Vista & PC Games - Bad Combination?

[GamingDaemon]

I just installed Vista (RTM) on my PC, a fresh install, not an upgrade.

Then I installed a couple of games, Oblivion and Company of Heroes.

Ooops! Oblivion flickered like crazy, and only worked when i chose the Window option over the Fullscreen mode.

Company of Heroes turned the screen blank forcing me to reboot. I could never get this to work.

I just finished do a fresh install of Windows XP on the same PC.

I have an nVidia 7900 GT/GTO w/ 256MB of memory, a 4700+ dual-core AMD 64 proc, 2GB of memory, 2 fast SATA II hard drives and an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium mobo.

I downloaded the latest nVidia beta driver for Vista.

What am I doing wrong?

 

[stash]

The driver situation is not ideal at the moment, expect that to change by Jan. 30.

 

[GamingDaemon]

Ok. Do I need to upgrade to a 8800 nVidia card?

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: GamingDaemon
Ok. Do I need to upgrade to a 8800 nVidia card?

If you want DX10, yes. You don't need an 8800 to run Vista though.

For now there is little need so I would suggest sticking with the 7900. The OS hasn't reached store shelves yet so nVidia's drivers aren't done cooking. I've been watching them improve over the last few builds so the shelf date at the end of January should look good.

 

[JasonCoder]

Originally posted by: GamingDaemon
Ok. Do I need to upgrade to a 8800 nVidia card?

You've been reading the Vista section of NVidia's site haven't you? Seriously tho, I think some of the newer cards are having more problems in Vista then the more mature 7000 and 6000 lines. So you'd actually probably be more screwed with a newer card. And AFAIK SLI isn't yet happnin in Vista although that may have changed.

 

[JEDIYoda]

I am a avid gamer and I will tell you what is being said about Vista and gaming....

No serious gamer is going to switch to vista at least for a few years.

XP will run games better than vista and all this BS about DX10.......everytime they have come out with a new DX it has always been backwards compatable. There is noway the gaming world is going to cut off the heats just so people will go out and get vista...lolol...

 

[Markbnj]

My experiences so far with RTM, clean install, dual-booted with my XP Pro installation:

Battlefield 2 - heavy-duty flickering and geometry artifacts all over the place. I tried two different drivers - the ones that shipped with RTM and the ones from nVidia's site - with no differences.

Bottom-line: unplayable.

Call of Duty 2 - installed and ran fine in all modes up to 1650 x 1080. Seems to perform best at 1280 x 1024. No problems.

Bottom-line: playable.

Rig: X2 4400+, 2 gigs, 7600GT.

 

[SickNic]

In order for your graphics card to work with vista, you need to download special beta drivers that nvidia has availible on their site. Check it out:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/technology_vista_home.html

I dunno if that will fix your problem with the games, but it will definitely help when runing vista.

 

[meson2000]

problems with games in Vista is not Vista's fault. Its the drivers for your graphics card. Nvidia and ATI still have work to do. Things will get better in the next couple months before Vista ships. By the summer, all this will be behind us and you won't be hearing too many complaints. When XP came out, everyone said the same thing. If you are a gamer, stick with Win98, XP is just going to slow things down. That all changed when the drivers got cought up. How many of you are still gaming on Win98 now?

 

[Markbnj]

Update: I went to run CoD2 in Vista tonight and the intro movies locked up on me. Vista recovered safely both times, and CoD2 offered to run itself in safe mode. I finally accepted that and the game switched itself to DirectX7 compatibility mode, and that worked, but the graphics weren't what they should be, obviously. Looks like gaming on Vista, at least for those with nVidia cards, isn't quite there yet.

 

[aka1nas]

My X1900XT has been working pretty well in vista 64. With the latest Beta Catalyst driver, I've been able to run the following games fine:

Heroes of Might and Magic 5
Darkstar One
CS: Source
NWN2
Mechwarrior 4: Mercs
X3: Reunion

Performance is now close enough to XP that I can't notice a difference just by looking at a FRAPs counter while playing.

Games that I have had problems with:

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.(assertion error when trying to play game)
KOTOR: Won't start

 

[Arkaign]

If you consider gaming to be important, stick with XP for now.

If you want to jump into Vista, but keep gaming, throw it on a different drive, and use your bios hard drive boot order to boot into it when you want to mess with it. By keeping it on a seperate drive, any mistakes or problems you may run into won't affect your existing stable XP install.

 

[GamingDaemon]

Originally posted by: JasonCoder

Originally posted by: GamingDaemon
Ok. Do I need to upgrade to a 8800 nVidia card?

You've been reading the Vista section of NVidia's site haven't you? Seriously tho, I think some of the newer cards are having more problems in Vista then the more mature 7000 and 6000 lines. So you'd actually probably be more screwed with a newer card. And AFAIK SLI isn't yet happnin in Vista although that may have changed.

Yes

I installed the Vista RTM on my wife's machine, she has a 7600 GT, and the games worked flawlessly. They actually looked better in Vista than they did in XP. So I think you are right about the 7000 lines.

As for Vista and gaming, I work with Microsoft a lot in the Business world as a custom business software developer. I have seen a number of initiatives come and go. I have seen what they can do when they decide to invest in a technology and put their weight behind it. I have never seen them put so much weight and capital bhehind re-capturing and re-invigorating the PC Gaming scene. I could not disagree more with the poster that said we will still be playing games on XP. They have established a list of requirements, for example, that game publishers must abide by to gain the "Games for Windows" label. With that label, they get to put their games in the "Games for Windows" kiosks which Microsoft has bought in every major gaming store in the country. They are serious about this. Then, there is XNA and DX10, both making developing games even easier. Makes me consider becoming a game developer isntead

Seriously, they are really committed to making PC Games win over console games. That's what I'm hearing from the inside. And as an avid PC Gamer, that's great news.

Also, I found later drivers for nVidia than what nVidia is posting here: latest nVidia driver