Vista Gaming Performance

[bonzai10]

gdogg, gimme a break! Dude im a linux user and im happy nvidia works harder to make linux gfx drivers work better and more effitient. Do you know how hard it was to install linux drivers in the past ? Man! now it is almost as simple as in windows! I appriciate that nvidia puts more effort for linux because (i think) it's harder to make drivers for linux which would work as fine as under windows.

Back to topic. Well maybe finall version games will perform well. I ran Postal 2 and wow on XP i had smooth animation in menu and Vista has trouble with it. I dunno if it's because nvidia's x64 drivers are in development but im sure it'd run better on x86 drivers, but I dont care about Gaming. I installed vista to test it and see how it performs. I use PC for messaging, writing, e-mails etc then im fine with that build

[Spooky]

yeah, drivers in-box, well some are good, some OK, some not so good, and some suck. But thats not the point of having drivers in-box to begin with. The reasons for in-box drivers is to have basic functionality after the OS is installed, the reason is not to have all the bells and whistles of the manufacturers drivers. The manufacturer is supposed to provide drivers with all the bells and whistles and features that make thing work with all the features not in the in-box drivers.

Like that $2 whore, in-box drivers are only intended to provide down and dirty, sloppy, not so good looking, basic functionality.

even if it is ONLY driver issues, then its still a poor show, especialy as the drivers are for critical system.

nvidia and creative labs drivers for vista certainly seem to suck more than a $2 whore

[vomit]

if they want to send out half a driver, thats fine, but even so, it has not impressed me one little bit, like many other pc users i have invested a small fortune in my gear and dont take kindly to it runing like some cheapo pc world heap of junk especialy from a company that has been in the game for many many years, i expect more from all involved parties, especialy as they have been more than willing to take my money in the past and no doubt will be more than happy to have some more in the future.

i apreciate that its not a finished product can only hope for better in the future.

[hoak]

Has anyone tried disabling teh butt-load of services it runs by default to see the impact on performance? You don't even have to change your services settings, you can just manually stop them or write a script with with lines for each service you want to stop like:

NET STOP "Service Name 1"
NET STOP "Service Name 2"
NET STOP "Service Name 3"

Where "Service Name" is the exact name of the service as it appears in the Services Manager (and include the quotes). After services are stopped this way, teh'll automatically restart when needed or on the next reboot.

Vista may actually be able to run games faster then XP if some of the sludgy services are out of the way as some are rather enormous resource pigs...

Edited October 6, 2006 by hoak

[RJARRRPCGP]

Looks like I won't get Vista for a long time, unless otherwise. The activation stuff is going to just make many users stay with earlier versions of Windows until EOL!

[Spooky]

because of Vista's modular design, disabling services has little to no effect on overall performace for the most part, might have a little effect for certain parts at times but overall not much for the overall performance, untill you shut down so many that you begin to lose functionality. If I had to choose two of the best things to change for a performance boost the first would probably be changing from the nice graphics of the Aero theme back to the classic, and the second would probably be making sure that all the drives in my system were using the NTFS file system with no Fat32 in sight.

I like your idea about the script

Has anyone tried disabling teh butt-load of services it runs by default to see the impact on performance? You don't even have to change your services settings, you can just manually stop them or write a script with with lines for each service you want to stop like:

NET STOP "Service Name 1"
NET STOP "Service Name 2"
NET STOP "Service Name 3"

Where "Service Name" is the exact name of the service as it appears in the Services Manager (and include the quotes). After services are stopped this way, teh'll automatically restart when needed or on the next reboot.

Vista may actually be able to run games faster then XP if some of the sludgy services are out of the way as some are rather enormous resource pigs...

Why? Activation is just the same for a user as it has been, CD key on install and online or phone call activation. The only thing thats really changed is that organizations will no longer have VLK's, instead they will have to activate also and there are a couple of different new methods for them to give out keys.

VLK's does make it eisier for "some purposes"

Looks like I won't get Vista for a long time, unless otherwise. The activation stuff is going to just make many users stay with earlier versions of Windows until EOL!

[dAbReAkA]

yeah, i fiddled with the services.. disabled 10-15.. i dont see such a great performance boost.. my tests on quake 4 cannot be exactly accurate, because vista uses more memory than xp - even with better drivers with 512mb ram it still will have suckier in-game performance.. the real results would be from a system with more memory (1gb+)

[hoak]

Spooky, I well realize that Vista services don't individually confer much of a performance difference, but combined some do a great deal. The point of using a KillAll.CMD script is you scarcely need any Vista services to run a game on vista, and any services you stop will automatically restart when needed, all will restart automatically on the next reboot, and you can even force a default start of all serives with with another script that just uses the opposite command:

NET START "Service Name 1"
NET START "Service Name 2"
NET START "Service Name 3"

...where STOP is relpaced with START; I've been doing this for years on Server 2003 for running games and game servers and only need 5 or so services running...

The point of using a script is it encourages you to be agressive and experiment with stopping literally everything you don't need for gaming with zero risk because no changes are made to your system. Of course you can do the same thing manually but it's rather tedious...

Even on Server 2003, some games see little or no performance benefit as the games just don't use that much in the way of resources -- but some games BF2 is one obvious example can see stunning imporovements in performance, stability, and more uniform frame rates.

Stopping services once started does not confer all the performance advantage of disabling the service completely becuase you're unloading it from memory and that area of memory it was loaded into will likely remain somewhat fragmented -- but it's a risk free, easy, low drag way to take multiple loads of several system resources....

The kinds of performance improvements on Windows XP/2003 you see from this kind of tweaking isn't the vaunted higher frame rates (though on some games you do see that), generally what you see are things like less hitching, more consistent frame rates, more consistent pings, faster load times of maps, greater game stability... I'd be very surprised considering the memory footprint and CPU utilization of some of Vista's servervices if this did not apply to Vista as well....

Edited October 6, 2006 by hoak

[Aegis]

The importance of reviewing the performance of prerelease builds:

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34915

Some people said earlier in the topic that RC1 was still in development, and hence performance should be much better when Vista goes gold. Obviously that's not the case, and Microsoft has even said so directly. Guess I won't be finding any incentive to switch to Vista anytime soon, especially if someone ports DX10 over to XP.

[hoak]

I agree Aegis, the reasons to buy/own Vista is just way too few, and what do you really get for your money in the way of truly new technology? Little/nothing I can see; all the new technology in Vista is directed toward integration, aesthetic swill, and DRM...

With features and benefits like a sloppy interface that's a screen real estate hog, and essentially clones/rips off ideas developed for Linux/UNIX window managers nearly a decade ago (and found to be functionally useless)... The same interface also uses and cripples OpenGL the free open 3D API that DirectX is trying to compete with... An activation scheme that will disable the OS and require you to purchase a new copy if you upgrade your motherboard... The list goes on...and while curious, I'm not impressed...

It looks to me like Microsoft's OS development is being run by Marketing Weenies, Attorneys and Bureaucrats, not Engineers...

Edited October 7, 2006 by hoak

[gdogg]

yeah, drivers in-box, well some are good, some OK, some not so good, and some suck. But thats not the point of having drivers in-box to begin with. The reasons for in-box drivers is to have basic functionality after the OS is installed, the reason is not to have all the bells and whistles of the manufacturers drivers. The manufacturer is supposed to provide drivers with all the bells and whistles and features that make thing work with all the features not in the in-box drivers.

Like that $2 whore, in-box drivers are only intended to provide down and dirty, sloppy, not so good looking, basic functionality.

even if it is ONLY driver issues, then its still a poor show, especialy as the drivers are for critical system.

nvidia and creative labs drivers for vista certainly seem to suck more than a $2 whore

thats very odd, vista ran great for me

post rc1 build that was released. 5728

built in nvidia drivers were the only ones to not crash immediatly in warcraft 3. it performed stable, and eventually crashed after about 30 minutes.

I have a 6 month old computer. Nvidia must be thinking like gamers, vista will be support, once its out, and demand is their, xp is more important right now. Leaving vista drivers upto microsoft, which seems to be doing the better job in making nvidia drivers for vista.

I used vista ultimate edition, with 1GB of ram, booted slightly slower than a nlited version with prefetch left, to keep it about even in the testing scenerios.

But the vista UI was far more responsive than xp's. With all those bells and whistles on.

@aegis

but if the xbox 360 supported dx10, then there would be an alternative for crysis, convincing users vista is not needed.

heres to hoping the ps3 can support dx10. I guess thats possible right? winex maybe lol.

Edited October 7, 2006 by gdogg

[Aegis]

Now this is interesting...Apparently turning off Aero has no effect on gaming performance, so the rather dramatic FPS decrease is here to stay .

[Spooky]

Well, yeah. The article is exactly correct, turning off the Aero effect doesn't improve gaming performance and the reason why is that the performance of games is not a consideration for MS operating systems any longer. In case anyone missed it, when X-Box and some of the newer consoles started hitting the streets, the move for windows based operating systems started shifting to business, IT, and media centers which are focused applications for PC's rather than "PC's to do everything" focus, with the games left to the consoles which are focused on games. You may have noticed that a lot of games are released first just for console now, where as a few years ago they were released first for PC's. The market for consoles is booming and has a bigger share then PC's so game manufacturers are doing what any business would - going to where the money is and taking their resources with them. The reason for bigger shares for consoles is because for gaming PC's have become a nightmare. The amount of support for PC based games is a lot higher then it is for consoles, the coding for PC games is more extensive and costly. A game off the shelf for the PC might cost about the same as a game for a console for example, but when you add in what it cost to produce a PC game and support it and then compare it to a console game the profit margin is greater with the console game.

So, the overall reason why turning off the Aero effect in Vista doesn't improve gaming performance is simply because it's not supposed to, and is supposed to stay running to support things like media center. MS seems to be leaving the games to consoles like X-Box. Think about it, games will suck on the OS, while the entertainment-media orientation will make PC's attractive for homes - MS will sell an OS and then increase their profits by also selling the x-Box if someone wants games. If MS made Vista and future OS's gaming platforms they would be competing with their self in the market place for games. They stand to make much more by divorcing games from the OS and shifting them to consoles. They are simply going where millions of people have said they want to go with PC's by the popularity of movies, music, and other entertainment related media (not games) have told them where people want to be. And those numbers greatly outnumber PC gamers now that 12 and 13 year old kids get consoles every day instead of PC's because mom and dad don't want to put up with the hassel and don't understand PC's when they walk into the store and see consoles advertised as 'Gaming Consoles' and PC's just showing pretty GUI's - comparing the two the consoles look a lot more attractive for giving the kids what they want. Mom and dad want a PC to surf, email, see movies, and listen to music, most adults overall don't play many FPS games for example, you may know a lot of them, but in context with the total PC ownership games are in the minority regardless of the often over-inflated gaming statistics.

PC's started out as work machines, evolved into a platform for many things not work related - and will de-evolve back to work machines which I think we will start to see with Vista.

Now this is interesting...Apparently turning off Aero has no effect on gaming performance, so the rather dramatic FPS decrease is here to stay .

Edited October 20, 2006 by Spooky

[vomit]

well i built this pc to play games, and play games it will. Vista is unlikely to become my main OS for the forseable future, possibly not until support ect is ended for XP.

Since my firts post regarding its gaming performance i have have upgraded my cpu from a 4000+ @2600 mhz to a 4800+ @ 2568, no noticable performance gains in Vista although XP seems to be loving it.

I also own a xbox360, yeh its good fun but i find it lacking in something, not 100% sure what exactly. i can play BF2 all day on the pc no problem but the Xbox just hasnt got enough to keep me interested for that amount of time on any game i have played on it so far. Maybe just missing the verbal abuse that goes on through teamspeak with my clan m8's.