Games in Vista are sluggish than XP even in low graphics

[ProclaimDragon]

This is getting on my nerves to the point that I need to create a topic and see if anyone can help me out about it...

I have this LG laptop for a long time with an ATi Mobility Radeon x700 and 2Gb of RAM, 2.0 Centrino and a 5400 rpm HDD. It only had 1GB of RAM and a 4500rpm HDD when I bough it.

Anyway, on XP, I was always able to play any game without any issues lowering the graphics as much as need so the same played nice, fluid. I mean, I play Crysis, with a low resolution and graphics but I play it fluidly. That's my point for the issue...

On Vista, I can't play any game fluidly, all of them are sluggish. And I'm not even talking about Crysis but games that need less horsepower, for instance, PKR (Poker for the ones who don't know) and TmNations Forever. I mean, for either, I don't have the graphics at their maximum, but I find a point where I can play these games without issues can on XP, I can find that point, not on Vista.

At first I though that was because of RAM. XP can handle theses games with 1GB and I though Vista couldn't, but now I have 2GB and Vista still doesn't allow me to play games fluidly.

But here's the thing, sometimes I can play it fluidly but then the screen flickers and the framerate drops, after some seconds, the screen flickers again and the framerate increases and I can play the game fluidly again. And this happens all the time, over and over again. This makes me think... Why the hell does the game runs smoothly but sometimes it just doesn't? For instance, in PKR, the scenes don't change, no more elements are added to the screen, the background is still, only people are moving there body and hands and the game plays fine in a second, bad in the next and this goes on and on...

The drivers I'm using are always the latest from ATi (when I don't forget to update them) and I use the mod tool I forgot it's name so I can use desktop drivers with the mobility card. And no, there are no laptop manufacturer drivers, only for XP, and I don't want to keep XP just play simple games like this in minimum graphical configurations. I'm not an heavy gamer...

Any reason for this to happen on my Vista? Something wrong with my laptop? Any tips on how could I try and fix this?

I really hope someone can at least shed some light on this...

[Kushan]

What's your processor? Centrino isn't a processor type.

[ProclaimDragon]

Pentium M.

[Thrawn]

Try this: before you open a game, disable Aero manually.

Open a command prompt with administrative rights (just type "Command" in the start menu search box, right click and "Run As Administrator")

Type in the command prompt:

net stop uxsms

Use "net start uxsms"

to turn it back on.

If that does not help, you may need to examine your power management settings. Your computar may think you're idle, and it might be search indexing, etc. I don't think it is stupid enough to clock the processor down in the middle of a game.

[+Gary7 Subscriber²]

Maybe a HD that is faster than 5400RPM's will help?

[PaulCabby]

graphics is a bit out dated too

[wst50]

Maybe a HD that is faster than 5400RPM's will help?

graphics is a bit out dated too

I think we're meant to explain why there is a drop in performance playing games on Vista with that rig, when the games were fine on XP.

It's a software problem the OP's complaining about >_> So what do you do? Suggest hardware fixes...

Do you have any extra non-OS crap going on in the background, OP? Did you install a different antivirus maybe, or some other software that runs in the background (that you didn't have on XP) ?

[ProclaimDragon]

No, I basically have the same software running and the same antivirus. But I think that Thrawn suggestion might helped a bit, I have to do a bit of more testing (read: playing) to see if the issue comes up or not. Cause basically, the games start playing fine, only after a while playing the game, it starts acting sluggish.

I use the universities wifi network all week and don't have any other internet connection so I can't test PKR (it's online for those who don't know) cause that's the one where this issue is more aggravated...

Will report back during the weekend to see if Aero is causing this... Anyway, keep coming your ideas (if you have any) of what might be the problem...

[soldier1st]

you running service pack 1?also your GPU is a bit outta date.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

first thing i thought of was Aero also.

when you changed to Vista, did you reformat?

if so, did you install your chipset drivers?

[EduardValencia]

Sorry to tell you,don't install vista with that graphic card,Crysis detects directx 10 installed and obviously demand more resources with the new engine.

You don't have a computer capable of running games on vista.Your hard drive and GPu are too slow

However we can make a more indepth analisis:

1.What version of Windows Vista you have?

2.What's your score in benchmarking your computer?

[bjoswald]

As the previous posters remarked, the hardware is a bit outdated. However, until you can buy some upgrades, there are a few minor tweaks you could do to ease some of the stress on the system:

1) Disable unnecessary visual effects

2) Adjust system services (use with caution)

3) Install "tweaked" drivers (e.g. Xtreme-G WarCat drivers)

4) Close unnecessary background applications

Also, you could download and read the Tweaking Companion for Windows Vista from www.tweakguides.com.

[Herculean]

Sorry to tell you,don't install vista with that graphic card,Crysis detects directx 10 installed and obviously demand more resources with the new engine.

You don't have a computer capable of running games on vista.Your hard drive and GPu are too slow

However we can make a more indepth analisis:

1.What version of Windows Vista you have?

2.What's your score in benchmarking your computer?

Why would the game switch it direct x10 mode when the graphics card doesn't support it?

That's stupid, the game ran fine in XP, I'm betting it's on the laptop trying to save power by throttling back the CPU/GPU; check the power settings.

[ViperAFK]

Why would the game switch it direct x10 mode when the graphics card doesn't support it?

That's stupid, the game ran fine in XP, I'm betting it's on the laptop trying to save power by throttling back the CPU/GPU; check the power settings.

No, crysis will NOT run in dx 10 mode unless you have a dx10 card.

[+Warwagon MVC]

LIke any new operating system Vista requires more horsepower to do the same thing that was available in XP. For normal every day things other than games, I would say that you could put vista on a machine that was fairly new. Bur if you want to do the same kind of gaming in vista than with Xp, you want to have some pretty good not out of date gaming components. Or buy vista in a new machine.

[Kushan]

Ridiculous. There are plenty of people here who have had positive experiences with Vista. Bad coding from Microsoft? You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

I completely agree. Microsoft have some of the best coding practices out there and any code they've released has been top quality.

Only people who can't code complain about their code.

[ProclaimDragon]

@soldier1st

Nope, haven't installed it yet. I rather do a clean install with SP1 on it, but I currently don't have the time for it. But do you think it will improve the performance or something?

@Jdawg683

Yes, it was a clean install. LG kinda sucks on that hand, they barely update their drivers at all. They only have drivers for the new laptop models they release and they simply forget the older models. There's not even any (old or new) chipset drivers for my laptop model on their website... So know, I probably don't have that updated... And I'm not even sure what's my chipset.

@EduardValencia

My score is 4.0

@Herculean

I have the power settings set to High Performance when I play... But I normally have it on Balanced and the games play fine most of the time, only after a while the framerate starts to drop and then increases again and so on...

Could you guys stop talking about my hardware? Have you at all read my post? First, I'm using a laptop, there's no way I can swap CPU/GPU. Second, that's not it, the games play fine on XP. Heck, the games play fine on Vista during the first minutes of gameplay, sometimes it even lats a while before it starts getting sluggish. Can't you understand that? The games are not sluggish all the time, just some times and it keeps flickering the screen switching between high (playable) and low (not playable) framerates. I wish English was my main language so I could explain this better, but it's not, could you guys make a little effort to try and understand what I'm saying?

And please stop mentioning Crysis and dx10, it was just an example to argument my point and I don't even play it anymore.

[+Gary7 Subscriber²]

I think we're meant to explain why there is a drop in performance playing games on Vista with that rig, when the games were fine on XP.

It's a software problem the OP's complaining about >_> So what do you do? Suggest hardware fixes...

Do you have any extra non-OS crap going on in the background, OP? Did you install a different antivirus maybe, or some other software that runs in the background (that you didn't have on XP) ?

It may help since he is now running Vista which is known to have stringent HW requirements and not really a gamers OS.

[+Warwagon MVC]

Maybe try disabling Vista's Indexing feature.

[Kushan]

Biggest BS I've ever seen.

Calculating time remaing until next nonsense post...

Right well, they haven't exactly released the code for Vista, but the Windows 2000 source was leaked a few years back.

This site has a look through it and finds it's rather good, albeit a little more unprofessional than you'd imagine from such a big company.

Now, if you're willing to actually provide some examples of poor code from Microsoft, it'd be great.

However, I very much doubt you can gather the difference between code and the final product. The code for Vista does exactly what it's supposed to, there's nothing wrong with it. The design might be a little sketchy, but that's not a fault of the code and that's the point I was making that went straight over your head.

[Eric Veteran]

Biggest BS I've ever seen.

Calculating time remaing until next nonsense post...

And how exactly is your whining going to help the OP?

@Original poster: Have you looked in the Perforamce & Reliability monitor to see if it indicates a problem?

[Maximum Error]

I'll need to chime in here.

Vista has been amazing for me. I have used it since launch and loved it. I have had no major problems and noticed that in my day to day e-mail, web browsing and office 'stuff' there was a considerable gain over XP.

However; I had one complaint! I love the half life series of games. And no matter what I did i couldnt get my XPS M170 (pentium M 2.3ghz, 2GB RAM, 256mb 6800 Geforce Ultra GO) to give me the same performance in Vista. I tried going back all the way to the classic interface with next to nothing running. No matter what I did I could not get the same GAMING performance from Vista. (same with SP1 btw)

With XP's SP3 just coming out I thought I would see what XP was like again and installed it; installed steam and downloaded HL2.............WOW is all I can say. Playing HL2 maxed out brought me back n I just loved it! I bought this laptop to game on and had long since forgotten what gaming on it was like. Dont get me wrong; i missed the glassy interface, the amazing search and much improved networking but the amazing gaming performance is enough to be keeping me with XP.

I suppose if you look at it the fact that XP is better for gaming on 2 year old XPS laptop is natural; Vista has far bigger overheads than XP and I suppose we just have to accept the fact that on hardware that was current at Vist's release we wont get like for like performance. If I went out just now and bought a powerhouse of a system vista would probabley do the job but for me and my system...... XP is the way to go.

(plus; because i have an audigy card the sound from XP is far better!)

[Rebdomine]

Stop blaming Vista, for your ****ty PC's - PLEASE!

Vista does require some more before the performance is the same or better! Is it really that hard to understand that?

[Maximum Error]

Stop blaming Vista, for your ****ty PC's - PLEASE!

Vista does require some more before the performance is the same or better! Is it really that hard to understand that?

Read before you attack....... U are agreeing with me!

Vista has far bigger overheads than XP and I suppose we just have to accept the fact that on hardware that was current at Vist's release we wont get like for like performance.

[Rebdomine]

Well yeah.. sorry..