25 Games Tested in Vista 102
mikemuch writes "Jason Cross at ExtremeTech has installed more than 25 PC Games in Windows Vista and reports back with his experiences with each. For the most part, the OS handled games with aplomb, but on the whole ran them slightly slower than XP, and some required logging in as administrator to install them. These and other minor issues were the result of immature drivers. It was hit or miss whether games would appear in the Games Explorer correctly with box art, and GameTap doesn't work yet at all."
Think before you upgrade (Score:4, Informative)
BTW, clicking on the "Print" link in the Options under the first page will show all pages as one. Useful if you don't want to click next all the time.
Re:Shock, Horror, Surprise... (Score:0, Informative)
Yet more high quality reporting from Slashdot.....
Re:Um, yeah, about that Games Explorer thing... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes and No.
It's done by reading a local Game Definition File which will - in Microsoft's vision of the future - be created by the developer and included in the game install.
However for games without such a file - presumably including all legacy games - Vista will dial the mothership and request the data using "Windows Metadata Services".
See http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb173447. aspx [microsoft.com]
Similar review at Firingsquad (Score:2, Informative)
http://firingsquad.com/hardware/windows_vista_aer
which shows that Vista, with the most CPU/GPU?Mem intensive Aero GUI enabled, is not negatively impacted as far as gaming performance is concerned.
Everyone just assumes that Vista is going to be a bloatware, but according to the numbers, it is going to be a great OS for gaming as far as the performance goes.
If you add nice GUI, taking advantage of the powerful GPU, that you, as a gamer, already have, security enhancement etc, it looks like a pretty decent OS for gamers.
New driver model (Score:5, Informative)
Workaround: set Compatibility Mode - XP. I found that gave me a significant increase (maybe 10% or so) in frame rates, and decreased startup times..
The only workaround for this with current hardware would be using XP (or other non-WDDM) drivers... probably not worth it. However, cards and drivers optimized for DX10 may negate this issue. The idea behind DX10 isn't to do anything DX9 revision C couldn't; the idea is to do it much faster, and to take advantage of WDDM (Windows [Vista] Display Driver Model).
In any rate, I game in Vista, and if my framerates are slightly worse, they are plenty good enough... and well ahead of, for example, Wine (though there's something awesome about playing even a DX8 game like WarCraft 3 in Linux/BSD).
Re:No HAL = No surround sound for WoW (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Let me in on the ... (Score:3, Informative)
The motherboard (ASUS A8R32) is a Socket 939 motherboard. You can tell from the "A8" in the model name... that refers to the socket type. All of ASUS' K8- and A8- series motherboards are Socket 939. Likewise, all of ASUS' Socket AM2 motherboards have "M2" in the model name. My own motherboard is an M2N-E, for example. You can decode that as "AM2 socket, NVidia chipset, configuration type E". In this case, it's a passive chipset heatsink, 6 SATA, no IDE, no onboard Firewire, etc. etc. They also have M2V motherboards, which can decode as "AM2 socket, Via chipset".