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.'"

Comments

An old adage:

[Knight Thrasher]

'Newer' doesn't necessarily mean 'better.'

reason

[spykemail]

I just don't see a compelling reason to upgrade to Vista. I already have Mac OS X and Windows XP, why should I buy a new version of Windows when I can already play games on XP and work on OS X? I realize that at some point I'm going to need to upgrade because Windows-only developers will leave XP behind, but still. That won't be for a while.

Most of the games I play are classics at this point anyway, unless Blizzard's new game requires Vista I think I'll be ok :).

This comparison is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Games designed for XP work best on XP? I'm amazed!

Re:Useless comparison

[sbate]

It is not useless if you have a 2gz P4 Nvidia system and you wonder what would happen if you "upgraded". The article was interesting had a wide range of games and had Christmas tree graphs that showed how lame Vista is in game performance and how little you get for your money by "upgrading". It is fair to say that on newer computers you get about the same performance as your old computer so you will not be losing anything. I cannot for the life of me think about anything worth upgrading to vista for a home PC yet. It is not any safer and is more annoying and has the same printdriver scanner support as Ubuntu. When I upgrade my work computer it will be to Ubuntu and my gameing rig to an DS and PSP duct taped together back to back.

Windows Vista compatability

[My Iron Lung]

I'm playing all my games with specs quite similar to the ones in the article (slightly better processor, exact same 8800 GTS card). Between XP and Vista, I've honestly noticed very little, if any, difference in my game performance. I run the settings quite high.. the only real issue I've had is that Sim City 4 will simply not work under Vista.

I'm not trying to be a troll here, but when you're playing a game in fullscreen, isn't it basically getting your machine's full attention? What's Vista doing that makes XP so saintly in comparison?

Immature Drivers

[SpryGuy]

I'm certain the cause is the immaturity of the video drivers.

I was forced to upgrade to Vista at work, and I've expeirenced all sorts of driver related problems, from inablity to recover if the monitor is unplugged and plugged back in (or KVM's away and back), to repainting issues in several apps (most notably, Visual Studio 2005). In addition, I've seen some very poor performance in many instances, including the much-"Wow"-ed feature of 3D task switching.

I'm sure most of these issues will be ironed out over the next year or so as the drivers become more optimized and stable.

Re:duhhhhhhhh....

[Lonewolf666]

The difference is that Windows 2000 (or XP) had some real improvements over Win 98. Most importantly, support for more RAM and better stability. It had some problems with driver availability at first, but that is the only drawback I can recall.

With Vista, you get the same driver problems, less stability than before (as the predecessor is stable enough and much harder competition than Win 98 was) plus some compatibility problems. The only advantage might be the new GUI design. I say might be, because that is a matter of taste.

So I guess Vista will have a much harder time replacing XP than XP replacing 98.

"Wonder as to the cause"?

[Minwee]

Wow. Games which were designed, tested and optimized for XP run better on XP.

What exactly is there to wonder about?

Manufacturing and QC

[blueZ3]

Back in the day, "hi tech" devices like floppy drives and CD-ROMs were manufactured by companies that had a reputation to keep and some notion of quality control. With the massive move of manufacturing to China and the victory of the generic device (and price over all other considerations), that's no longer the case.

If you buy a CD drive from Frys made by NewCoTech and it fails, it's pretty unlikely you're going to remember NewCoTech when you're out buying a replacement. Even if you do, chances are that by then NewCoTech will have renamed itself GoodTech and you'll buy another piece of junk all unknown. Basically, it's the luck of the draw these days, and as far as I can tell, there's no Chinese word for "quality."

I've basically come to the point where if I can't find a non-China manufactured product, I generally won't buy whatever it is. The exception are inexpensive throw-away items that I don't need to last. If there's no other option (computers, for example) I buy a branded product where I know that the brand has a reputation to uphold. Even that's risky. I've had branded stuff that was made in China die on me, and

Made in China is the new Made in Taiwan from the 70's, or the new Made in Japan from the 60's (for those who are old enough to remember). For something like a plastic toy that my daughter is going to play with for a year, it's fine. For anything you need to last, find something made somewhere else.

Re:Frame rate perception

[Mprx]

CS is much slower paced than Quake 3 or similar.