Vista: Service Pack One

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

No complaints about Vista as an OS, though you do have a perf hit for games, but otherwise I've found it to be a lovely environment...

[Meshugger]

They did a gaming test in a Swedish online magazine recently (www.idg.se) where they compared the same games (and apps) on Vista SP1 to XP. Vista still lost horribly in most tests. I'm not switching yet.

 

Source (in Swedish though): http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.149702

 

Thanks, no upgrade for me until the performance on games is at par with XP. Maybe by late 2009/early 2010 perhaps.

[samm]

Another interesting note is that my Vista score actually went up after installing SP1 - although the main score on my laptop did not increase due to the CPU bottleneck, but I can always upgrade that later.

So an OS-internal test claims the updated OS just got faster, and you believe it?

[Deadly_Nightshade]

So an OS-internal test claims the updated OS just got faster, and you believe it?

 

No, but the system does seem to be running better after the installation - and it seems, so far, that only Steam apps. are affected by the decreased frame-rate. Maybe Valve will patch the engine.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Gamespot (if you still have any faith in them) have a look at Vista SP1, measured against old Vista and XP SP2 here. The conclusion is:

Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 is a step in the right direction. Gaming performance increased in comparison to a fresh installation of Windows Vista. Windows XP SP2 provides better overall performance, and remains the place to go for dual-GPU solutions. Windows Vista is not quite the ideal gaming platform yet, but the new OS is getting close to dethroning Windows XP.

[samm]

bit-tech also reviewed vista sp 1 gaming performance and "core" performance. They came to very mixed conclusions: Some apps ran better/faster/smoother, while others were slower, some didn't start anymore, and some showed no change...

[Deadly_Nightshade]

I did not see where the part where applications did not start at all, although I might have missed that part while skimming through the graphs. On another note, I've found that SP1 is ok, and the main bug I was having with a NWN mod was my own bad coding and not Vista.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Well, I might roll back to the original Vista just to see if an error in NWN happens with the vanilla edition. So far I have been able to fix it by rolling back my display drivers, so I do not know if the game simply does not like the newer forceware or if SP1 has bugged the game (I installed it after I had already updated to SP1).

 

Edit: If anyone else uses Vista and plays NWN, could you write about any error you might have had. The same request is true of sp1 users.

 

Edit #2:

Here is the exact error:

The game starts freezing - music will play, but everything else hangs for about 20 seconds before crashing. When I exit the game a little warning triangle pops up in my taskbar - "Video Driver Error - nvlddmkm has stopped responding and has recovered."

Edited April 2, 2008 by Deadly_Nightshade

[taks]

hard to say whether the driver is the cause of the error (i.e. it's just plain broken) or an effect from an incompatibility between the driver and SP1. i'd guess the latter, but that's just a guess.

 

taks

[Morgoth]

Good that I recently sold all my old games (all 50 of them!) over Ebay so that I don't have to deal with any issues on my new rig anymore.

[aries101]

They did a gaming test in a Swedish online magazine recently (www.idg.se) where they compared the same games (and apps) on Vista SP1 to XP. Vista still lost horribly in most tests. I'm not switching yet.

 

Source (in Swedish though): http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.149702

 

Thanks, no upgrade for me until the performance on games is at par with XP. Maybe by late 2009/early 2010 perhaps.

 

Yes, and then Microsoft actually plan to release their next OS called Vienna as a working title. I just hope my computer from August 2003 old computer will hold on till at least the middle of 2010 or so.

 

As for Vista I have seen both that list in Swedish and some sort of test that Tom's hardware did. And Vista still lost many of the battles to XP. Then again, you really need to compare Vista SP1 to XPSP1. And then I think Vista is far more superior than Vista. It really is unfair to compare a 6-7 year old well supported and updated XP OS to a 1 year old Vista SP1 OS.

[mkreku]

It really is unfair to compare a 6-7 year old well supported and updated XP OS to a 1 year old Vista SP1 OS.

It would be unfair if it was some sort of competition. But it's not. It's real life results we're talking about and right now XP is (still) the choice for gamers, no matter how good Vista will eventually (potentially) be.

[taks]

that's true.

 

for the same reason, government pooters are not typically updated with the "latest" OS until it is proven reliable, often near the end of its support life-cycle. now they're trying to switch many systems over to linux (particularly embedded apps, not so much desktops), which will be an interesting nightmare... the kernel changes what, every 6 weeks or so? and there's no set framework for changes/additions. sometimes the danged things simply aren't compatible from one release to the next.

 

taks

[SteveThaiBinh]

I'm upgrading to Windows Vista in the next hour(s?).

 

If you never hear from me again, it's because Vista killed my computer. Or me. Or both. :ninja10:

[Blank]

It was nice knowing you, Steve.

[SteveThaiBinh]

It lives.... it lives!!!!

[taks]

no maiming or gimping around even?

 

i personally do not have any issues with vista other than a few quirks that make things more difficult to do. i'm not running games on my laptop (where vista is installed), however, so i have not seen the real impact of a slower OS, either. of course, word 2007 takes some serious getting used to. i have mostly gotten used to it, and i'm beginning to like it after writing over 100 pages on it.

 

taks

[SteveThaiBinh]

No real problems so far, though I've still to test it in any heavyweight games. A couple of minor annoyances, but that's to be expected.

[Bokishi]

Vista will always be faster for me now, since XP can only use 2 videocards

[Deraldin]

Vista will always be faster for me now, since XP can only use 2 videocards

 

Do you have some compulsion to constantly remind us of your tech superiority? :sad:

[Bokishi]

No i'm just sick of hearing people say that XP is faster for games. Vista is truly the fastest for games if you have the hardware. XP just doesn't have the capability to take advantage of more than two videocards, while Vista is coded so it can sli 3 or 4 cards

[angshuman]

No i'm just sick of hearing people say that XP is faster for games. Vista is truly the fastest for games if you have the hardware. XP just doesn't have the capability to take advantage of more than two videocards, while Vista is coded so it can sli 3 or 4 cards

So you're saying that Vista is faster for those that wish to invest $1800 on video cards alone (3x 9800GX2s... because if you're looking at 3-way SLI you're probably not looking at something like 3x 8800s since 2x 9800GX2 would be faster, cheaper, and less cumbersome).

[Bokishi]

2x 9800GX2 Quad SLI is vista only, and is a toss up about which is faster (vs 3x 8800) cuz it has more shader power but less memory

[angshuman]

2x 9800GX2 Quad SLI is vista only, and is a toss up about which is faster (vs 3x 8800) cuz it has more shader power but less memory

Fair enough. It still seems you need to be in the $1000-investment ballpark to gain anything out of Vista, which is more than what 95% (completely unscientific guesstimate) of gamers would be willing to pay. For that 95% -- a lot of which are fairly serious gamers with, say, 8800GT-class setups -- XP is faster than Vista.

 

I can't argue against the theoretical validity of your original comment, but theoretical maxima are moot when you're trying to sell a volume product such as Vista. All said and done, it's a bad, bloated product which probably started off with a decent set of design goals but ended up as a complete mess due to some terrible design decisions accompanied by craptacular drivers from Nvidia, Creative et al.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Vista seems to be working out fine. NWN2 doesn't run noticeably faster or slower, but a rather annoying bug I got with the latest patch that caused the system to hang appears to have disappeared (touch wood) or at least be much less frequent in Vista.