Vista SP1 matches XP SP3 in gaming performance tests
According to data from Microsoft, the hardware company's drivers were responsible for the largest amount (28.8 percent) of Vista crashes. ATI was at 9.3 percent. It's therefore not surprising that many users were having performance troubles with their Vista gaming machines. This has been slowly changing, thanks to both new third-party and Microsoft drivers.
Most recently, the progress has hit a point where gamers have stopped complaining about Vista. My good friend, a gamer who swore he would be skipping Vista (as many gamers have), built himself a new computer and installed Vista x64 SP1. Not only did he tell me that he had made the switch, he was quite satisfied with the decision. Back in November, data showed that Vista was being adopted very slowly by gamers, and so one gamer switching over is hardly something to write home about. On the other hand, a few recently released gaming performance tests by ExtremeTech do show something that's worth mentioning.
The test machine had the following specs: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750, ASUS Blitz Formula, 2GB of Corsair RAM, WD6500AAKS hard drive, and an ATI Radeon HD 3870. The rig is hardly a high-end machine, but one must remember that these tests vary slightly with every different component. The test software used included PCMark05 and 3DMark06, while the games tested included Supreme Commander, Crysis, and World in Conflict. Windows Vista SP1 significantly outperformed XP SP3 in the PCMark05 test, and all but matched SP3 in the 3DMark06 test. As for the games, Vista SP1 tied XP SP3 in Supreme Commander, slightly beat XP SP3 in the Crysis test, and also slightly beat XP SP3 in the World in Conflict test. Nowhere did Vista RTM or Vista SP1 truly stumble, which suggests that ATI has significantly improved its video drivers to match XP's.
Can the same be said for NVIDIA? The company has actually recently just rereleased the 175.16 drivers for GeForce FX, 6, 7, 8, and 9 series as they just passed the Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) test: Vista x86, Vista x64, XP x86, and XP x64. Before these, the last WHQL drivers for the GeForce 6/7/8 series of cards were released released back on December 19 and 20. While there are no recent tests to show the improvements, it seems NVIDIA is getting back on track as well.
Will gamers previously set on skipping Vista begin taking the plunge?
Source : Extreme Tech via Arstechnica
Written by ShaDow on May 15th, 2008 with
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