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Vista vs. XP Game Stability and Performance
boyko.at.netqos writes "HardOCP does a side-by side comparison with a battery of games to check stability and framerates in Windows XP and Windows Vista. In addition to the lowered framerates in Vista, they had stability issues in Need for Speed: Carbon and Prey. From the article: 'For some titles, especially Company of Heroes and Need for Speed, we saw dramatic framerate discrepancies. What's more, both of these titles have recently released patches! Other titles showed a slight, but essentially negligible difference, such as BF2142, World of Warcraft, and Prey. Really, there was only one instance where Vista was able to pick up a few more frames than XP — World of Warcraft at greater than 90fps, where the human eye can't even see the difference. To see this overall trend against Vista is very interesting and makes us wonder as to the cause.'"
I think the people doing this test should really have a look at the vista manual. If they did they'd know the OS was designed to block suspicious looking frames from the games we play to keep your computer secure. This generally means a slight performance hit. But hey, if you're willing to shell out hundreds of dollars on upgrades for an OS, what's a few more hundred to buy an even new video card that'll allow you to play games with performance comparable to those on a machine running XP with less powerful hardware?
I have nothing compelling to say
First, you compile Wine to run in Vista...
Meta will eat itself
What the article does not state is that there reason for such slowness is that behind the game, Vista is poping up the message:
"You are attempting to refresh the screen. Cancel or Allow?"
whats vista doing that makes xp look saintly by comparison? Not working.
LCDs are worthless for any game that's dependent on fast reaction, such as first person shooters. Modern first person shooter design is moving towards deemphasizing twitch, for example by adding autoaim and weapon spread and slowing the game down, but play an oldschool fast FPS like Quake 3 on a CRT at 120Hz vs. an LCD at 60Hz, and you'll see it makes an enormous difference. Not only is the perception of smoother movement important, but latency too. With an LCD, a frame is buffered in the graphics card for 17ms, buffered in the LCD for at least 17ms, and then displayed over at least 5ms. With a CRT running twice as fast, the frame is buffered in the graphics card for only 8ms, not buffered in the CRT at all, and displayed over an average of 4ms (the top of the screen almost immediately, and the bottom after just under a whole frametime). That's 38ms added latency for a top of the range LCD, and 12ms added with a moderately good CRT (truly fast CRTs will do 200fps or more). A slow LCD can add 100ms or more (see "LCD input lag" discussion). Human visual reaction time is about 200ms to 250ms, with the highly gifted going slightly faster, and those tired or under the influence of depressants a lot slower. To be competitive at a twitch-heavy FPS you'll need to be reacting around 200ms (one reason why twitch is deemphasized now, so player genetics is not so important). The additional 26ms latency from choosing a fast LCD over an average CRT is a significant chunk or your reaction time, and enough to affect your average success rate in twitch-vs-twitch situation.
1. Download some free theme that looks like Aero. Watch out for malware.
2. Remove half your ram.
3. Clock the CPU down a few notches.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.