Games performance: Vista x64 SP1 vs XP x64 SP2

[hagjohn]

@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.

I have an Asus motherboard with SoundMax on it and have had no issues on Vista on either 32 or 64. I've never been stopped from installing any driver because of driver signing.

[ObiWanToby]

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.

Team Fortress performance loss isn't that big of a deal... I am glad to see you had gains in COD 4 and Crysis though.

[bigmehdi]

@Aeden

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.

I didn't pay attention to this crossfire & SLI things ... seems that Vista 64 is a bit less a attractive now...

@hagjohn

I have an Asus motherboard with SoundMax on it and have had no issues on Vista on either 32 or 64. I've never been stopped from installing any driver because of driver signing.

this is because your motherboard is much recent than mine

I have a P4C800-E deluxe ...

But I realize I've made a mistake in my "bashing" against Asus :blushing:

The driver I used to "fix" my sound problems was intended for XP only too ... (from motherboard P5P800).

[bobbytomorow]

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

Ahh that is an os's performance. Its make NO diference whose at fault for what, all that should matter to the end user is bottom line performance and right now XP x86 delivers it in spades, actually across the board not only in gaming.

Also why are you trying so vehemently to defend some corporations product? Do they pay you? No. Do they know you exist? No. We get it, you like Vista, ok now let other people share their experiences and opinions. Stop trying to blame all of Vista's problems on user error, if it truly was a good os its user error would be low.

[Bryan R.]

Ahh that is an os's performance. Its make NO diference whose at fault for what, all that should matter to the end user is bottom line performance and right now XP x86 delivers it in spades, actually across the board not only in gaming.

Also why are you trying so vehemently to defend some corporations product? Do they pay you? No. Do they know you exist? No. We get it, you like Vista, ok now let other people share their experiences and opinions. Stop trying to blame all of Vista's problems on user error, if it truly was a good os its user error would be low.

Wow talk about misunderstanding. I don't think you read all my posts correctly. I have clearly stated that companys have not given their fair share of effort to produce quality drivers. In no way have I accused end users for anything. No crap XP owns all in performance. If you didn't notice before, I'll say it again, Microsoft is at fault for many things but I don't think they are at fault for the lack of drivers - even though that is becoming less and less true. I'm not going to go off topic and discuss anything more than that. So what if I like Vista; I also like XP, for different reasons. Of course to the end user all that matters is if it works or not. I'm terribly sorry for expressing my opinion. I am not preventing anyone from expressing theirs.

[Malisk]

Not really surprising. XP 64-bit has awful vendor support in many cases. It's just a pilot OS from Microsoft for 64-bit support really, and many manufacturers treat it as such.

[ViperAFK]

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...

Double the times for games to load??? something is wrong there, there is no difference in loading times on any of my games (Or FPS for that matter) when I switched from XP (32 bit) to vista (64 bit). CS:S loads almost instantly, COD4 loads levels insanely fast I have had no problems at all.

[Denis W. 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.

Performance-wise, I don't notice that much of a loss in Team Fortress 2 on Vista versus XP. (Except the game likes to crash when exiting in Vista.)

What I noticed with my copy of Vista Business x86, with my GeForce 8800 GT and Audigy 2 ZS: after I did something sound events stutter, music playback stutters a bit, sound in Source-based games stutter as well (even worse with ALchemy), and graphics tend to flicker a little bit. I'll probably try installing Business x64. Really my main holdback is the sound card, and I'm not really in the position to replace a freaking sound card at the moment. It still works great with XP x86.

Last note: almost the major components of my computer date from New Years Eve 2007. Except the sound card.

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.

I have to run RivaTuner if I need to game. Otherwise my GPU will go up in smoke. For Vista x86 I can set RivaTuner to start without prompting for UAC. On Vista x64 I'd have to do that, plus disable driver checking every single time I boot the PC.

[ViperAFK]

Performance-wise, I don't notice that much of a loss in Team Fortress 2 on Vista versus XP. (Except the game likes to crash when exiting in Vista.)

What I noticed with my copy of Vista Business x86, with my GeForce 8800 GT and Audigy 2 ZS: after I did something sound events stutter, music playback stutters a bit, sound in Source-based games stutter as well (even worse with ALchemy), and graphics tend to flicker a little bit. I'll probably try installing Business x64. Really my main holdback is the sound card, and I'm not really in the position to replace a freaking sound card at the moment. It still works great with XP x86.

Last note: almost the major components of my computer date from New Years Eve 2007. Except the sound card.

I have to run RivaTuner if I need to game. Otherwise my GPU will go up in smoke. For Vista x86 I can set RivaTuner to start without prompting for UAC. On Vista x64 I'd have to do that, plus disable driver checking every single time I boot the PC.

How did you set rivatuner not to prompt?

[Denis W. Veteran]

How did you set rivatuner not to prompt?

Guide.

Theoretically these same instructions should also work for similar tools.

[bjoswald]

I obviously can't (and won't) comment on behalf of others, but personally, I think those synthetic benchmarks are FUD. Try it out for yourself and see how good or bad "X" game runs on "Y" videocard in "Z" machine.

[ViZioN]

after I did something sound events stutter, music playback stutters a bit, sound in Source-based games stutter as well (even worse with ALchemy), and graphics tend to flicker a little bit. I'll probably try installing Business x64. Really my main holdback is the sound card, and I'm not really in the position to replace a freaking sound card at the moment.

Did you manage to fix the stuttering? I'm getting almost the same problem on different hardware and without a creative sound-card. I've tried using the latest beta and WHQL 64 bit drivers but neither seem to make any difference. I'm getting severe sound stuttering in TFC2 and CS:Source. Havent been able to test any other games.

I'm beginning to think the issue might be Vista SP1...

Anyone have any ideas of what I can try to fix this? The only thing I remember doing is downloading the free trackmania game, it crash on opening and then TFC doesn't want to work :p

[nekrosoft13]

So nvidia drivers really ARE lousy!

wow another genius

[ViZioN]

Any ideas about what I posted above guys?

Cheers

[andy2004]

id be interested in a 32 bit comparison. From personal experience xp 32bit still runs games faster than 32bit vista or 64bit vista. Vista is great but when it comes to games sorry but 32bit xp wins outright.

[Denis W. Veteran]

Did you manage to fix the stuttering? I'm getting almost the same problem on different hardware and without a creative sound-card. I've tried using the latest beta and WHQL 64 bit drivers but neither seem to make any difference. I'm getting severe sound stuttering in TFC2 and CS:Source. Havent been able to test any other games.

I'm beginning to think the issue might be Vista SP1...

Anyone have any ideas of what I can try to fix this? The only thing I remember doing is downloading the free trackmania game, it crash on opening and then TFC doesn't want to work :p

I tried reinstalling Vista Business SP1 x64, but I'm reverting back to x86 one last time. Bit of a pain in the ass to maintain both 32 and 64 applications: for instances, separate sets of codecs for both 32 and 64 bit players.

On the plus side, installation of the Creative drivers was surprisingly speedy on x64. Performance was generally good; games were fine.

Really I have no idea what causes all this stuttering. Last time the wave of nonstop sound stuttering came after uninstalling NOD32...

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Performance-wise, I don't notice that much of a loss in Team Fortress 2 on Vista versus XP. (Except the game likes to crash when exiting in Vista.)

What I noticed with my copy of Vista Business x86, with my GeForce 8800 GT and Audigy 2 ZS: after I did something sound events stutter, music playback stutters a bit, sound in Source-based games stutter as well (even worse with ALchemy), and graphics tend to flicker a little bit. I'll probably try installing Business x64. Really my main holdback is the sound card, and I'm not really in the position to replace a freaking sound card at the moment. It still works great with XP x86.

Now that I think of it, I don't think I lost any performance in Team Fortress 2. Though I do have that annoying crash whenever I exit the game. I know I lost performance in Half-Life 2 for sure. I lose 50fps simply by turning the flashlight on in Episode 2. Heck, Half-Life 2 runs so poorly that I had to run it 32-bit. It's odd because the game defaulted to 64-bit mode and it was really buggy. Valve claimed the game would run better on a 64-bit processor. Haha.

Anyway, I have a Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum and it works fine on Vista Ultimate x64 with ALchemy (X-Fi edition). I also have no issues with my video card (ATI HD 2900 XT) at all.

[ViZioN]

I tried reinstalling Vista Business SP1 x64, but I'm reverting back to x86 one last time. Bit of a pain in the ass to maintain both 32 and 64 applications: for instances, separate sets of codecs for both 32 and 64 bit players.

On the plus side, installation of the Creative drivers was surprisingly speedy on x64. Performance was generally good; games were fine.

Really I have no idea what causes all this stuttering. Last time the wave of nonstop sound stuttering came after uninstalling NOD32...

My problem seems now to have disappeared but I'm not entirely sure why. I'm running the 169.25 WHQL drivers from nvidia. I also tried disabling services on vista that I don't think I need (used speedyvista to do this). The one thing I noticed was that the stuttering was worst when vista decided it wanted to do something and started churning the HDD. God knows what vista is up to...

I'm also on RAID0. Don't know if anyone else is. I don't run NOD or any AV so I can't compare that, but on x64 my TF2 seems to be running smoothly, for now...

[SirEvan]

since upgrading to 8GB of ram and a Q6600, even not overclocked, games such as COD4 and Frontlines: FOW and World in Conflict all load signifigantly faster, especially Frontlines w hich used to take forever before, but is insanely fast now....dont know what some of you are talking about....vista x64 sp1 rocks.

[toadeater]

So basically, this confirms there's no reason to "upgrade" to Vista. It confirms that Vista requires more resources to accomplish the equivalent task on XP. It also confirms you need 64 Bit Vista because of the increased RAM usage, while XP only needs 2GB for gaming and doesn't need to be 64 bit.

I'm sure Vista will improve again with Vista SP2, but how long is that going to take? With Windows 7 on the horizon, Vista is a dead end. It's as dead as XP, only it stinks worse. :laugh:

[ViperAFK]

So basically, this confirms there's no reason to "upgrade" to Vista. It confirms that Vista requires more resources to accomplish the equivalent task on XP. It also confirms you need 64 Bit Vista because of the increased RAM usage, while XP only needs 2GB for gaming and doesn't need to be 64 bit.

I'm sure Vista will improve again with Vista SP2, but how long is that going to take? With Windows 7 on the horizon, Vista is a dead end. It's as dead as XP, only it stinks worse. :laugh:

I really do not see how this confirms that vista requires more resources when it comes out on top...And it certainly does not confirm you need 64 bit vista because of increased ram usage because that does not make any sense at all. And x64 actually increases RAM usage...I fail to see how you can reach these conclusions.