The move towards Vista...

[arover]

Well, I'm building my new pc next week, and with a Q6600, 8800GTS, and 2 gigs of ram, I figure I might as well give Vista a try. But this is my question: Through the months, have the performance of the drivers, specifically those by Nvidia, increased all that much? From the articles I read dating back to jan/feb of this year, things weren't looking all that great with playing various games in Vista compared to XP. I ask this because I really wish to stick to one OS if I'm going to use Vista, but if need be I'll do a dual boot with xp. What do you guys think?

 

[Noema]

Gaming in Vista has improved dramatically since January. Performance differences in my rig between Vista 64 and XP are pretty much non-existent at this point. Also stability has been excellent for me with my 8800GTS. Not a single crash in almost 3 weeks (since I installed Vista).

Heck CoH is even playable at DX10 with the newest drivers (I get a steady 40fps) and the game looks amazing.

I say go for it and use Vista as your main OS.

 

[arover]

Is there much of a difference between 64 and 32 with 2gb of RAM?

 

[Noema]

You mean in performance? Probably not at all...with maybe 64-bit like 1-2% slower due to the longer 64-bit binaries, and a tad faster in most 64-bit apps, and perhaps noticeably faster in some 64-bit apps like video encoding (though that I haven't had first hand experience with).

At any rate, the move to 64-bit is, for the most part, not motivated by performance but, rather, by the fact that 64-bit allows you to use more than 4GB of RAM with PAE enabled and more than 2GB of total virtual memory allocation per process.

Since I have 4GB of RAM I need to use a 64-bit version of Windows, because 32-bit versions will only see about 3.2ish GB depending on your hardware config. If you are planning on adding 2GB later down the road, I suggest you get the 64-bit version to avoid reinstalling later. Just make sure all your hardware is supported.

 

[n7]

Performance in Vista vs. XP isn't that much different.

I'd suggest Vista 64, as mentioned by Noema.

The newer nV drivers seem to have fixed some of the troubles the 8800s have been having in Vista, so i'm relatively happy with nV's driver presently, which is kinda shocking...

 

[chizow]

I made the switch to Vista about 1 1/2 months ago and have been very pleased, although there are still some pitfalls. Not so much on the video side, but more on the sound front. Sound support in Vista is an absolute mess.

But the others covered it very well. There's probably a few inconsistencies between XP and Vista with a few titles, but overall the performance gap has closed significantly for newer games. There's still a lot of complaints about Vista/8800s and older titles, but that's to be expected if gaming devs are no longer supporting their titles.

Also, if you're running Vista 64 you should seriously consider going for 4GB from the start. No there isn't much performance difference running 2GB in Vista 32 or 64, but there is a rather large benefit of running 4GB in Vista 64 with most new games. AT recently did an article about the "2GB Wall" featuring Supreme Commander and I've also seen a drastic difference running 2GB vs. 4GB in LOTRO.

 

[Acanthus]

Azalia sound works fantastic in vista, most of the sound issues are related to creative.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

cs:s has been working fine with me (so i assume steam games would be fine too)

 

[aka1nas]

Most games made in the last 2 years or so are working fine now in Vista 64. Some of the older stuff has been hit or miss. Frankly, I really don't replay old games all that much, and the really old stuff (console games and stuff that can still be played without 3d hardware acceleration) usually runs fine emulated or in a VM.

 

[Ackmed]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
Most games made in the last 2 years or so are working fine now in Vista 64. Some of the older stuff has been hit or miss. Frankly, I really don't replay old games all that much, and the really old stuff (console games and stuff that can still be played without 3d hardware acceleration) usually runs fine emulated or in a VM.

Heh, my favorite game of all time, Tribes, works in Vista. And it came out when DX6 was the latest!

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
Azalia sound works fantastic in vista, most of the sound issues are related to creative.

Well I ended up going with the path of least resistance and pulled my X-Fi. The onboard Realtek HD works fine, it just doesn't sound anywhere as good as the dumbed down X-Fi in Vista (when it worked) which was also a far cry from the X-Fi with EAX5 in XP. Point is that you can get generic Vista sound working (because that's all thats left thanks to MS dumping DirectSound support in Vista), but its not going to sound as good as previous sound implementations under XP.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: Acanthus
Azalia sound works fantastic in vista, most of the sound issues are related to creative.

Well I ended up going with the path of least resistance and pulled my X-Fi. The onboard Realtek HD works fine, it just doesn't sound anywhere as good as the dumbed down X-Fi in Vista (when it worked) which was also a far cry from the X-Fi with EAX5 in XP. Point is that you can get generic Vista sound working (because that's all thats left thanks to MS dumping DirectSound support in Vista), but its not going to sound as good as previous sound implementations under XP.

Im thinking OpenAL is the best way to go in the long run... However for now it sucks, especially for users with exsisting hardware that supports directsound.

 

[VERTIGGO]

Can't use an X-Fi. Subwoofer still doesn't work in Vista. Creative is so behind it's not even funny.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
Im thinking OpenAL is the best way to go in the long run... However for now it sucks, especially for users with exsisting hardware that supports directsound.

Possibly, hard to say until the next generation of hardware. Currently however, it seems there's major hardware/driver conflicts with moving sound resources to user-space rather than kernel-space. I think most of the blame still lies with MS/Vista, but there's also clearly some problems with how Nvidia chipsets allocate resources/interrupts on the PCI bus. Creative is also at fault for allowing their cards to evolve into resource hogs that leave yeti-sized virtual footprints. I doubt sound will ever be as good in Vista as in XP, but I'd love to at least have similar quality without the hardware/software compatibility issues I've dealt with.

Originally posted by: VERTIGGO
Can't use an X-Fi. Subwoofer still doesn't work in Vista. Creative is so behind it's not even funny.

Ya thats currently one of my biggest complaints with Creative drivers and Vista atm. So much functionality was taken away and yet to be replaced. Its so damn frustrating essential features like Bass Redirect, channel mixing, and channel mapping still haven't been re-implemented in Vista.

 

[videopho]

I somewhat second Chizow on the Creative Lab's crappy X-Fi driver issue.
The driver does work (well most of the time, anyway).
When it stops working it will let you know with annoying static hiss noise coming out of the speakers.
A temp fix is to go to device mgr, just disable the driver and re-enable it and you're good until who knows when.
Besides that issue, my LT MX Rev mouse is another.
In Steam games, the mouse is not even functional.
The temp fix for that is I use my spare MS (wired) mouse.

Otherwise, I'm a pretty happy Vista 64 user, myself.

 

[Canterwood]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: Acanthus
Azalia sound works fantastic in vista, most of the sound issues are related to creative.

Well I ended up going with the path of least resistance and pulled my X-Fi. The onboard Realtek HD works fine, it just doesn't sound anywhere as good as the dumbed down X-Fi in Vista (when it worked) which was also a far cry from the X-Fi with EAX5 in XP. Point is that you can get generic Vista sound working (because that's all thats left thanks to MS dumping DirectSound support in Vista), but its not going to sound as good as previous sound implementations under XP.

You see this is what I can't understand. People accepting second best on their Vista rigs.
If it works perfectly well in XP, why change and have to use onboard sound?

I have a copy of Vista which I installed on a test box, and it drove me nuts.
Support and drivers just aren't ready for prime time, and until they are I'm keeping XP on my main rig.
Everything works and works well, and I won't accept having to put up with crappy sound or graphics.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Canterwood

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: Acanthus
Azalia sound works fantastic in vista, most of the sound issues are related to creative.

Well I ended up going with the path of least resistance and pulled my X-Fi. The onboard Realtek HD works fine, it just doesn't sound anywhere as good as the dumbed down X-Fi in Vista (when it worked) which was also a far cry from the X-Fi with EAX5 in XP. Point is that you can get generic Vista sound working (because that's all thats left thanks to MS dumping DirectSound support in Vista), but its not going to sound as good as previous sound implementations under XP.

You see this is what I can't understand. People accepting second best on their Vista rigs.
If it works perfectly well in XP, why change and have to use onboard sound?

I have a copy of Vista which I installed on a test box, and it drove me nuts.
Support and drivers just aren't ready for prime time, and until they are I'm keeping XP on my main rig.
Everything works and works well, and I won't accept having to put up with crappy sound or graphics.

Well, its certainly not a situation I'm "satisfied" with, but frankly, I see a much bigger benefit running 4GB on an x64 OS with tinny generic sound than 2GB on a x86 OS with EAX5. In XP, many games (Titan Quest, Dark Messiah, Supreme Commander, CoH) were already pegging commit charge close to the 2GB wall and overall system performance was bogging down. LOTRO would actually constantly crash in certain zones/transitions as the client ran out of user-space. If I could run 4GB in XP, then sure I woulda gone that route....but XP 64 is supposed to be even worst in terms of support and compatibility.

I haven't had any problems on the video driver side (I moved to Vista after the major bugs were worked out) and overall I really like the look and features of Vista. I would say that running 2GB on either Vista 32 or 64 is definitely not worth it, as you'll see little if any improvement in overall performance (worst probably) and also lose DirectSound functionality in the process.

 

[Canterwood]

Originally posted by: chizow
If I could run 4GB in XP, then sure I woulda gone that route....but XP 64 is supposed to be even worst in terms of support and compatibility.

I'm currently using XP x64 Pro with 4GB DDR2.

Whilst indeed support was an issue for a while, most major vendors got their act together in the end.
For me at least, all my hardware is supported and fully functional, including my X-Fi gamer card.

The recent Service Pack 2 for x64 has helped get rid of a load of bugs as well.

The switch to Vista is inevitable, but for me at least, I'd rather wait until:

1) All the usual early adoption bugs and driver problems get sorted.
2) There's a compelling reason for me to upgrade. (DX10 games and me eventually getting a new DX10 card)

Its sad to keep hearing all you guys not being able to get the most from your expensive hardware because either MS, Nvidia, Creative or whoever haven't got it right yet.

 

[Ackmed]

Originally posted by: VERTIGGO
Can't use an X-Fi. Subwoofer still doesn't work in Vista. Creative is so behind it's not even funny.

My sub works fine with my 3 year old Z-5500's.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Canterwood

Originally posted by: chizow
If I could run 4GB in XP, then sure I woulda gone that route....but XP 64 is supposed to be even worst in terms of support and compatibility.

I'm currently using XP x64 Pro with 4GB DDR2.

Whilst indeed support was an issue for a while, most major vendors got their act together in the end.
For me at least, all my hardware is supported and fully functional, including my X-Fi gamer card.

The recent Service Pack 2 for x64 has helped get rid of a load of bugs as well.

The switch to Vista is inevitable, but for me at least, I'd rather wait until:

1) All the usual early adoption bugs and driver problems get sorted.
2) There's a compelling reason for me to upgrade. (DX10 games and me eventually getting a new DX10 card)

Its sad to keep hearing all you guys not being able to get the most from your expensive hardware because either MS, Nvidia, Creative or whoever haven't got it right yet.

Bleh, when I bought Vista Ultimate back in April (got it cheap in the CUSA closings), there still seemed to be a lot of problems with XP 64. Many indicators pointed to XP 64 support being abandoned, so spending on an XP 64 upgrade at the time didn't make much sense. In any case, I don't think its completely Vista at fault. Sure the loss of DirectSound and bare bones drivers for the X-Fi hurt overall sound quality, but I'm confident the problems I've been having with the X-Fi are related to my board and 650i chipset more than anything else. There's a better chance of running my X-Fi with a different board in Vista than with my current board under XP/XP64. Hopefully the problems are resolved with future BIOS updates, but at this point I'm ready to move on.

 

[evolucion8]

In the ATi case, Vista still a bit slower and sluggish compared to XP in the gaming arena, I lost 700 points in 3DMark05 just for being in Vista, it's too touchy in the driver department and it's memory management it's mediocre, even with 2GB of RAM. There's a Creative X-Fi Vista installation CD Application hoving around the net and it really works, I was able to use all the options found on the original Creative X-Fi WinXP installation CD. And the Creative ALchemy works allright. But I just went back to XP, it's just faster and more resistant to failures, Vista needs a Service Pack urgently.

 

[apoppin]

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...062057&highlight_key=y

Post number 5

Vista benched against XP with both the 2900xt and the 8800GTS
[last month's early drivers]

Vista is awesome for gaming.
-and Creative isn't "creative"

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: apoppin
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...062057&highlight_key=y

Post number 5

Vista benched against XP with both the 2900xt and the 8800GTS
[last month's early drivers]

Vista is awesome for gaming.
-and Creative isn't "creative"

It is kind of ironic that a sound card company named "creative" stifles competition and makes proprietary APIs.

Everyone blames MS for dropping directsound, i think MS stomped out a demon by going to OpenAL. Big shocker, the companies that have been innovating have made the switch, and Creative can barely get sound through the friggin speakers.

 

[Dravic]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: Canterwood

Originally posted by: chizow
If I could run 4GB in XP, then sure I woulda gone that route....but XP 64 is supposed to be even worst in terms of support and compatibility.

I'm currently using XP x64 Pro with 4GB DDR2.

Whilst indeed support was an issue for a while, most major vendors got their act together in the end.
For me at least, all my hardware is supported and fully functional, including my X-Fi gamer card.

The recent Service Pack 2 for x64 has helped get rid of a load of bugs as well.

The switch to Vista is inevitable, but for me at least, I'd rather wait until:

1) All the usual early adoption bugs and driver problems get sorted.
2) There's a compelling reason for me to upgrade. (DX10 games and me eventually getting a new DX10 card)

Its sad to keep hearing all you guys not being able to get the most from your expensive hardware because either MS, Nvidia, Creative or whoever haven't got it right yet.

Bleh, when I bought Vista Ultimate back in April (got it cheap in the CUSA closings), there still seemed to be a lot of problems with XP 64. Many indicators pointed to XP 64 support being abandoned, so spending on an XP 64 upgrade at the time didn't make much sense. In any case, I don't think its completely Vista at fault. Sure the loss of DirectSound and bare bones drivers for the X-Fi hurt overall sound quality, but I'm confident the problems I've been having with the X-Fi are related to my board and 650i chipset more than anything else. There's a better chance of running my X-Fi with a different board in Vista than with my current board under XP/XP64. Hopefully the problems are resolved with future BIOS updates, but at this point I'm ready to move on.

The nice thing about xp 64bit is that its not based on the same code tree as XP, but instead is based on the Server 2003 code. When server 2003 got sp1 recently so did xp 64 bit. As far as gaming is concerned and needing 4gb or ram and more then 2gp per app, xp 64 bit has that now, and is better then vista for hardware sound. My x-fi works like it should.

But MS will never push xp 64 as a alternative as they want everyone to move to vista ( I got it at the 04 or 05 amd tech tour when i brought both a server and desktop bundle, but didnt install it till 06 after drivers caught up). I dont think you will see xp 64bit support disappear as fast as xp support since its based on the later server 2003 code base, which will keep getting updates.


of course you will be stuck with directx 9c, but you'll have better hardware accellerated sound. I just dont see vista in my future anytime soon since i'm on xp 64.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
It is kind of ironic that a sound card company named "creative" stifles competition and makes proprietary APIs.

Everyone blames MS for dropping directsound, i think MS stomped out a demon by going to OpenAL. Big shocker, the companies that have been innovating have made the switch, and Creative can barely get sound through the friggin speakers.

I have to disagree here. EAX and its variants isn't a proprietary API, its proprietary within DirectSound which is available to everyone. No one else has cared enough about PC sound to develop their own proprietary environmental audio, so how is Creative to blame? Creative has been pioneering PC sound since the 8088 when the only other alternative was beeps and buzzes from an internal speaker.

Even if Creative were to give out free license to EAX and its variants, most sound solutions wouldn't even be able to use it (afaik, Creative has licensed out EAX to some sound providers). That's where Creative is at fault and running into problems. They designed hardware around their proprietary tech and that hardware leaves a larger footprint that can create conflicts with other hardware. They probably expected other industry players to bend over backwards (Nvidia, MS) to make their products work and that's simply not how things are playing out.

MS is still to blame for dropping DirectSound though, and its definitely not for altruistic reasons as you suggest. They wanted DirectSound out of kernel-space to improve overall stability and reduce support on their end. As a result, PC sound is about where it was 6-7 years ago. Creative was actually the first company to support OpenAL in Vista with the X-Fi and they continue to lead on the development front. If you don't believe me, go to OpenAL's site, click on downloads. Where does it re-direct you?

And thanks for the heads-up on that DVD Evolucion8, I'll have to search around for it.