XP vs Vista: Redux @ [H]

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Jason_Wall

[H] Consumer Managing Editor
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In our last article, we looked at what NVIDIA hardware could do with framerates in popular gaming titles. The [H] readers wanted more - so here it is. We retested our gaming suite with ATI hardware and also tried out NVIDIA's new 158.xx driver set. Curiously, the overall trend in the data didn't change much, but it was clear that ATI is doing better with their drivers than NVIDIA is.

Now that we've used new drivers and a more comprehensive panel of hardware, we're at a point where we have to look at this profound trend in the data as significant. Even though it's only by a few frames here and there, it's curious to see that Vista continues to underperform (albeit slightly in most cases) in 3D gaming applications compared to XP.
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Thanks for reading!

Please support [H] and Digg this article!
 
Woot - thanks for retesting these for us :)

I haven't read the article yet (going to read it next), but I am astonished that you didn't see much of a difference with the 158.xx drivers! They made a huge difference for me over the 100.65's! (esp CS:S, Fear, Oblivion)

edit: Good article!
 
same problem, the article page doesnt load.

edit:
I lied, it loaded but took a very long time :)
Yawn, its going to be a long day.
 
New test, pretty much the same result.

Got to love the DRM layers, huh vista boys? :D
 
Nenu said:
same problem, the article page doesnt load.

edit:
I lied, it loaded but took a very long time :)
Yawn, its going to be a long day.
Click to expand...



EDIT: Looks like things are moving along much better now.
 
As your article shows there is a major difference in driver quality with Ati on Vista in the sense that there really is minimal impact between Vista and Xp. Which many of us I had noticed a month ago. Its one of the reasons I think Ati's Amd new hardware could possibly have a chance of improving with hardware revisions and of course driver improvements.
competion is always good. And this also shows.. Vista is not the devil. I have been running on my ultimate based machine for 4 months now and I have been satisfied so far. Of course as Nvidia makes improvements to their drivers it only helps the gaming environment for everyone on the Vista platform.
 
That is an awful ot of work to go thru all those games, cards and OS's.:eek: Thanks to the [H] for providing so much info for us gamers.
 
Very nice article update. The [H] continually impresses me with their professional manner in writing tech articles.

I used Vista as a beta and I've used it now for several months as a full release. My take on it so far is this:
Vista is an updated, bloated OS that we really didn't need.
The extra eye-candy that was already in versions of Linux and the Mac aren't worth the upgrade in Vista.
Display drivers have caught up with the OS now and the experience is tolerable, but slower than XP on the same hardware.
Like any new OS, there are still hardware peripheral problems. There is still a lack of new driver support for peripherals such as printers and scanners which require manufacturer designed drivers for full functionality.

Personally, I dual-boot Ubuntu and XP. Ubuntu can do 90% of what I need an OS to do. The other 10% I can do in XP. Vista doesn't live on my desktop machine.

Vista Premium came on my laptop, so I use it there. I also have a 2nd hdd that has XP on it that I also sometimes use when Vista just gets on my nerves. I paid for Vista when I bought the notebook, so I use it, but the same notebook runs better overall and much faster when using XP. Luckily my notebook manufacturer had XP drivers for all the hardware in the notebook, so it runs great in XP.

If Ati had the same amount of support in Linux as they do in Windows, I'd also have Ubuntu on the notebook. But after spending hours & hours trying to get the 3d effects & certain hardware to work properly, I had to nix the linux install and put windows back on there.

I can see the time coming when Vista will be a requirement for games and apps, but hopefully the OS will be post-SP1 by then and less of a hassle to use.
 
Bellz said:
Very nice article update. The [H] continually impresses me with their professional manner in writing tech articles.

I used Vista as a beta and I've used it now for several months as a full release. My take on it so far is this:
Vista is an updated, bloated OS that we really didn't need.
The extra eye-candy that was already in versions of Linux and the Mac aren't worth the upgrade in Vista.
Display drivers have caught up with the OS now and the experience is tolerable, but slower than XP on the same hardware.
Like any new OS, there are still hardware peripheral problems. There is still a lack of new driver support for peripherals such as printers and scanners which require manufacturer designed drivers for full functionality.

Personally, I dual-boot Ubuntu and XP. Ubuntu can do 90% of what I need an OS to do. The other 10% I can do in XP. Vista doesn't live on my desktop machine.

Vista Premium came on my laptop, so I use it there. I also have a 2nd hdd that has XP on it that I also sometimes use when Vista just gets on my nerves. I paid for Vista when I bought the notebook, so I use it, but the same notebook runs better overall and much faster when using XP. Luckily my notebook manufacturer had XP drivers for all the hardware in the notebook, so it runs great in XP.

If Ati had the same amount of support in Linux as they do in Windows, I'd also have Ubuntu on the notebook. But after spending hours & hours trying to get the 3d effects & certain hardware to work properly, I had to nix the linux install and put windows back on there.

I can see the time coming when Vista will be a requirement for games and apps, but hopefully the OS will be post-SP1 by then and less of a hassle to use.
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Plenty of other threads about this. You blame Vista for there being a lack of driver support?:rolleyes: That's not Microsofts fault and SP1 isn't going to fix that.
 
However, our scope was more limited than we realized. After the article, a consistent criticism was that we did not include ATI hardware in our evaluation, so any claims that we made were unqualified. Our readers were absolutely right. One of the reasons that our content is better than most publications is that because we have the best readership in the industry and we listen to them.
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Thank You [H]:cool:

Also, thank you for linking some of the graphs and the previous article for comparison.
 
Maybe its just me, but seems like after a a few more driver releases the performance will be about even. With that being said, I'm still an XP user and probably will be for quite a while...
 
The article is not loading for me...:confused:

Edit: Now working but very slow in loading.
 
Finn said:
New test, pretty much the same result.

Got to love the DRM layers, huh vista boys? :D
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DRM has nothing to do with the frame rate drops, moving the drivers out of kernel space does. With that in mind, the frame rate drops are about what one should expect.

The real question is subjective.

Is the drop in frame rate noticeable and if so does it degrade the gaming experience so much that it doesn't offset the things you may like about Vista that you're willing to live with it. If not are you willing to dual boot to get your fps back?

The thing that's really going to throw this up in the air is the newer LCDs that refresh at 120MHz.
 
It seems to me that something similar to this happened when Windows XP was released. Some websites wouldn't test games on XP as it was "constantly optimizing itself in the background" which added overhead and lowered frame rates. Funny how every new piece of technology is slightly worse when it is new but then this is promptly forgotten when it becomes mainstream. Remember how hyperthreading added overhead and lowered frame rates when it was brand new? Yet nobody disables it (or disables one of their processor cores in modern times) when benchmarking games that aren't multithreaded. It looks like Vista has closed the gap on XP enough for this to all be forgotten a few months from now.
 
i get 15 fps in BF2 i doubt going back to XP will help that.

all i can say is that yes with vista you lose FPS but (with ATI) you lose no more than 10 (well maby in the odd case lol) and to me i realy wouldnt mind if i was getting that high FPS anyway.

nvidea need to get there act together tbh on the drvier side

considering that vista hasnt even been out a whole year im impressed tbh i thought it would be worse ;)

does the fact they are running on diffrent DX's affect it? DX9L on vista or am i making this up? ;)
 
webdev511 said:
..The real question is subjective.

Is the drop in frame rate noticeable and if so does it degrade the gaming experience so much that it doesn't offset the things you may like about Vista that you're willing to live with it. If not are you willing to dual boot to get your fps back?
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Precisely, and some of the strong criticism I made of the original article still applies. A very restricted bunch of tests have been run here, and some very big conclusions/intimations have been subsequently made.

The difference between 71fps and 75fps in Battlefield 2142 is going to make no difference whatsoever to my experience of it. The difference between 53fps and 61fps in Company of Hereoes is going to be difficult to detect when playing. The difference betweem 54fps and 59fps in Oblivion is a concern only to the ego, really.

And, let's face it, what if we're not gaming on an 8800GTS? I've run tests on 6xxx series cards and 7xxx series cards here, and not seen differences even of that small magnitude.

To be quite honest, in all the supposed 'tests and proof' I've seen to date I've not really seen anything which could lead a reasonable person to any other conclusion than "Playability is bugger-all different under either platform". But hey? It's kinda cool to participate in the "Vista isn't as good for gaming!" rat race, isn't it?

I'll say it again, just like I did in the previous thread. There are good reasons Vista isn't as good a gaming platform. Framerate drops aren't amongst those reasons!
 
Quick question...

Did you guys consider running a pass of tests against the system with either the sound card disabled or sound disabled in game? Sound performance is eebil in Vista, and some games get a healthy FPS boost just by killing the sound. I'm not saying that it's the magic bullet or anything, but it's definitely a piece of the puzzle.
 
unfortuantely i'm betting Nvidia doesnt have the cojones to come down here and respond, even if they have released several driver releases since vista came out that have clearly not hit the mark as they should have.
 
I have looked at both articles and couldn't see this anywhere for the life of me. Were you using 32 bit or 64 bit vista? As I understand it performance is different (worse for 64 bit) so this is quite an important fact.
 
Maybe it's me,but shouldn't a supposedly improved OS be better than the previous version,not worse?Neither ATI or Nvidia performed better in Vista than they did in XP.
And the DX10 titles out there haven't fared any better,from what I heard,Halo2 and Shadowrun are awful in performance.
 
Tempest_Prime said:
Quick question...

Did you guys consider running a pass of tests against the system with either the sound card disabled or sound disabled in game? Sound performance is eebil in Vista, and some games get a healthy FPS boost just by killing the sound. I'm not saying that it's the magic bullet or anything, but it's definitely a piece of the puzzle.
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I'd like to see tests run with Aero disabled as well. I wouldn't be surprised if Windows classic speeds Vista up enormously.
 
I see two conclusions from these articles:

1) XP will give you a slight performance over Vista in this test set-up
2) The nvidia product is slightly faster than the ATI product

I still dont think Vista is worth it yet, but soon there will be no choice.
 
michael.pa2 said:
Maybe it's me,but shouldn't a supposedly improved OS be better than the previous version,not worse?
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I guess you're too young to have been around for the early days of XP, then, when the same sort of nonsense was filling page space all over the place? When the titillation of the benchmark-obsessed was being pandered to whilst the people who simply made the change and got on with things were happily enjoying their gaming?


Same deal all over again, only this time it's Vista being decried and XP getting carried on about as if it's all of a sudden miraculously divine. Last time around Windows 98 was the Holy Grail, and XP the plaything of the devil.

Right now:

  • If benchmarks are more important to you than gaming (ie if your main concern is the framerate readout rather than the gameplay experience) then stick with XP.
  • If 3D audio in games is important to you then stick with XP.
  • If neither of the above are relevent to your gaming activity then the differences are so slight that you're not even going to have to turn your detail levels down!

Lot of hot air being expended about nothing! But I've yet to see an article like this'n admit the fact!
 
Thank you so much for this followup article.

Now we just need nVidia, AMD and Microsoft to step up and tell us who is at fault!
 
I upped to Vista for Halo 2 (they screwed that up bad), but the indexing start menu bar as well as the way you navigate parent folders have sped up my day to day work. And yes, I dig the pretty features of Aero. It seems the game perf is getting really close too. I havent had to turn any game detail settings down in Vista either.
 
I wonder if turning off the Aero interface will help, or check the box that says, "adjust windows for best performance." Hmmmm..
 
Tempest_Prime said:
Quick question...

Did you guys consider running a pass of tests against the system with either the sound card disabled or sound disabled in game? Sound performance is eebil in Vista, and some games get a healthy FPS boost just by killing the sound. I'm not saying that it's the magic bullet or anything, but it's definitely a piece of the puzzle.
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Now why would HardOCP run any tests like that?:confused:
HardOCP only does real world testing...and playing games without audio isn't real world at all. Not too many people play with sound disabled, except those that are benchmark happy or are already deaf.
michael.pa2 said:
Maybe it's me,but shouldn't a supposedly improved OS be better than the previous version,not worse?Neither ATI or Nvidia performed better in Vista than they did in XP.
And the DX10 titles out there haven't fared any better,from what I heard,Halo2 and Shadowrun are awful in performance.
Click to expand...
Halo2 and ShadowRun are not DX10, but they are Vista only. The only FULL GAME (not demo) that is DX10 at the moment is Company of Heroes with the latest patch.
 
While I appreciate the scope of the article, I'd still like to see one addressing the numerous daily usability issues. Vista has eaten so much of my data it's infuriating.

My ATI video cards occasionally have to go through a GPU reset after closing out Supreme Commander or 3DLabs GLSL shader studio. And speaking of Catalyst 7.5, with my BBA 1950 XTX, every single time I've installed it my display gets washed out and overbright. This occurs on DVI or VGA even with a fresh install. Going to the default Vista driver or back to 7.4 brings back the color and decreases the brightness. I'm quite happy with the 7.4's for now.

Thanks again for confirming that my 1950 XTX was still a good choice until they get this mess that is DX 10 fixed.

michael.pa2 said:
Maybe it's me,but shouldn't a supposedly improved OS be better than the previous version,not worse?Neither ATI or Nvidia performed better in Vista than they did in XP.
And the DX10 titles out there haven't fared any better,from what I heard,Halo2 and Shadowrun are awful in performance.
Click to expand...

One more thing. Doesn't anyone else think it's pretty cool that performance is almost on par with XP after 6 months, where XP took almost a year to catch up to Win2k?
 
The [H] linked to this article last March & there was a big (long) discussion of it somewhere around here, which I am now unable to locate. Anyway, something which bears repeating here:

http://www.shacknews.com/extras/2007/032907_alexstjohn1_3.x

Alex St John: Well, the PC--forget the operating system--is always a great platform. Modern PCs have superior graphics and memory and processing power to any next-gen console. I don't think Microsoft did anything to help the PC as a gaming platform with Vista, and that's a tremendous frustration because I take it very personally. If I would've been there, I would have made much more aggressive efforts to make sure Vista stayed out of the way of games. What you see with Microsoft is, without people at Microsoft who realize that the operating system does not add value to gaming, it gets in the way, they think they can add more value by adding in more shit that only gets in the way of making a good game. Unfortunately, Vista does that. Microsoft added more shit that impedes game development. It's certainly possible to make great games in Vista, it's just more of a pain in the ass than it needs to be. I think Vista is a missed opportunity for Microsoft to have done a better job in supporting PC gaming.
 
^

Seen it. Astute enough to understand that it's predominately a whinge about moving away from the ability to interact right down at the machine level, and more toward an environment where 3D operation doesn't frequently bring the operating environment crashing down around it ears. PCs aren't consoles. Operating systems are platforms which perform a multitude of tasks in addition to launching games. The original DX API was pretty badly flawed.

The newer environment we're seeing now is much more stable by nature, and it's to be applauded how little impact that has had on the comparitive performance we can wrest from the machine. Buggered if I'm gonna forego the benefits of a fundamentally better platform for the sake of the whinings of somebody who is loath to let go of yesterday!


If you only seek the opinions of the 'knockers' you never get to see the other side of the story, do you?


(That's enough from me anyways. People will believe what they want to believe, and swallow anything which seems to support it :))
 
Props, [H]. I appreciate your going through this effort.

The DRM layer probably is a factor here, though I'm sure frame rates will continue to improve as the drivers are tweaked. Of course, they'll continue to improve on XP as well, so Vista may not catch up until XP suport is dropped. ;)
 
yagisencho said:
Props, [H]. I appreciate your going through this effort.

The DRM layer probably is a factor here, though I'm sure frame rates will continue to improve as the drivers are tweaked. Of course, they'll continue to improve on XP as well, so Vista may not catch up until XP suport is dropped. ;)
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Why does anyone think the DRM pipeline has any impact in game performance. That makes absolutely no sense.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Now why would HardOCP run any tests like that?:confused: HardOCP only does real world testing...and playing games without audio isn't real world at all.
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While not "real-world" usage, it may provide some insight as to the causes.

John D said:
Now we just need nVidia, AMD and Microsoft to step up and tell us who is at fault!
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Why does it have to be someone's fault? Why can't it just be "Because of new features, Vista has slightly more overhead that impacts gaming performance?"
 
Tempest_Prime said:
Quick question...

Did you guys consider running a pass of tests against the system with either the sound card disabled or sound disabled in game?
Click to expand...

We have onboard sound and the drivers for it were installed on every OS installation. I play some of the games without sound, but that's just me not wearing headphones. I'll take a look at this as a possible explanation, though honestly, if I don't have to do another framerate test for a while, I'll be a happy man.
 
sbuckler said:
I have looked at both articles and couldn't see this anywhere for the life of me. Were you using 32 bit or 64 bit vista? As I understand it performance is different (worse for 64 bit) so this is quite an important fact.
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Sorry, I suppose that detail slipped through the cracks. We were using 32-bit Home Premium.
 
Interesting... Hexus just did an ATI to Nvidia comparision that showed Vista actually beating XP in some games...

Machine: Intel X6800 with 2GB of RAM and EVGA 8800GTS w/640MB

XP/Vista

Quake 4, High Quality 2048x1536 4XAA/8XAF: 55/55 FPS (tie)

Oblivion, High Quality 2048x1536 4XAA/8XAF: 30/36 FPS (Vista wins)

COH, Ultra Quality 2048x1536 4XAA/8XAF: 49/32 (XP wins)

Stalker, High Quality 2048x1536 4XAA/8XAF: 29/29 (tie)
 
Y2K SE said:
While not "real-world" usage, it may provide some insight as to the causes.

Why does it have to be someone's fault? Why can't it just be "Because of new features, Vista has slightly more overhead that impacts gaming performance?"
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What overhead? When gaming, I doubt your system is busy indexing or anything like that.

The difference in performance is probably due to the fact that 3d applications work on their own layer (sorry don't know the technical terms for this) so as not to interfere with other applications. ATI and Nvidia driver engineers, and game companies are probably still trying to adapt to this.
 
oneils said:
What overhead? When gaming, I doubt your system is busy indexing or anything like that.
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Actually, on a 2 core / 4 thread cpu while those threads are supposed to have their priority reduced, in my testbed watching performance counters indicated that Vista was indexing, defragging, and doing all kinds of other background tasks without properly throttling. I've actually watched Enemy Territory's thread go from normal to low priority hundreds of times a minute as Vista can't make up it's mind what it wants to do. These tests didn't suffer as much on a single core, single thread platform.
 
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