

Now quick, tell me why I give a flying crap what some has-been has to say about anything?

[ObiWanToby]

I disagree. Vista has more consistant smooth framerates, especially in Supreme Commander. I game on Vista, COD 4, Crysis, UT3, Gears of War, Supreme Commander, Sins of a SZolar Empire, Command and Conquer, all of which at on full graphics and at my native resolution of WSXGA+ (1680x1050). There was a noticable choppyness in Crysis when fighter jets bombed, but other than that things have been smooth and playable.

Check out.

http://www.driverheaven.net/articles/Vista%20XP/

http://www.driverheaven.net/articles/nvidiavistaxp/index.php

There are a few games that do perform better in Vista rather then in XP, plus that article is old, one could only hope that the situation has improved. Vista is probably technically slower for most games, but it doesn't make it a horrible gaming platform. Most gamers will have a super computer anyways, that will run Vista just fine.

[Denis W. Veteran]

I would like to believe that Vista's new memory management and composited desktop leads to better performance, HOWEVER it's not the case for my laptop. (and a bit for my desktop)

For my laptop games run like arse. It's a Dell XPS M1210 with Vista-readyness coming late in its commerical life. CPU's a T7200 and the GPU is a 7400 Go. According to these three reviews Source games should've had decent performance at native 1280x800. Not so if Vista's loaded onto the laptop. I've tried all drivers from the rarely updated ones from Dell to modded desktop sets from laptopvideo2go but it's the same situation. Source games run 10 to 15 FPS lower than XP, quite significant when it usually averages less than 40-50 FPS on medium settings. When I once had XP in a dual boot games ran quite well. That being said, I keep Vista on the laptop due to its vastly superior Explorer (file sorting, metadata editing, stacking, grouping files by criteria, searching by X and Y, etc), mobile features (power plans with adjustable processor throttling) and built in Tablet PC features that allow me to make crude drawings in OneNote. I use my laptop for note taking and Vista fits the bill well. But for a laptop that's supposedly one of the most powerful in its class at its time of release Source games shouldn't run on an average 10 to 15 FPS lower than XP on the same hardware configuration.

For my desktop: I have yet to see a game that performs better than XP through the two configurations it's been through, one with a combo Athlon X2 3800+ / 7800 GT and now with a Q6600/8800 GT. There's still a small FPS penalty but nothing too significant. Comparing 3D Marks, running in Vista x64 nets a 11288. Running in XP SP3 nets a 12175. I'll still continue to trial Vista in both x86 and x64 from time to time thanks to Vista Business being available on MSDNAA. But until then XP SP3 does me fine on my desktop.

[ObiWanToby]

Laptop GPUs from dell are all <insert a strong negative word>. My poor Inspiron 1520 doesn't even use GDDR2 or the GDDR3 that it is supposed to use, it uses DDR 2 for the graphics card :(

[Tomoko]

Nobody is going to write games around DirectX 10 while it's limited to Vista only. Years from now when XP fades away perhaps but not right now. Microsoft shot themselves in the foot trying to sell more Vista. It would have been far better to include DirectX 10 support for XP so that we'd have tons of games written for it by now.

[itsnotabigtruck]

This guy has it spot on.

[toadeater]

Totally agree. And if i've said it before, i'll say it again.

(so far) DX10 has given no tangible benefit to the user's experience in gaming that DX9 or OpenGL hasn't already had.

Why should I splash out for Vista and suffer <insert excuse here>, to gain, well.... nothing really.

The real issue is that MS falsely claims that DX10 cannot be done on XP. DX10, the HAL in Vista, and DX10 (D3D 10) the graphics API are two different things.

DX10 = Vista HAL

D3D 10 = OpenGL 3.0

When OpenGL 3.0 is released later this year, it will support DX10 hardware on any platform that has drivers for it. I'm looking forward to hearing MS's public explanation for when DX10 shaders are shown running XP even though MS claimed this was impossible. Maybe you won't get some of Vista's GPU memory management features, 3D multitasking (needed for Aero, not for games), and supposed extra driver stability (what's with all those BSODs then?), but they don't seem to help with game performance so I doubt anyone will care.

[ad1977]

Vista Blows? Any peice of software as complicated as an OS will need time for any hardware to take advantage of it. It took till service pack 2 for xp to take off. On a personal note Vista has been fine for me since beta.

[Starbuck84]

What I do know from my own experience is that Vista doesn't run slower in games than XP, for me at least. The games I play still run smooth and at the same FPS. But I think he's a little late now if he wants to "slap" MS... I mean, it looks more like people want to complain "oh let's pick Vista", I mean it's just getting old really fast. But that's just my humble opinion.

[X'tyfe]

agreed, any game developer who makes a directx10 only game now would commit financial suicide

if directx10 was ported to xp

i still would not upgrade, not after they murdered the sound system in it

i take sound seriously, almost as much as graphics

hell i have a 7.1 system here

but i cant use it in vista with directx10, and that is unacceptable

Edited March 28, 2008 by X'tyfe

[hagjohn]

Whatever.... if you start with crap, you are going to end up with crap. Build your own computer and you will have a good base for a gaming system. Forget those $600 dell's, HP's, etc... , they are crap.

No real problem gaming on Vista64 here... other than the nVidia drivers.

[EduardValencia]

Well Direct X nowdays is the best gaming platform,i don?t know any other who can run such a selection of games Like Directx,however i do feel some agreement with him,this niche isn?t as competitive as we would desire to be,and need a refreshment.

Yes he was "one" of the designers of the Directx architecure,but for a long time he doesent know what are microsoft plans,also he ignores the speed of the advancements in technology the PC industry has recahed anwill reachb>,i expect than in 1 year there will be enough selection of powerful graphic cards that will run whatever you throw at it,without a hitch.

lol Vista blows? not for me si:):)

[Windam]

Microsoft might as well port DX10 to Windows XP..

[spaceelf]

if directx10 was ported to xp

i still would not upgrade, not after they murdered the sound system in it

i take sound seriously, almost as much as graphics

hell i have a 7.1 system here

You can use 7.1 in Vista. It's 6.1 that's mysteriously missing.

As for hardware audio being gone, that's fading from XP as well. XAudio 2, DirectSounds replacement, was just released and has no support for hardware audio. Of course devs can still target DirectSound, but I highly doubt too many will for very long. DS hasn't been changed for roughly nine years, and it was showing its age five years ago.

And since OpenAL works in Vista, that makes both OSes even on audio for future titles.

Microsoft might as well port DX10 to Windows XP..

Which they won't. DX10 on XP, as they put it, would be a crippled beast at which point it might as well be called DirectX 9.0D. They can't backport the architecture enhancements which are a major part of the experience.