How's Vista Gaming Performance Nowadays?

[code255]

I noticed that Nvidia released some new (non-beta!) ForceWare drivers (version 97.46) for their older GPUs for Windows Vista two days ago (5th of Jan 2007).

Several months ago there were some reports which showed that, in general, gaming performance was lacking a bit on Vista. Often framerates were around 10-15% lower on Vista than on XP. But that was with Release Candidate versions of Vista, and beta versions of ATI and Nvidia drivers (this probably had a more serious impact).

What's the situation NOW? How does gaming performance on Windows Vista (final version with latest GPU drivers) compare to Windows XP? Now that Vista software and drivers aren't in beta stage anymore, do games perform as good on Vista as on XP? Do they even perform better than on XP now (*gasp*!), or will we probably have to wait for DX10 to mature to see any benefits?

Are there some reports on how the new Nvidia Vista drivers perform out already, or will we have to wait for lots of Vista reports and benchmarks to get published on the day Vista launches to the public?

 

[insomnio]

I've been playing Counter Strike: Source and Day of Defeat: Source for a while with max settings. I've been getting 70+ fps

specs: Athlon 64 4600+ x2, ATI X1900 GT, 2GB 800Mhz Ram

edit: I'm on Vista 64 bit

 

[Quinton McLeod]

With a X1900 GT, your frame rates should be well above 70. Maybe in the 120 fps mark. If you are getting around 70 fps, it means it's running awfully slow.

 

[insomnio]

Thats just the lowest I've seen it drop to. Usually its in the 90-110 fps range. Using 1024x768, AA@6x and Anisotropic@16x

 

[code255]

While it's nice that you guys are getting good framerates in Vista, it's how they compare to what you'd be getting in Windows XP that's being questioned in this thread.

Have a look at: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2850&p=3

That short preview article showed that framerates in Vista were quite crap compared to what they are in XP. But how do things look now with the RTM version of Vista, and the latest graphics drivers, now? Does anyone have some objective XP vs Vista comparisons which are recent?

 

[insomnio]

I'm on Vista RTM, framerates are the same in the two games I'm playing. Dont have any other games to really compare it to. I was expecting to have all kinds of problems, but at least for what I'm doing, fps are just as good as on XP.

Although, recently I've been playing around with ReadyBoost and while load times are a lot faster, fps seems to have gone down. I'm playing around with stuff to make sure its not just something else making my fps go down.


edit:spelling

 

[insomnio]

Well ReadyBoost doesnt seem to be the culprit, in fact it sped up load times quite a bit. In the Counter Strike:source video stress test I got 146 fps. In game, on dust2 and office, i averaged out at ~110 fps. Range was around 90-150. Day of defeat seems to give me problems with fps. Each map tends to give me a different range on fps. For instance, snowbridge gives me about 90-110, avalanche gives 50-70.

As far as CS:S goes, performance is just as good for me on Vista if not a lil bit better.

I'll try to run 3dMark and see what score I get.

 

[code255]

Originally posted by: insomnio
I'll try to run 3dMark and see what score I get.

Would be great if you still have your 3DMark score from XP somewhere.