Vista vs XP gaming benchmarks

[MikeyLSU]

I'm dualbooting and am benchmarking both OS against each other to see exactly the performance changes I see for each OS.

I'm running a e4300 @2.2
2GB RAM
ATI x1950 pro

I plan on running C&C 3 tomorrow.
these are stress tests by the game. XP is listed first and I'm posting ave FPS. With all settings on high.

HL2 XP - 63 Vista - 49
Lost Coast XP - 58.6 Vista - 50.13
Company of Heroes XP - 75 Vista - 65.7

So for these games there is a 27%, 17%, and 14% decrease in performance in Vista. Still not good enough for gaming. I keep hoping it will get closer but this test brought me back to reality. I also have all current drivers.

 

[fierydemise]

That seems really strange, although I'm not dual booting so I can't test I haven't found Vista any slower then XP. Thats not say I doubt your results, I'm just surprised.

 

[mechBgon]

Athlon64 X2 3800+ @ stock
nVidia 6600 "vanilla" 256MB PCI-Express video card (relatively slow clocks, it's passively cooled)
2GB RAM

Half Life 2: Lost Coast video stress test, 1280 x 1024, high settings except Simple Reflections, no AA (hey, it is a 6600 vanilla)
Vista Ultimate x64 using Vista's in-the-box video drivers: 34.96 frames per second
WinXP SP2 32-bit with nVidia 93.71 video drivers: 36.98 frames per second

Difference: 2 frames per second. I think I can live with that

 

[MikeyLSU]

I wonder why my results are so different. I have done it plenty of times to make sure the results are what they are.

EDIT: I also realized that I'm running Vista x64 and XP x86, would that make a difference in performance?

I know that HL2 has a 64 bit version of the game, maybe it is not optimized as well and that is the cause of some of the big differences.

 

[Jeff7181]

Well, he has an nVidia card, and historically nVidia drivers has been first to release drivers that support new features/technology. So maybe nVidia's Vista support is a little better? /shrug

He's also using a 64-bit version of Vista compared to a 32-bit version of XP.

In addition, your video card is quite a bit more powerful than his. So maybe in situations where his performance should be reduced, his video card is already performing to it's full potential so there's no change in frame rates. Whereas your's is quite capable of higher frame rates, so when possible it's performing much better, then in those situations where performance is reduced by issues related to Vista, there's more room for your performance to change.

 

[MikeyLSU]

after reading around some more today I found that HL2 64 bit version normally has the biggest framerate hit compared to other games with Vista. Not sure why, but it seems across the board that Vista does much closer with other games. Also, the 32 bit mode outperformes the x64 in each OS in framerate. x64 only seems to be better in loadtimes.

Hopefully I will get a chance to benchmark C&C3 and I may find some demos of games to try out for fun. Does anyone know of a way to force HL2 to play in 32 bit mode on a x64 system? It picks it automatically, but I would like to try the 32 bit version to test it out.

 

[juktar]

Originally posted by: MikeyLSU
I'm dualbooting and am benchmarking both OS against each other to see exactly the performance changes I see for each OS.

I'm running a e4300 @2.2
2GB RAM
ATI x1950 pro

I plan on running C&C 3 tomorrow.
these are stress tests by the game. XP is listed first and I'm posting ave FPS. With all settings on high.

HL2 XP - 63 Vista - 49
Lost Coast XP - 58.6 Vista - 50.13
Company of Heroes XP - 75 Vista - 65.7

So for these games there is a 27%, 17%, and 14% decrease in performance in Vista. Still not good enough for gaming. I keep hoping it will get closer but this test brought me back to reality. I also have all current drivers.

I am not sure what you are referring to as not good enough for gaming.

Are they not good enough for benchmarking?

All of them are pretty close. I would say that is good performance for around 3 months of optimisations compared to years on XP.

I think you are too caught up in the numbers. The important thing is how the game plays. Unless the FPS goes way down sometimes (which could happen) The games should be plenty playable with that kind of FPS.

Framerate problems happen to me on occasion in WoW on Vista. On occasion, my FPS rate goes down to 10-15 fps for 2 or 3 seconds and then back up to where it should be. I don't know what it was on XP, as I did not look at FPS then. What I do know is the game plays about the same, except for above. As soon as that is ironed out (this problem is posted on the WoW forums), it should be where it is suppose to be.
It is not often enough for it to bother me.

 

[MikeyLSU]

When I say it is not good enough for gaming, I am referring to the 20% decrease in performance rather than the framerate. Obviously, all of these games run just fine for me. 50 FPS compared to 60 is nothing at all when actually playing, it is a numbers game. What worries me is newer games possibly having the same performance hit where it would hurt my FPS from playable to non playable.

But like I said in my last post, I think I was wrong in that assumption as HL2(the main game I tested) does not test well at all on the x64 version or Vista so that would explain the big hit.

 

[Atlantean]

I'm not sure how many fps I am getting in HL2, will test after I get home from work tonight. I am also using an nVidia 7900 GTO, 3gb ram and a 3800+ at stock speeds with Vista Ultimate 32 bit, running at 1680x1050 with everything on high and AA at 2x, AF at 4x, haven't seen any hiccups or stutters.

 

[juktar]

Originally posted by: MikeyLSU
When I say it is not good enough for gaming, I am referring to the 20% decrease in performance rather than the framerate. Obviously, all of these games run just fine for me. 50 FPS compared to 60 is nothing at all when actually playing, it is a numbers game. What worries me is newer games possibly having the same performance hit where it would hurt my FPS from playable to non playable.

But like I said in my last post, I think I was wrong in that assumption as HL2(the main game I tested) does not test well at all on the x64 version or Vista so that would explain the big hit.

That makes sense.

Do you ever get drastic framerate drops at all? Like down to 10-15 fps?

 

[MikeyLSU]

no, it is perfectly playable so far, though I have not tested it too much. Just started dual booting Vista Ult. x64 on Sunday. I still play games in XP, just doing this to see where Vista stands for my system.

 

[Aikouka]

I don't have any numbers as I never recorded anything before I switched to Vista and even if I did, they'd be using old drivers... but when I switched, I never really noticed any horrid change in framerate with my 8800GTX. Then again, it should also be mentioned that I mainly play WoW and I play it in Windowed mode, which makes a difference, because since I have a DirectX 10 card, it can process Aero as well as WoW at the same time, so some of my performance is lost to Aero still being active.

 

[nerp]

CS:S and source games were not playable until semi-recent drivers. The latest drivers are, to me, great. The performance is roughly the same as it was under XP at this point.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
In addition, your video card is quite a bit more powerful than his.

Exactly. If I want more performance, it's not the operating system that's going to get the axe, it's the video card.