Games performance: Vista x64 SP1 vs XP x64 SP2

[UAC]

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/softwar...igkeitscheck/2/

Software

Microsoft Windows Vista x64 SP1

Microsoft Windows XP x64 SP2

Microsoft DirectX 9.0c

Microsoft Direct3D 10

ATi Catalyst 8.3

Nvidia GeForce 174.74

[Argi]

Performance improvements across the board?

[Beastage]

Performance improvements across the board?

I'd expect that much, driver support for Vista 64bit is much better than XP 64bit ... as someone running vista 64bit I am pretty sure you can't squeeze any more performance from the same PC, in other words I think I am getting as much as my hardware allows.

[rajputwarrior]

that is good to see for vista x64 but i bet if you compare x86 vs x86 OS the XP x86 would kill vista in all categories. Hardware support in xp x64 has always been crap...

[Julius Caro]

So nvidia drivers really ARE lousy!

[Bryan R.]

So nvidia drivers really ARE lousy!

Do you not know how to read a bar graph?

I have these installed and all I can say is they need to get the control panel working 100% with all the features I'm used to from XP. Do they have like 10 people in all working on these drivers? They really need to step it up.

[CY:G]

I find that hard to believe, right this moment im installing XP on my desktop because after using Vista for 2 weeks it still takes double the time for the games to load.

As far as frames per second, i don't know, it might be me but all the games felt smoother in XP, also Vista has a horrible tendency to read the HDD a hell of a lot more when im inside games, keep in mind that i already disabled prefetch, indexing and search services...

[Argi]

I find that hard to believe, right this moment im installing XP on my desktop because after using Vista for 2 weeks it still takes double the time for the games to load.

As far as frames per second, i don't know, it might be me but all the games felt smoother in XP, also Vista has a horrible tendency to read the HDD a hell of a lot more when im inside games, keep in mind that i already disabled prefetch, indexing and search services...

You answered your own question. Of course it's going to be hammering the HDD more if you've disabled prefetching which is what puts data from the HD into memory in the first place...

[bigmehdi]

yeah, in these stats vista 64 win ...

but it is well known that drivers support in vista 64 is a pain in the ***

because of signed drivers checking, and this can't be disabled.

[Argi]

yeah, in these stats vista 64 win ...

but it is well known that drivers support in vista 64 is a pain in the ***

because of signed drivers checking, and this can't be disabled.

Do you have any specifics or are you making blanket statements? Which hardware? Which drivers? And it can be disabled permanently too (not that you'd want to).

[kiddingguy]

I indeed think that Vista has a better 64 bit support for drivers and stuff.

Any news on the 32 bit edtions of Vista and XP?

Since I prefer to play games in my XP 32 bit environment.

[CY:G]

You answered your own question. Of course it's going to be hammering the HDD more if you've disabled prefetching which is what puts data from the HD into memory in the first place...

Well i disabled prefetch because i was trying to get Vista to stop reading the HDD so much, but nothing helped :(

[Bryan R.]

I find that hard to believe, right this moment im installing XP on my desktop because after using Vista for 2 weeks it still takes double the time for the games to load.

As far as frames per second, i don't know, it might be me but all the games felt smoother in XP, also Vista has a horrible tendency to read the HDD a hell of a lot more when im inside games, keep in mind that i already disabled prefetch, indexing and search services...

You've got to be kidding me. With your specs in your sig, Vista would absolutely fly. Yes no crap Vista is going to load games slower then XP, but as time passes with newer better hardware, it will not be noticable. Maybe you should start by not disabling features you have no idea what they are for...My PC listed in my specs is lighting fast and I am always looking at my HDD activity light and is consistently off.

yeah, in these stats vista 64 win ...

but it is well known that drivers support in vista 64 is a pain in the ***

because of signed drivers checking, and this can't be disabled.

Crappy driver support compared to what? XP x86? Of course it is going to be worse. And it's not MS's fault, companys (one example: nVidia) need to get a move on and fully support 64-bit. And yeah where are you hitting issues with driver signing?

EDIT: And you know what, not that I think about Vista has pretty good built-in driver support. In my desktop for instance it had drivers for all my devices, albeit, I installed the newest from nVidia. And even the past three servers I've built, Server 2008 even had all the RAID drivers built-in.

Edited April 19, 2008 by lord_xenos

[bigmehdi]

@chAos972

Do you have any specifics or are you making blanket statements? Which hardware? Which drivers? And it can be disabled permanently too (not that you'd want to).

Ok, I'm just reporting what people are complaining about : drivers support is more painful with vista 64.

The fact is that with vista (32 bits) I got a problem with the onboard sound device (soundmax) , which didn't worked properly with the default driver ... What I've done is hack the inf file from the driver of a more recent motherboard (Asus ...), install that driver, and then the sound was even better than before under XP :laugh: In short what I'm saying with this example, is that without bypassing the "driver signing" , I wouldn't have be able to enjoy proper sound. Now , "people" and geeky articles are saying that driver signing can't be bypassed with vista 64; and that's what worry me the most. I've never verified this, but I'll certainly give Vista x64 a try the next time I'll upgrade my comp.

@lord_xenos

Crappy driver support compared to what? XP x86? Of course it is going to be worse. And it's not MS's fault, companys (one example: nVidia) need to get a move on and fully support 64-bit. And yeah where are you hitting issues with driver signing?

Everyone's saying it's not Ms's fault ... I don't agree. There must be a reason if so many companies refuse or can't deliver proper

drivers for vista ... After all, it's up to MS to provide incentives for all these companies to develop such drivers, and to make this job as easier as possible. If not enough hardwares are properly supported by Vista, then Vista is nothing.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate x64 and I've noticed some performance gains in games like Call of Duty 4 and Crysis. However, I have lost performance in games like Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2. Anyway, I think driver support for 64-bit operating systems is becoming more mainstream. I bought my computer back in November-07 and I had no trouble finding all the 64-bit drivers I need.

[Chester0]

@chAos972

Ok, I'm just reporting what people are complaining about : drivers support is more painful with vista 64.

The fact is that with vista (32 bits) I got a problem with the onboard sound device (soundmax) , which didn't worked properly with the default driver ... What I've done is hack the inf file from the driver of a more recent motherboard (Asus ...), install that driver, and then the sound was even better than before under XP :laugh: In short what I'm saying with this example, is that without bypassing the "driver signing" , I wouldn't have be able to enjoy proper sound. Now , "people" and geeky articles are saying that driver signing can't be bypassed with vista 64; and that's what worry me the most. I've never verified this, but I'll certainly give Vista x64 a try the next time I'll upgrade my comp.

@lord_xenos

Everyone's saying it's not Ms's fault ... I don't agree. There must be a reason if so many companies refuse or can't deliver proper

drivers for vista ... After all, it's up to MS to provide incentives for all these companies to develop such drivers, and to make this job as easier as possible. If not enough hardwares are properly supported by Vista, then Vista is nothing.

:laugh:

[Julius Caro]

@chAos972

Ok, I'm just reporting what people are complaining about : drivers support is more painful with vista 64.

The fact is that with vista (32 bits) I got a problem with the onboard sound device (soundmax) , which didn't worked properly with the default driver ... What I've done is hack the inf file from the driver of a more recent motherboard (Asus ...), install that driver, and then the sound was even better than before under XP :laugh: In short what I'm saying with this example, is that without bypassing the "driver signing" , I wouldn't have be able to enjoy proper sound. Now , "people" and geeky articles are saying that driver signing can't be bypassed with vista 64; and that's what worry me the most. I've never verified this, but I'll certainly give Vista x64 a try the next time I'll upgrade my comp.

@lord_xenos

Everyone's saying it's not Ms's fault ... I don't agree. There must be a reason if so many companies refuse or can't deliver proper

drivers for vista ... After all, it's up to MS to provide incentives for all these companies to develop such drivers, and to make this job as easier as possible. If not enough hardwares are properly supported by Vista, then Vista is nothing.

You can disable vista's driver signing thing, but I'm not sure if you can do it on a permanent basis (you just hit F8 and have an option there). I thought that you could install unsigned drivers just fine on vista, and that only those that needed to run in kernel mode or something like that were the ones that needed the signing.

But I've never found myself in the situation of having to modify singed drivers myself in order to get a device properly working. Vista x64 runs fine on my computer, the memory usage is definitely not twice as much as the x86 version, 32-bit applications are perfectly compatible... (and I'm beginning to think that running a 32-bit app inside a 64-bit OS isn't any slower at all than when the processor is in legacy mode). I just dont know why people don't install x64.

[Bryan R.]

@chAos972

Ok, I'm just reporting what people are complaining about : drivers support is more painful with vista 64.

The fact is that with vista (32 bits) I got a problem with the onboard sound device (soundmax) , which didn't worked properly with the default driver ... What I've done is hack the inf file from the driver of a more recent motherboard (Asus ...), install that driver, and then the sound was even better than before under XP :laugh: In short what I'm saying with this example, is that without bypassing the "driver signing" , I wouldn't have be able to enjoy proper sound. Now , "people" and geeky articles are saying that driver signing can't be bypassed with vista 64; and that's what worry me the most. I've never verified this, but I'll certainly give Vista x64 a try the next time I'll upgrade my comp.

@lord_xenos

Everyone's saying it's not Ms's fault ... I don't agree. There must be a reason if so many companies refuse or can't deliver proper

drivers for vista ... After all, it's up to MS to provide incentives for all these companies to develop such drivers, and to make this job as easier as possible. If not enough hardwares are properly supported by Vista, then Vista is nothing.

All of this, every bit is just crap that you've heard from other people. So when you install Windows Vista it's just suppose to automatically have all your drivers for your devices? No. It is not Microsoft's job to make drivers for hardware someone else made. And Microsoft does give "insentives" to people to create compatible drivers. But don't you think pleasing their customers would be enough insentive to create fully functional drivers? So it is not Microsoft's fault for every piece of hardware to not work in your PC. And you know, it's not even Microsoft's fault for "requiring" drivers to signed. Maybe developers should not just create drivers and applications willy nilly - running with administrative rights and whatnot. Don't try and make blame Micorsoft, I'm not saying they deserve blame for some things, but not this.

[X'tyfe]

this means nothing

why dont we do a real test? XP 32-Bit/Vista 32-Bit/Vista 64-Bit

we shall see who performs better then

[Bryan R.]

this means nothing

why dont we do a real test? XP 32-Bit/Vista 32-Bit/Vista 64-Bit

we shall see who performs better then

I think this is more of comparison of drivers and compability rather then the OS' performance.

[abulfares]

well vista seems to be performing as i expected (parallel to xp path)

XP: RTM sucked --> SP1 got better --> SP2 pretty good

Vista: RTM sucked --> SP1 now its better --> cant wait for SP2 :)

[bigmehdi]

@lord_xenos

So when you install Windows Vista it's just suppose to automatically have all your drivers for your devices?

At least I except most important devices to be "fairly" supported. It's quite boring that the only driver that Microsoft

provide for my soundmax onboard sound device, leads to dysfunctions. And that Asus refuse to provide an official driver for my motherboard.

(the driver exists , but only for people that buy a new shiny motherboard).

But don't you think pleasing their customers would be enough insentive to create fully functional drivers?

It seems not. Many companies are only interested only by your $ :

if there's incompatibilities with Vista , that's an opportunity for them to sell new hardware.

Off course they are short sighted, and it's a matter of time before customers boycott them.

I'm especially thinking of the recent scandal for creative & a certain "daniel K" (see this link or just google for more ...)

it's not even Microsoft's fault for "requiring" drivers to signed.

Well , that's new .... I've read that companies must even pay a fee to get their driver signed by Microsoft ....

Also due to "DRM limitations" , it's harder to developp "universal drivers" i.e a single driver that works for many similar

hardware ... See the article "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection". Now , you might say that's just FUD, but if it's true they really deserved to be blamed for the driver support, at least.

[Bryan R.]

At least I except most important devices to be "fairly" supported. It's quite boring that the only driver that Microsoft

provide for my soundmax onboard sound device, leads to dysfunctions. And that Asus refuse to provide an official driver for my motherboard.

(the driver exists , but only for people that buy a new shiny motherboard).

Yeah don't you think that fault is on ASUS? I have an ASUS board and I know exactly what your talking about, however, that is not Microsoft's fault that would be ASUS.

It seems not. Many companies are only interested only by your $ :

if there's incompatibilities with Vista , that's an opportunity for them to sell new hardware.

Off course they are short sighted, and it's a matter of time before customers boycott them.

I'm especially thinking of the recent scandal for creative & a certain "daniel K" (see this link or just google for more ...)

Ok, so you seem to be seeing things my way now. Yeah ASUS wants your money as it seems. THEY are making it difficult for you to obtain a working driver, which I'd like to point also, obviously a compatible driver does exist, its just that ASUS supplies it to buyers of new motherboards.

Well , that's new .... I've read that companies must even pay a fee to get their driver signed by Microsoft ....

Also due to "DRM limitations" , it's harder to developp "universal drivers" i.e a single driver that works for many similar

hardware ... See the article "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection". Now , you might say that's just FUD, but if it's true they really deserved to be blamed for the driver support, at least.

Not a suprise that Microsoft would like to make money by charging for drivers to be signed. It doesn't change the fact that a signed driver is supported by Microsoft and deemed compatible with their OS and may someday become part of the wonderful world of Microsoft Update.

Edited April 19, 2008 by lord_xenos

[fishrman]

So, in other words, unless you've got a CrossFire setup...XP drivers seem to keep pace (if not outpace, most of the time) with Vista performance. The Catalyst drivers shine with CrossFire & Vista, however, giving around 5-10 frames more per second.

[hagjohn]

yeah, in these stats vista 64 win ...

but it is well known that drivers support in vista 64 is a pain in the ***

because of signed drivers checking, and this can't be disabled.

No, I've never had any issues with not being to install drivers.