Coldon
06-10-2007, 04:20 AM
I've read almost all the reviews on vista vs. xp performance in regards to gaming and i cant help but feel that people seems to miss a single (in my opinion) important thing: sound performance! Not one review i've seem really makes a point of this or mentions that they have disabled the games sound system prior to testing...
now if you're running an x-fi ini xp, you have full access to all the hardware acceleration features on the card, this is not so in vista. Even without a fancy sound card has anyone checked the performance of the sound subsystem in vista in comparison to xp?
Comparing a game like BF2 that uses hardware accelerated sound in xp compared to in vista where (correct me if i'm wrong) most of the sound features are still done in software isn't really accurate. Yes it is real world performance but it also tend to wrongly point the finger at just the video card drivers and forget all about the sound.
I remember when i used to run benches and still try tweak everything, i used to disable sound in games and see a noticeable (10%+)(well noticeable statistic wise) increase in framerates. Sound does affect performance and framerates, i still remember having horrendous performance in unreal 2 till i disabled the sound (just for kicks) and strangely enough the framerate smoothed out and my lagging and jerking vanished... Granted it was a long time ago...
This is also a moot point and probably just me imagining things but 3dmarks scores seem to have stayed consistent across vista and xp and 3dmark doesnt make use of sound...
I dont know enough about sound driver achitecture or even windows driver architecture to actually post details or results but i feel its a valid question: could sound be causing the reduced game performance in vista?
Edit/Delete Message
now if you're running an x-fi ini xp, you have full access to all the hardware acceleration features on the card, this is not so in vista. Even without a fancy sound card has anyone checked the performance of the sound subsystem in vista in comparison to xp?
Comparing a game like BF2 that uses hardware accelerated sound in xp compared to in vista where (correct me if i'm wrong) most of the sound features are still done in software isn't really accurate. Yes it is real world performance but it also tend to wrongly point the finger at just the video card drivers and forget all about the sound.
I remember when i used to run benches and still try tweak everything, i used to disable sound in games and see a noticeable (10%+)(well noticeable statistic wise) increase in framerates. Sound does affect performance and framerates, i still remember having horrendous performance in unreal 2 till i disabled the sound (just for kicks) and strangely enough the framerate smoothed out and my lagging and jerking vanished... Granted it was a long time ago...
This is also a moot point and probably just me imagining things but 3dmarks scores seem to have stayed consistent across vista and xp and 3dmark doesnt make use of sound...
I dont know enough about sound driver achitecture or even windows driver architecture to actually post details or results but i feel its a valid question: could sound be causing the reduced game performance in vista?
Edit/Delete Message