Vista and gaming now?

ArphaRima

Anybody know if upgrading to Vista would be a completely far-fetched idiotic idea for a gamer, or whether MS have learnt lessons since the windows XP launch?

Thinking of buying Vista Ultimate and then either dual-booting with XP or overwriting my XP. Havent decided if I'll take either option yet. I would like a new toy though... And I am rather impatient. But I do like my games... Goddamn.

satchmo

Yeah I know the feeling... I'd like to upgrade to get something new to play with, but it seems the drivers just aren't up to scratch yet and Vista performs worse than XP in all the gaming benchmarks I've seen, quite badly too in some. Hopefully the drivers will be sorted out soon enough, but until them I'm gonna hold off on upgrading.

humanji

I think it'd be insane to upgrade (contradiction in terms?) to Vista at the moment. Personnaly, I'm going to hold off as late as I can so that they can iron out the bugs.

sprinkles

I thought they had most of the bugs ironed out with the Beta version they released last year? I know someone that has the latest beta version and it runs most of his games fine

tba

The real Question is why updgrade solely for games

The real Answer is DirectX 10

The Obvious reply is name a DirectX 10 game that is out at the moment.

The Unfortunate answer is MS Flight Simulator

humanji

tba wrote:

The real Question is why updgrade solely for games

The real Answer is DirectX 10

The Obvious reply is name a DirectX 10 game that is out at the moment.

The Unfortunate answer is MS Flight Simulator

Well, you could install it ten times!

i_am_dogboy

I wouldn't specifically upgrade for the sake of games right now, but i've used all the beta's and I never had any trouble playing games, one release didn't really like my graphics card but games did run as well as they did on XP. For a home system I don't think there's much reason to pick ultimate over home premium, the difference from my experiencs aren't as great as xp home vs professional.

While I wouldn't hold off upgrading for the sake of games, I would however hold off upgrading for the sake of not having to deal with the constant pain in the ass questions from the OS about what applications should be using what resources. Chances are I won't be upgrading 'till xp is genuinely a worse option for gaming and development, same as I stuck with 2k for so long.

And no, it's not worth it just to see aero, even though it is mighty pretty and much nicer looking than OSX or XGL in my opinion.

Stephen

nVidia's Vista drivers are nowhere near their XP drivers in performance yet -- I know as I installed Vista enterprise (from work) last week, and 3D performance was awful. Apparently they released some newer drivers yesterday, which are better bit still nowhere near their XP drivers. I'm sure they'll get them sorted eventually. I don't know how ATI's Vista drivers are doing at all.

I've since gone back to XP.

Sputnik

Read this:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2007/01/30/xp-vs-vista-uk/

Not doing to well preformance wise compared to XP it seems.

Cuddlesworth

Having used Vista I can only say this.

Games are using more and more ram.

Vista is using way more ram then Xp.

2gigs is fine for now, but in 6 months time?



Check out the XS OS V.3 coming out in the next few months. Designed for gaming with dx10 support it should be fun.

i_am_dogboy

I wasn't paying too much attention to memory usage and stuff while I was playing games on vista, oddly enough I was concentrating on the games. I did notice some performance difference in FEAR and in DOW, the only games that are really new enough to give my machine any hassle but I figured that was just due to the fact that I was on a beta build. On a side note my graphics card is a 6800 GS and I didn't notice any problems with stability or artifacts-and I do write a good bit of rendering code so it wasn't a case of me just not using the card enough to see them.

Also, it just occurred to me that I could never get 5.1 sound working, again I just put that down to beta drivers.

MisterAnarchy

krazy_8s wrote:

2gigs is fine for now, but in 6 months time?

:eek: :eek: :eek:
I dont see any reason to upgrade for at least a year.
It took me about 3 years to get a stable XP system and if it isnt broken dont fix it.

djmarkus

it was the same story with XP at the start, 2k was better at games for about 6 months, so i guess it will be that long for Vi$ta to catch up

Beelzebub

krazy_8s wrote:

Having used Vista I can only say this.

Games are using more and more ram.

Vista is using way more ram then Xp.

2gigs is fine for now, but in 6 months time?



Check out the XS OS V.3 coming out in the next few months. Designed for gaming with dx10 support it should be fun.

XS OS V.3???

I'll believe it when I see it - frankly I think it's bogus.

K.O.Kiki

Beelzebub wrote:

XS OS V.3???

I'll believe it when I see it - frankly I think it's bogus.

Bogus -- or Phantom?

PixelTrawler

If you are going to stick it on, dual boot with xp. I've been running vista ulimate for about 2 months ( have an MSDN account ) but i've the machine set to dual boot with Media Centre 2005.

Vista is nice but theres no way id let go of XP just yet. Too many missing drivers and other issues with vista yet - whatever about getting drivers, try getting 3rd party utilities.
Its stable and I havent noticed any issues with memory with 2gig although I havent tried a single game on it yet since the decent drivers are only starting to appear now -

Its new explorer window takes a bit of getting used to and the UAC, if you don't turn it off, can get really annoying - it constantly prompts you to confirm actions.

It is a hell of a lot easier to install then xp too, not that xp was too bad but its just a lot nicer

Geff

Its a seriously bad idea to upgrade to Vista for gaming right now.

I was using a beta version with my Geforce 5500GT and some games couldn't even run. I am sure most issues are ironed out by now but its still not a good idea to upgrade so early.

Give it time, maybe Service Pack 2.

bizmark

Meh im getting vista with a new pc from what iv heard the gameing different is like 10 fps at worst in some dx games and pritty bad in open gl ......but im sure the drivers will become better pritty soon so im not that worryed plus ill be ready for Eve onlines dx 10 engine \o/ which is why im upgradeing really ¬_¬

Cuddlesworth

Beelzebub wrote:

XS OS V.3???

I'll believe it when I see it - frankly I think it's bogus.

Considering they have released versions of the Os already(albeit more xp based), it cant be that hard to believe. All they are really doing is integrating dx10 into it. Without the **** that Vista brings.

Kiith

What the hell is XS OS V.3??

And i'll be waiting as long as i can to install Vista. Never been the biggest fan of new microsoft products, and i doubt Vista will help that opinion in any way.

Dooom

I heard Vista gives you aids.
Seriously though, stay away from it if for a while longer til they get it nice and smooth. Although roll on DX10 stuff.

Mojito

I'm running Vista Ultimate on my PC and all my games runs very well maxed out at 1680X1050. I do have an 8800GTX and an E6600 cpu though.

Looking at the link for the games benchmarks you should notice that there's not much of a difference.

Call of Duty @ 1280x960
XP 84.6 and Vista 83.0 FPS

Far Cry @ 1280x1024
XP 157 and Vista 151 FPS

Unreal Tournament 2004 @ 1280x1024
XP 255 and Vista 173 FPS


You would have to have pretty good eyes to notice any difference when playing those games. I think it will have more of an impact on lower spec PC's. If you have recently built a nice high spec PC. Go for it if you want Vista!

To be honest Vista does look very nice but it is so annoying to use and feels very clunky and awkward when you need to do anything technical. They have tried to make it to simple to use by holding your hand through everything you try to do. It really has been design for the novice user to use. They should have developed two modes expert and newbs.

tba

**Vista Starts Up**

Choose your difficulty Level

Novice
Easy
Normal
Hard
Gates

Cuddlesworth

Kiith wrote:

What the hell is XS OS V.3??

Xs Os is a Os based on a Linux kernal capable of playing dx9 games. It was designed by a team of coders at the forums of xtremesystems for benchmarking. It's not a perfect Os, but its a damm site less ****ty then xp.

Xs2.0 is 64megs in size.

ArphaRima

I am going to singapore in 3 weeks. I reckon I'll buy myself a WD raptor 150gb HD and put vista Ultimate on it (I'll keep Xp on my 74GB Raptor...). (Havent decided between OEM and Retail) I have a feeling MS are not going to be as lenient with their licencing enforcement this time. Anybody heard different?

My spec is a year old and roughly as follows; AMD fx-57, 2 Gb ram, 7800 gtx, primary HD 74gb raptor, and an x-fi fatility. I know driver support wont be perfect, but I assume they will not neglect to develop software quickly for recent flagship hardware.