Is XP still better than Vista for gaming ?

jigger · 27 Jul 2009 at 00:31

Mattus said:
You mean the SP3 that was nothing more than a roll-up of previous fixes and a few unrelated networking and security updates?

I do mean Service Pack three.

I'm not fully aware of what technical developments went into XP from 2007, but I'm sure XP improved from service pack 2, and I would think it's fair to say there's a good chance most reviewer's would just grab a copy of XP SP2 and test without updating.

Mattus · 27 Jul 2009 at 00:46

Amnesia said:
now im not trying to convince you to believe my tests so much but simply saying them tests what they did are nothing but lies....im not the only person who tested vista vs xp and all of us found vista to be a lot slower.
this is ppl i know in rl not someone who i met on the internet.

Ahh, group logic. Well, I find Vista to be faster than XP. Me saying that is just as meaningless as saying that Vista is 'a lot slower'. There's no evidence, and therefore no reason to believe it.

Declaring that the review is 'lies' is a pretty strong accusation to make when you can't prove it.

And so you talked to people in real life? I talked to someone in real life on a train, who told me that the voices in his head were saying that the giant lizards were coming. It's not exactly a guarantee of accuracy. I'd trust an online review more than something a mate said, because I can see the processes they used. And if it's a reputable site, testing hardware and software is what they do, so you've gotta have some confidence in their ability to do it right.

You still haven't provided a single fact. Just hearsay.

TAC4U · 27 Jul 2009 at 02:01

Mattus said:
And so you talked to people in real life? I talked to someone in real life on a train, who told me that the voices in his head were saying that the giant lizards were coming.

That sounds a bit exaggerated but I talked to someone that actually claimed a gamepad was more accurate than a keyboard and mouse for first person shooters and that they didn't understand how people could play them on PC. Seriously.

Anyway, my experience with Vista was that it was slightly slower initially but that things changed with improved drivers. And the feature set of Vista was such that I never even considered going back to XP and I've been using Win7 as my primary OS since January (and have already preordered it).

At the end of the day Vista was a decent OS and essential if you wanted to stay with the times and play games with DX10. Benchmarks confirmed that Vista was faster in many / most games but the negative campaign against it meant that many people already formed an opinion before giving it a chance. I'm just glad that Win7 is getting such positive press, especially as it's just a better optimised version of Vista - it vindicates Vista, even though the haters will claim the opposite. Finally XP can be left behind and people can start to realise that in today's world it's simply not a very good operating system.

RizlaKing · 27 Jul 2009 at 02:47

I switched from xp to vista when vista was first released and at that time yes no if's or buts xp was faster and vista did have a few teething problems. Since sp1 vista has improved a lot to the point where i find on my system in sig it is infintely faster then xp 32 or 64 is and it is definately a lot more stable.

Truth is we had the same problem with vista that has plagued every MS os old die hards not liking something new moaning about something they hardly bothered trying for any length of time. What made it worse for vista was the sheer number of reactionary rubbish that got posted en masse on the internet many of it simple repeats of one person's view and wollah vista was labelled a failure.

Win7 is not so much a complere upgrade to vista more a sideway diagonal upgrade which will give the vista hater's the chance to bin xp and still be able to say they never touched the rubbish vista but for vista user's there isn't a whole lot of reason to upgrade to win7 as ms have already said some of the features in win7 can be inplemented on vista if they are popular enough though not all will be.

When win7 is finally officially released i will gaurantee we will see the MS hater's out in force on that os as well with the usual complaints and saying how something else is better. Way i see it if your happy with whtever os you have then does it really matter what someone else thinks be happy with it and let others moan about it life is so much easier.

queamin · 27 Jul 2009 at 03:18

Truth is we had the same problem with vista that has plagued every MS os old die hards not liking something new moaning about something they hardly bothered trying for any length of time.

Xp was the same if i remember that was slated as well and only got better after sp1

Overslop · 27 Jul 2009 at 04:19

RizlaKing said:
I switched from xp to vista when vista was first released and at that time yes no if's or buts xp was faster and vista did have a few teething problems. Since sp1 vista has improved a lot to the point where i find on my system in sig it is infintely faster then xp 32 or 64 is and it is definately a lot more stable.

Truth is we had the same problem with vista that has plagued every MS os old die hards not liking something new moaning about something they hardly bothered trying for any length of time. What made it worse for vista was the sheer number of reactionary rubbish that got posted en masse on the internet many of it simple repeats of one person's view and wollah vista was labelled a failure.

Win7 is not so much a complere upgrade to vista more a sideway diagonal upgrade which will give the vista hater's the chance to bin xp and still be able to say they never touched the rubbish vista but for vista user's there isn't a whole lot of reason to upgrade to win7 as ms have already said some of the features in win7 can be inplemented on vista if they are popular enough though not all will be.

When win7 is finally officially released i will gaurantee we will see the MS hater's out in force on that os as well with the usual complaints and saying how something else is better. Way i see it if your happy with whtever os you have then does it really matter what someone else thinks be happy with it and let others moan about it life is so much easier.

All Windows sucks, Apple OS is the only good one! :mad:

[/fannying art student]

Amnesia · 27 Jul 2009 at 04:53

Mattus said:
Ahh, group logic. Well, I find Vista to be faster than XP. Me saying that is just as meaningless as saying that Vista is 'a lot slower'. There's no evidence, and therefore no reason to believe it.

Declaring that the review is 'lies' is a pretty strong accusation to make when you can't prove it.

And so you talked to people in real life? I talked to someone in real life on a train, who told me that the voices in his head were saying that the giant lizards were coming. It's not exactly a guarantee of accuracy. I'd trust an online review more than something a mate said, because I can see the processes they used. And if it's a reputable site, testing hardware and software is what they do, so you've gotta have some confidence in their ability to do it right.

You still haven't provided a single fact. Just hearsay.

why would i need to provide facts to voice my experience ?
also im not going by what a mate just said when ive tested it myself but u fail to read that bit and want to believe your lizard overlords.

but if what it says in the internets is facts and proof then here you go.
the first link is from the same site as what u posted lol

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xp-vs-vista,1531-4.html

http://www.romow.com/computer-blog/its-official-windows-xp-is-faster-than-vista/

http://www.crn.com/software/207001890;jsessionid=C5YUZWV2CM1X2QSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN

http://news.cnet.com/Windows-XP-outshines-Vista-in-benchmarking-test/2100-1016_3-6220201.html

http://www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk/20071128181/windows-xp-faster-than-vista.html

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9048658/Windows_XP_SP3_boasts_speed_boost_testers_claim

Mattus · 27 Jul 2009 at 05:36

Amnesia said:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xp-vs-vista,1531-4.html

That's from the week when Vista was first released. They would have tested the RTM version of Vista with really immature drivers. Vista graphics drivers have improved a hell of a lot since then. Irrelevant.

http://www.crn.com/software/207001890;jsessionid=C5YUZWV2CM1X2QSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN

1GB of RAM for Vista? One thing I will give you is that if you have 1GB RAM, upgrading to Vista is a bad plan.

Anyway, all that says is that Vista took 20 seconds longer to start and used a bit more pagefile, on a rig with 1GB of RAM. Oh, and was 3% slower in a benchmark. Not exactly damning.

http://www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk/20071128181/windows-xp-faster-than-vista.html

That isn't relevant either - it compares Vista RTM to Vista SP1, and XP SP2 to XP SP3. It doesn't give any results comparing XP with Vista.

http://www.romow.com/computer-blog/its-official-windows-xp-is-faster-than-vista/
http://news.cnet.com/Windows-XP-outshines-Vista-in-benchmarking-test/2100-1016_3-6220201.html
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9048658/Windows_XP_SP3_boasts_speed_boost_testers_claim

This is interesting. All of these refer to the same survey, done by a company called Devil Mountain Software. The link above from Mobile Computer Mag is a survey done by 'exo.performance.network' - which, if you google it, is a project from Devil Mountain Software. I'll have to look into it a bit more, but the company doesn't seem to have done anything but bash Vista. Also, their claim is pretty extreme - they claim that XP is more than twice as fast as Vista. Curious.

Anyway, have a look at this. It shows that Vista SP1 and XP SP3 perform pretty much the same in games. In Supreme Commander, Vista is actually quicker.

kylew · 27 Jul 2009 at 07:50

Amnesia said:
sorry for quoting just 1 line but what you're showing there would be a 50% increase which is again a massive difference.

that same 50% difference would be 40fps on a first person shooter which is pretty much unplayable and 60fps which would be perfectly playable.

btw im not saying xp is 50% faster...was just wondering where this 3fps come from

Amnesia said:
hi

where do you get this 3fps from ?

is this game you're talking about running at 10fps which would be a massive 30%increase

maybe 30fps ? so its still a massive 10% increase

300 fps ??? 1% increase

i can see you like vista a lot and thats fine but i cant see it having more of a lifespan than xp.
one of the most annoying things i found with vista is what you pointed out....when i double click an icon i want all available resources running it.....not vista doing its own thing in the background.
i also hate the hard drive constantly being thrashed.....i also dont like my load times increased because the os wants to guess what im going to do....double clicking for me isnt very hard so i'll tell the os myself what i would like to load.

i know some of these services can be stopped but then where is the upgrade when all you're really doing is exchanging speed for stability.

whats with the uac or whatever its called... ? and whats with running apps as admin so often ?
tbh if you dont feel an app is safe then you shouldnt run it and it would have been better if the option was to run it in a safe mode rather than doing things the other way around .

I honestly think you don't quite understand how computers work especially because of the underlined comments.

OspreyO · 27 Jul 2009 at 08:42

Personally there nothing in Vista or W7 I need over XP other than access to more RAM. I've yet to find a feature I need. Yes the interface is nice but thats about it. I've had problems with Vista with access rights to files and random HD activity, and random pauses that I can't lock down. I've had it installed for well over a year so maybe thats not long enough. Issues I don't have on XP. I've just removed W7 on one machine and gone back to Vista. I haven't tried it since SP2, so maybe its improved. I have just put XP back on another machine, 2GB, Core2Duo 2Ghz, and the interface feels quicker. Maybe thats just subjective I dunno. We'll see how Vista SP2 is.

OLDPHART · 27 Jul 2009 at 09:01

Used XP Pro for years, was frightened to switch to Vista because of all the bad threads but built a new rig took the dive Vistax64, had no prob's with drivers and updates PC ran sweet as a nut still using first install Aug 08. For me Vista is far better than XP Pro who cares about a few frame's either way, have not tried Win 7 yet but pleased with what l hear next build Win 7.

jigger · 27 Jul 2009 at 11:52

Some of the interesting suff I have found.

http://www.romow.com/computer-blog/new-research-windows-xp-sp3-is-10-faster/

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xp-vs-vista,1531-3.html

http://www.tweakguides.com/

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1332&page=4

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3233&p=1

Greebo · 27 Jul 2009 at 12:02

IMO vista is fine for games so long as you have the memory.

The only reason a game runs slower in vista over xp is due to vista needing extra memory.

For example, you will need 6gb ram in vista to have the same framerates as xp with 4gb ram.

Even then, the framerate difference is small.

So if you have the ram, run Vista.

Amnesia · 27 Jul 2009 at 12:30

kylew said:
I honestly think you don't quite understand how computers work especially because of the underlined comments.

should i just laugh at you then ?

Amnesia · 27 Jul 2009 at 12:47

Mattus said:
That's from the week when Vista was first released. They would have tested the RTM version of Vista with really immature drivers. Vista graphics drivers have improved a hell of a lot since then. Irrelevant.

1GB of RAM for Vista? One thing I will give you is that if you have 1GB RAM, upgrading to Vista is a bad plan.

Anyway, all that says is that Vista took 20 seconds longer to start and used a bit more pagefile, on a rig with 1GB of RAM. Oh, and was 3% slower in a benchmark. Not exactly damning.

That isn't relevant either - it compares Vista RTM to Vista SP1, and XP SP2 to XP SP3. It doesn't give any results comparing XP with Vista.

This is interesting. All of these refer to the same survey, done by a company called Devil Mountain Software. The link above from Mobile Computer Mag is a survey done by 'exo.performance.network' - which, if you google it, is a project from Devil Mountain Software. I'll have to look into it a bit more, but the company doesn't seem to have done anything but bash Vista. Also, their claim is pretty extreme - they claim that XP is more than twice as fast as Vista. Curious.

you found them biased ? personally i never read any of them so cant comment

ok il post some more for you then.

http://www.pronetworks.org/index.php/content/post/windows-xp-sp3-faster-than-vista-sp1/

http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-intel-giveth-microsoft-taketh-away.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/04/vista_vs_xp_tests/

http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/601470/vista-vs-xp-performance-tested-and-vista-is-slower/page2.html

http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2007/11/27/vista-sp1-vs-xp-sp3-which-is-faster/

http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2007/11/vista-sp1-performance-dud.html

jigger · 27 Jul 2009 at 12:48

It seems quite clear that most people find Vista slower for gaming and XP looks to have better overall performance so I am leaning toward XP just as I did 18 months ago :eek:

However I will more than likely want to build a DX11 rig in the near future so my choice is jump on the fine ship Vista or wait and see if Windows 7 is any better.

Is it just me or do most test show Windows 7 to be slower that Vista :confused:

It looks like Xp could end up giving both a hard time.

arc@css · 27 Jul 2009 at 12:58

We are still not close to tapping in to 100% of what the Dx9 tech can offer.

jigger · 27 Jul 2009 at 13:10

Very true, DX10 promised the release the full potential of DX9.

Ever get the feeling you are being strung along ?

arc@css · 27 Jul 2009 at 13:14

Yes, I do

Though not as much now since coming on here, have learnt a few of the pitfalls thanks to everyone here who has helped a lot.

Mattus · 27 Jul 2009 at 14:01

Amnesia said:
you found them biased ? personally i never read any of them so cant comment

ok il post some more for you then.

http://www.pronetworks.org/index.php/content/post/windows-xp-sp3-faster-than-vista-sp1/

http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-intel-giveth-microsoft-taketh-away.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/04/vista_vs_xp_tests/

http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/601470/vista-vs-xp-performance-tested-and-vista-is-slower/page2.html

http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2007/11/27/vista-sp1-vs-xp-sp3-which-is-faster/

http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2007/11/vista-sp1-performance-dud.html

They all refer to the same tests as before, which you don't know because you didn't read them. What's the point discussing something you haven't read?

7 is amazingly streamlined. At idle, my CPU usage in 7 RC is a flat line at 0%, which I never saw in Vista. The Windows processes that use 150MB RAM in Vista seem to use 50 in 7. Bewilders me how anyone could choose XP over 7.