Is XP still better than Vista for gaming ?

[The Seventh One]

Agree with a lot of people here, if you have the hardware Vista 64 craps on XP (That is of course you are fully patched up to SP 2 etc), hell W7 is even better than both and thats around the corner.

 

[Jamie1994]

I got vista the day it came out and never used xp since.For me vista is as fast and more stable than xp ever was.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAH

But really, when vista came out EVERYONE was complaining about how unstable and buggy it was, I mean hell, windows explorer would crash even if you weren't using the computer.


I know vista is a lot better then it was when it came out now, but it's a little too late with Win7 weeks from release.

 

[Sem]

Very mixed bag of results in those tests...

I still say on balance XP is 7-10% faster in the majority of cases with win7 rapidly closing the gap.

i reckon the improved functionality and option of 64bit more than makes up for the 3-5fps drop in some games/benchmarks

i used to be an XP whore and never made the switch to vista (not just cause of gaming)

anyway been running win7 since build 7000 and while 3dmark 06 is around 1k lower i haven't really noticed a difference in actual games

but then again i have bleeding edge hardware probably different with older stuff

 

[Things change I've changed]

XP all the way, I installed Vista 64bit on a spare drive on a system with 2.4 core duo + 4gb of ram and I had a terrible time with it, the churning of my HDD every time I rebooted my system, the million and one confirmations you get all the time just to install new software or change system settings, and networking, my god, what a pain in the ass, never in my life did I think it was possible for an os to reset my router randomly, and also the aero interface kept ramping up my GPU fan which I just couldn't believe, it's hardly a 3D os, I'd honestly prefer to use windows95 than Vista.

 

[The Asgard]

It deffinatly can have an effect on editing a text file - might be a bit complicated to try and explain it without pictures tho.

How can editing a text file get complicated?

First thing I do is turn UAC off.

I develop software under Vista and I hate having to go back to XP. Vista is a solid OS now and I can't fault it.

 

[johny dolan]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAH

But really, when vista came out EVERYONE was complaining about how unstable and buggy it was, I mean hell, windows explorer would crash even if you weren't using the computer.


I know vista is a lot better then it was when it came out now, but it's a little too late with Win7 weeks from release.

Vista was much better at launch than xp ever was.I also got xp when it launched and nothing working with it.Xp was very poor until sp2.When i got vista i set up a dual boot with xp just incase and never used xp again.I have win7 pre-order and ill do the same dual boot again.Vista has had its day now nevermind xp.

 

[jigger]

Rroff,

What would you say the difference in performance is after tweaking XP ?

I have always done it on auto pilot, and never really tested.



Anyone dual booting and got half an hour to 3d mark 05 ?

 

[johny dolan]

When i was going for a good 3dmark06 score i used xp as it was about 1500 points faster with my sli gtx8800s back in the day.Not sure about today though.

 

[Rroff]

i reckon the improved functionality and option of 64bit more than makes up for the 3-5fps drop in some games/benchmarks

i used to be an XP whore and never made the switch to vista (not just cause of gaming)

anyway been running win7 since build 7000 and while 3dmark 06 is around 1k lower i haven't really noticed a difference in actual games

but then again i have bleeding edge hardware probably different with older stuff

While thats an academic point really I would agree when it comes to win7 but not vista...

How can editing a text file get complicated?

First thing I do is turn UAC off.

I develop software under Vista and I hate having to go back to XP. Vista is a solid OS now and I can't fault it.

I was saying _IF_ you have UAC on it makes it even more complicated - sure you can just turn UAC off .

Rroff,

What would you say the difference in performance is after tweaking XP ?

I have always done it on auto pilot, and never really tested.



Anyone dual booting and got half an hour to 3d mark 05 ?

Even if you go insane disabling services and tuning registry values I doubt you will gain even another 1% in performance (on an already clean OS) - but a bit of tweaking can get a more stable FPS baseline also pulling up the average a little in benchmark runs. My point was tho I'm not seeing XP as faster coz I messed up - I'm seeing XP as faster as when it really comes down to "balls to the wall" it does still outperform vista in gaming on balance.

I also agree that XP was much better with SP2 - I delayed moving over from Windows 98 til SP2 due to the general instability. Since then with a well tweaked system XP runs very stable and fast...

One of the main differences is tho I think - vista has been rewritten at the kernel level in such a way that it can survive being blasted with a ton of applications, startup items, etc. better than XP... if you have 100 processes running, 25 items in the system tray, a startup list as long as your arm and so on then its not suprising Vista manages to be the faster OS. Try a slimmed down clean install of both and you'll see a different picture.

 

[Shocky-FM]

XP has always been faster, I used vista only because of DX10.

 

[BloomerzUK]

XP might be faster, but we're taking no more than 3fps iirc, which really isn't a lot.

Can make the difference between playable and unplayable.

 

[gurusan]

this editing txt stuff is major lol. come on now

 

[Rroff]

no seriously... first time started up win7 I did the old open notepad, scribble some stats in for benchmarking...

used to XP without thinking ctrl+s select c:\ save... oops error

ok once you disable UAC, use the my docs folder, etc. it works but it was just the only poor example I could remember specifically off the top of my head... I just remember when I was using it and vista I was getting frustrated at how many extra steps over my XP install it was taking to do fairly simple tasks.

 

[gurusan]

perhaps you were making the txt on a drive you did not have permission to?

 

[arc@css]

Shame really but I bought Vista 64 premium around this time last year and wasn't, at least overall, that impressed with it and after a while I reinstalled XP 32. I appreciate that Vista has come a bundle since then but with Win7 around the corner I am simply going to wait for that and buy a couple of new drives probably at the same time too. Pity since my 1 licence Vista will just be chucked, I can't sell it so that's a waste of resources and money.

 

[Fire Wizard]

Theres not much in it - in a lot of cases performance is as close as identical - but I have a set of saved games and noted down the framerate in the menu of games that use a 3D background - which I use mainly for testing overclocking gains and driver updates - but as a sweeping generalisation from these vista is about 7-10% slower overall. Tho you really only notice the difference in scenes were your getting 200fps - where it drops to say 185 - in other cases its the difference between 31 and 33fps, etc.

Thanks for getting back to me. In my experience, Windows XP, Windows Vista and also Windows 7 perform very similar to one another and I haven't really noticed one of the operating systems being significantly faster than the others.

Regarding editing a text file. The only reason why you will see a User Account Control dialogue by simply editing a text file is if it is located in a system location. With UAC enabled, since you're running with standard user rights, any administrative tasks you perform will trigger a UAC prompt.

 

[titaniumx3]

Not sure about Vista, but I think on the whole, Windows 7 is better for games than XP. Some games run faster in XP but most seems to run ever so slightly better in Windows 7. My impression is that very resource hungry games or games that make heavy use of multithreading, get better fps under Windows 7 (e.g. GTA4, Arma2, etc).

 

[Rroff]

That last point is a good one actually titaniumx3...

XP will almost certainly be better for single threaded games - but in newer multi threaded games then in theory vista possibly and win7 deffinatly with the better kernel are going to show much bigger gains and run more responsively.

 

[Rroff]

Thanks for getting back to me. In my experience, Windows XP, Windows Vista and also Windows 7 perform very similar to one another and I haven't really noticed one of the operating systems being significantly faster than the others.

I have noted down the opening screen fps in bioshock, lost coast, etc. as a reference and also have a place on COD4 I use to compare fps (on the broken wood bridge on overgrown looking down to the stone bridge) I also have saved games from bioshock, COD4, mass effect, oblivion and a couple of other games.

Its not the most scientific benchmark - but loading up a few of those and seeing what the fps stabalises to from the initial viewpoint gives me a good idea.

And deffinatly XP has a slight performance edge across all those - its not that noticeable in the ones where its around 30-40fps - but the places where its 200+ its quite noticeably different... whether it has any realworld impact is debatable...

EDIT: Whatever way you shake it tho - theres only 2 horses in this game XP and Windows 7 and XP might be in the lead right now but its already flagging. Vista slowed to a trot many miles back.

 

[mmj_uk]

Even with a 4ghz i7 and 6gb ram I find XP64 a smoother gaming experience, less background baggage.