Forceware Vista x64 drivers improving?

I'd like to se in-game preformance as 3Dmarks relates to...well nothing in that area actullay.
 
I was just using 3DMark as a gross generalization. I'm still working on my own feel of the situation (and benchmarking)...
 
I noticed dramatic performance improvements.

Vista x64 162.22 - 3dmark06 score: 10063

Vista x64 163.75 - 3dmark06 score: 10184
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
I was just using 3DMark as a gross generalization. I'm still working on my own feel of the situation (and benchmarking)...
Click to expand...

I understand, but I would like to see hard numbers, not "feelings".
Not putting you down or anything here :)
 
Just got Doom 3 installed (classic!) so I'll have numbers up for that soon.
 
The numbers for D3 are in and I'm blown away by the dramatic improvement.

Windows XP SP2 @ 1280x1024 4X FSAA 16X AF - 101.3fps

Windows Vista Ultimate @ 1280x1024 4X AA 16X AF - 97.3fps

Last time I tried D3 on Vista I got about 83fps at the same settings. Wow. :D

On to the HL2 Lost Coast Benchie...
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
The numbers for D3 are in and I'm blown away by the dramatic improvement.

Windows XP SP2 @ 1280x1024 4X FSAA 16X AF - 101.3fps

Windows Vista Ultimate @ 1280x1024 4X AA 16X AF - 97.3fps

Last time I tried D3 on Vista I got about 83fps at the same settings. Wow. :D

F.E.A.R. performance is almost perfect parity with Windows XP too, although I don't remember the exact numbers.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the numbers :)
But I still see no reason to "upgrade" until preformance is better than under XP ;)
 
Atech said:
Thanks for the numbers :)
But I still see no reason to "upgrade" until preformance is better than under XP ;)
Click to expand...

MS pretty much said that it wasn't going to happen because of the way the drivers are broken off from the kernel space and put into user space. I can understand to a point why they did this (to keep system stability when drivers aren't) so the best we can hope for is about a 5% hit to at best parity with XP. I would link to the article but I can't remember where I read it...

I don't mind a 5% hit (which is slightly more than what Doom 3 took on my machine) at worst case scenario, and I feel I get much more out of it by the beautiful GUI, improved interface, security, and forward looking features of the OS. Remember that XP too took a hit compared to Windows 98/SE and even 2000 back in the day. XP is the defacto OS, and soon the mantle will pass to Vista.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
MS pretty much said that it wasn't going to happen because of the way the drivers are broken off from the kernel space and put into user space. I can understand to a point why they did this (to keep system stability when drivers aren't) so the best we can hope for is about a 5% hit to at best parity with XP. I would link to the article but I can't remember where I read it...
Click to expand...

I read otherwise:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTA0NSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==


I don't mind a 5% hit (which is slightly more than what Doom 3 took on my machine) at worst case scenario, and I feel I get much more out of it by the beautiful GUI, improved interface, security, and forward looking features of the OS. Remember that XP too took a hit compared to Windows 98/SE and even 2000 back in the day. XP is the defacto OS, and soon the mantle will pass to Vista.
Click to expand...

I mind a hit for nothing at all...besides going Vista over XP ;)
 
Hey I didn't make it up, and the snippet was primarily reffering to DX9 stuff. While that might be true for DX10 apps, we certainly haven't seen the fruits of that yet.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
Hey I didn't make it up, and the snippet was primarily reffering to DX9 stuff. While that might be true for DX10 apps, we certainly haven't seen the fruits of that yet.
Click to expand...

Didn't say you had, but I will wait untill I see a clear gaming benefit with Vista.
Which in my guess won't happen this generation (GPU)
 
Yeah my hellgate runs a lot better also on x64 and the newest beta drivers. Also while I love my XP boxes (I have 4), I actually enjoy Vista a lot better in gaming. My hellgate running in DX10 looks a lot better then DX9 hands downs. DX9 just looks too fake. While this does not apply to all my games like HL2 it does in games like Hellgate for some reason......I know there is a performance hit, but I do not notice notice it.
 
I noticed an improvement on the 169.12 beta drivers as well.. Here is my score on the WHQL 163.75 drivers:


36ghzEVGA01.jpg



I re-ran 3dmark06 today after updating to the beta 169.12 drivers..


3dmark0636ghz16827.jpg



For me, there was a "significant" improvement! I even gained a few FPS in Crysis.. (Yes, I am running Vista Ultimate x64)
 
Zinn said:
The OPs wallpapers are a little more than creepy. :eek:
Click to expand...

LOL

What, you're not an anime fan? There's a five year old girl on the house (roomie's daughter) so it's not like I can have a wallpaper of a nude spread of Bar Refaeli [/drool] on my desktop...

Anyways, I change them on a regular, but this is my usual one, and since I'm a fan of Heavenly Sword, this one is my fav...

Dektop.jpg
 
Okay back on topic...

I just got done running the HL2 Lost Coast benchmark. Very dissapointing.

1152x864 @ 4X AA 16X AF - 70.53fps. I know my machine is faster than that, but I hear that all Valve's older (64-Bit) offerings suck under Vista
 
I think the 4xaa is killing your lost coast benchmark, the hdr will eat up a bit more memory
 
Slade said:
I think the 4xaa is killing your lost coast benchmark, the hdr will eat up a bit more memory
Click to expand...

From what I remember, though, I'm pretty sure it got at least high 70's to low 80's under XP. However, I'm not going to throw XP back on to double check, and then re-format and install Vista again. That's a lot of work, and it's getting late. :p
 
Wow, this post has fallen to the wayside. :(

Anyways, I've got XP back on my machine since I had the itch to play some Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, and my XBox USB modded controller won't work under Vista. Couple that with the fact that my internet connection was down for about four days and I've had enough. So now I have some screens to back up some of the XP numbers. However, I won't be posting them here.

I'll be starting a new thread for this with a more appropriate title for my personal evaluation of ForceWare driver performance and general gaming running a mid-end system under XP SP2 and Vista Ultimate x64, so people with lower end (but still quite capable) machines will get a better idea of what kind of performance hits you'll be taking for migrating to Vista. I really have only seen evals with higher end cards, or ones with much faster processors. So I thought I would do this to help other people like myself who are wondering if Vista is worth putting on a less-than state-of-the-art PC if you intend to do some hardy gaming on it. XP benches first, with Vista ones to follow, so stay tuned.

Peace out. :cool:
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
Wow, this post has fallen to the wayside. :(

Anyways, I've got XP back on my machine since I had the itch to play some Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, and my XBox USB modded controller won't work under Vista. Couple that with the fact that my internet connection was down for about four days and I've had enough. So now I have some screens to back up some of the XP numbers. However, I won't be posting them here.

I'll be starting a new thread for this with a more appropriate title for my personal evaluation of ForceWare driver performance and general gaming running a mid-end system under XP SP2 and Vista Ultimate x86. Vista x64 IMHO is pretty much irrelevant since hardly any games actually take advantage of the 64-Bit OS, and since I'm only running with 2GB of RAM, so people with lower end (but still quite capable) machines will get a better idea of what kind of performance hits you'll be taking for migrating to Vista. I really have only seen evals with higher end cards, or ones with much faster processors. So I thought I would do this to help other people like myself who are wondering if Vista is worth putting on a less-than state-of-the-art PC if you intend to do some hardy gaming on it. XP benches first, with Vista ones to follow, so stay tuned.

Peace out. :cool:
Click to expand...

Looking forward to those numbers :)
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
Okay back on topic...

I just got done running the HL2 Lost Coast benchmark. Very dissapointing.

1152x864 @ 4X AA 16X AF - 70.53fps. I know my machine is faster than that, but I hear that all Valve's older (64-Bit) offerings suck under Vista
Click to expand...

Something wrong there. I break 200 FPS at 1600x1200 4xaa 16xaf with old drivers on my machine. The GTS should at least get 100+ at that res. Then again, maybe you're CPU limited?
 
silent-circuit said:
Something wrong there. I break 200 FPS at 1600x1200 4xaa 16xaf with old drivers on my machine. The GTS should at least get 100+ at that res. Then again, maybe you're CPU limited?
Click to expand...

Yeah, more than likely. Your CPU @ stock is about 25-30% faster than mine. :eek:

That will be coming soon though, to a shiny new(er) 5600+. :D

Oh and the reason why I'm sticking to x64 instead of rolling with x86? Better performance.

I will be following up with actual numbers with a screen shot to back it up though.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
Yeah, more than likely. Your CPU @ stock is about 25-30% faster than mine. :eek:

That will be coming soon though, to a shiny new(er) 5600+. :D

Oh and the reason why I'm sticking to x64 instead of rolling with x86? Better performance.

I will be following up with actual numbers with a screen shot to back it up though.
Click to expand...

Doubt it helps things I run a 50% OC from stock at all times. (save at the moment, actually... stock HSF is installed for the first time ever as I prep to add the CPU to my water loop over Christmas break.)

I'm running Vista Ultimate 64bit. ;)
 
HL2LC_XP.jpg


Well there's the XP result. Seems not all is well in x64 land...

I heard that the 64-bit versions of HL2 take a mighty hit compared to their 32-bit cousins, with no apparent improvements to explain or compensate for the performance disparity. Just plain lazy (or suck-ass) programming on Valve's part. For shame.
 
The XP results are done, and I'm in the middle of updating Vista x64, and getting all the drivers and appropriate hotfixes installed. Since I don't want to spend the next few days doing this, it will be just a quick and dirty bench with the following:

3DMark06 1.1.0 (DX9)
Doom 3 v1.3 (OpenGL)
Quake 4 1.3.1 (OpenGL)
Half-Life 2 Lost Coast (DX9)

And last but definately not least:

F.E.A.R. v1.08 (DX9)

I will add more when I have time, and I may very well add FarCry to the list if I get enough people asking for it. Any requests?

(P.S. But only if it's a game I have !)

*goes back to installing updates and listening to Portishead*
 
silent-circuit said:
...you really, really need to set up dual booting rather than reinstalling all the time...
Click to expand...

Yeah, but it doesn't help the fact that I've only got a 160GB hard drive. Space is limited once I get all the stuff I want on my system. Maybe I'll do a dual-boot once I get more space. I agree though, formatting and reinstalling is a real PITA. :mad:

Anyways, I'm off to start benchmarking!
 
Well, keeping XP is 3-4GB so even with a 160GB a 5-10GB XP boot partition isn't that big a loss vs. hours of your time over and over.
 
I've been running Vista 64 for about three months now, and from an entirely emparical point of view, the 64-bit drivers have gotten quite a bit better. I don't have any hard numbers, versus the 32-bit drivers, but from a purely "feel" stand point they are quite a bit better. I haven't had a problem with them in several months. When I tried moving to 64-bit Vista in February, this was not the case. The drivers were very buggy and caused numerous system crashes.
 
silent-circuit said:
Well, keeping XP is 3-4GB so even with a 160GB a 5-10GB XP boot partition isn't that big a loss vs. hours of your time over and over.
Click to expand...

That's true. Guess it all comes down to not really wanting to partition my hard drive, truth be told.

On a side note, this HL2:Ep1 disk is really pissing me off. I tried to install it under Vista and it keeps saying (after Steam is on the flippin' hard drive) that there isn't enough disk space to install Steam, so now it's going to take about two hours to grab the Lost Coast benchmark. Argh. *flips the bird at Valve*

Screenshot below for your viewing pleasure. :)

Fuck_STEAM.jpg


Doesn't matter if Steam is running or not, I still end up with this lovely little error message.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
On a side note, this HL2:Ep1 disk is really pissing me off. I tried to install it under Vista and it keeps saying (after Steam is on the flippin' hard drive) that there isn't enough disk space to install Steam, so now it's going to take about two hours to grab the Lost Coast benchmark. Argh. *flips the bird at Valve*

(snip)

Doesn't matter if Steam is running or not, I still end up with this lovely little error message.
Click to expand...

STEAM itself is fully up to date, though? I had similar errors before, and starting and shutting down STEAM a few times until it updated itself seemed to help.
 
silent-circuit said:
STEAM itself is fully up to date, though? I had similar errors before, and starting and shutting down STEAM a few times until it updated itself seemed to help.
Click to expand...

As you can see in the background, Steam is already running. It doesn't have a problem updating itself, the install DVD has a problem when I go and try to actually install the game, and then I get that error message you see. Restarting and retrying doesn't help. I figure the install DVD is fucked when it comes to Vista. *sigh*

Off to smoke a square and have a cup (or three) of joe while Lost Coast downloads and FEAR installs.
 
Well, the results are in and are interesting to say the least. I'll post a link here when it's done.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
As you can see in the background, Steam is already running. It doesn't have a problem updating itself, the install DVD has a problem when I go and try to actually install the game, and then I get that error message you see. Restarting and retrying doesn't help. I figure the install DVD is fucked when it comes to Vista. *sigh*

Off to smoke a square and have a cup (or three) of joe while Lost Coast downloads and FEAR installs.
Click to expand...

I've run in to the same thing before, actually. Solution was to just copy the entire Steam directory once everything is downloaded and installed, then when you want to restore it install Steam, let it update, close it, copy over with the old directory, and start it again. Seems to work fine. Valve's back up system doesn't work right under Vista. You might try compatibility mode, though...
 
silent-circuit said:
I've run in to the same thing before, actually. Solution was to just copy the entire Steam directory once everything is downloaded and installed, then when you want to restore it install Steam, let it update, close it, copy over with the old directory, and start it again. Seems to work fine. Valve's back up system doesn't work right under Vista. You might try compatibility mode, though...
Click to expand...

Tried it. No dice. Oh well, everything works fine if I just download the games directly off of Steam.
 
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