Vista and Game performance

Spitfir3 · 6 Mar 2007 at 15:13

Hi all,

I rather fed up of playing games on vista now... crappy drivers massive drops in fps etc.

So I was wondering, will performance in games be similar to XP when nvidia, creative etc release stable, good, compatible drivers?

OR even if they do, will I need atleast 2 gig of ram for some smooth running?

I've got 1 gig atm and im really considering moving up to 2gb... but would it be worth it especially with an aging AGP, 939 mobo?

Thanks

modo77 · 6 Mar 2007 at 15:34

2 gig would help, and the latest drivers are much of an improvment (for me anyway). My 3dmark scores are the same as XP, and games like BF2 are at the same FPS. Nvidia also say in the driver notes that they've only worked on fixes this update, they optimize it later) However the drivers seem to be a little buggy still, it crashes the driver a now and then (which would BSOD on XP), Vista just flashes a message up saying its recovered from a crash. And BF2 crashes when it starts the next map. They have fixed more a lot of issues though.

And creative are bringing out drivers this week, finally!

So all in all things are on the right track. Get that extra gig.

something daft already!! · 6 Mar 2007 at 16:00

I have no issues with Nvidia drivers on my 7800gs no display glitches both monitors work well and performance is no different from my xp. Supream Commander works really well using dual monitors but NFS carbon is rubbish! Most of my game seem to work a little better than in xp, for example, I could not use my mouse in Far Cry with xp, but can in Vista. I could not always connect with on-line games of generals in XP, alls fine in Vista. I have tried a number of drivers from Nvidia and am currently running 101.46, then newish beta which seems fine, if slightly better performance.

I used to get loads of glitches with Vista until I removed a dodgy memory module

NachT · 6 Mar 2007 at 16:01

I don't know what kind of games your actually playing.

But for me on Vista 64bit, I have a GeForce 7800. And with all the settings maxed out on WoW with AA on full, I get the max FPS my monitor can handle constantly.

60 FPS :cool:

Can go a lot higher if I force it, but it rips like bog roll.

Lanz · 6 Mar 2007 at 16:07

Id' say on average Vista uses about 300-400MB more memory than XP with a fresh install, so games on XP that used about 900MB of your 1GB, will now require about 1.3GB to run smooth.

So for example, BF2 using medium textures on XP maxed out at about 1.3GB, so having 1.5GB of memory worked fine, now with Vista, using the same settings, you'll need 2GB for sure to avoid any paging to disk.

Once drivers are mature, then framerates will probably be equal, but you will need more memory - that's one thing that wont improve over time.

Spitfir3 · 6 Mar 2007 at 16:18

mm odd, in WoW: TBC I get terrible FPS... 3 fps in outlands - okay its maxed out but in XP my 6800 could easily manage 40 fps (min)... tho if I turn all settings down to lowest it manages 40-50 fps outsides in Outlands.

BF2 seems okay - praps a lil lower - just installed HL2 ep:1 and its pretty bad - the sounds all skippy etc.

LLBDTiberio · 6 Mar 2007 at 16:52

I honestly haven't seen any drop in FPS in any game, I think most people are just too fuzzy about these sorts of things.
If a game runs with 60+ FPS be happy, technically thats as good as it gets, does 100+ fps really make that big of a difference to your eyes, nope :rolleyes:

zytok · 6 Mar 2007 at 16:56

Lanz said:
Id' say on average Vista uses about 300-400MB more memory than XP with a fresh install, so games on XP that used about 900MB of your 1GB, will now require about 1.3GB to run smooth.

So for example, BF2 using medium textures on XP maxed out at about 1.3GB, so having 1.5GB of memory worked fine, now with Vista, using the same settings, you'll need 2GB for sure to avoid any paging to disk.

Once drivers are mature, then framerates will probably be equal, but you will need more memory - that's one thing that wont improve over time.

You sure about that?

Thought that Vista appears to use more memory as it caches everything so if you look at your task manager when idle, it will appear to be using more RAM but as games kick in, Vista drops stuff like Aero to free up more RAM to dedicate to the highest priority task......

NachT · 6 Mar 2007 at 17:09

zytok said:
You sure about that?

Thought that Vista appears to use more memory as it caches everything so if you look at your task manager when idle, it will appear to be using more RAM but as games kick in, Vista drops stuff like Aero to free up more RAM to dedicate to the highest priority task......

Yeah, there's a new thing built into vista ( damn.. forgot what it's called ) But when your at your computer and using apps / games vista will make them as fast as it can. Somthing about RAM allocation.