Vista 64 vs XP 32: HD 4870 X2 Runs better under Vista!

Performance Scaling XP to Vista

On average with the Geforce GTX 280 you lose -1.6% by switching to Vista 64-bit, so in short: same performance and no loss!

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 does even better, if we leave out the numbers of Stalker and Tomb Raider (as Crossfire failed to run properly under XP) we see a +5.8% boost in average FPS going from XP to Vista. If we add the two game titles and let them enjoy CF-scaling the number jumps up to +27.7%!

also

Anti Aliasing Performance Scaling

We put all our results together for all games tested under both operating systems we can extract the following findings:

# Going from 0xAA to 4xAA

- Geforce GTX 280 under XP: -19.1%
- Radeon HD 4870 X2 under XP: -23.1%

- Geforce GTX 280 under Vista: -21%
- Radeon HD 4870 X2 under Vista: -10.6%

For both cards under XP the drop is pretty much on par; under Vista the HD 4870 X2 shows a remarkable difference, as performance only drops by ~10% on average!

# Going from 0xAA to 8xAA

- Geforce GTX 280 under XP: -26%
- Radeon HD 4870 X2 under XP: -25.8%

- Geforce GTX 280 under Vista: -28.7%
- Radeon HD 4870 X2 under Vista: -15.4%

When going from 0xAA to 8xAA the HD 4870 X2 is now better in both XP and Vista, under Vista the performance drop is still quite small, only ~15%! The GTX 280 drops by nearly double.

Source, with detail charts of all games tested

Wow, thats good news, though it makes me sad that nvidia isnt playing ball.

amd must really work on drivers such power is wasted cause of them

Good, about time programmers start paying attention to Vista and making sure it's up to par.

Having been using Vista 64 bit since it first launched, believe me, I know quite a bit about bad driver/software support for Vista... Luckily devs are finally starting to realize that just like 2000 -> XP, progression is inevitable.

OT: By the end of this topic I predict it will be nothing more than ignorant people who have used Vista a few times just bashing it nonstop and complaining.

funny how all the people that predicted that the poor performance was due to bad drivers turned out to be right. if anything my vista is more responsive than my xp in starting up apps and getting work done. Once i made the move i cant ever see myself going back to XP

Vista64 is a great OS. I've had the pleasure of using it for now 9 months. 64-bit is great on it--I run into only a few problems, but those are solved with Virtual PC 2007 or VMWare. Windows More Errors on the other hand, that was quite a pain. I ran it for about 3 months on a K6-2 550MHz before that machine was replaced by a Celery2GHz with WinXP.

Vista x64 works great for me, only issues I have are due to software with drivers not supporting vista.

Nice to see vista doing well in games... since i wont be able to run away from it forever :) Its not bad at all imo...after I remove/configure tons of useless stuff. No ground breaking features or anything, but at least it has dx10 and decent 64bits support.

Hey thats awesome. Only 15% drop for 0-8xAA.. WOW. I guess probably more CPU bottleneck at 0xAA.

I switched from WinXP to Vista 64bit ultimate just yesterday, I waited so long because I was sceptic about driver support, especially for my X-Fi.

Gaming performance is important to me, so this is good news. I'm starting to get used to vista and starting to like it more and more. Just mem usage seems so high compared to XP...

Only 2 things that really annoys me:
- cant properly tweak usb mouse polling rate (without having test-mode watermarks on desktop)
- warning every time you open an installer file. (not UAC)

Of course it's the most "bloated," it's the newest.

XP was more "bloated" than 2000 as well, yet I don't see you history-rewriters complaining about that. Don't even get me started on Windows ME...

If you guys want to ignore the fact that in the past the same crap happens with every new OS (waah, it's bulky. waaaah, it crashes. waaaaah, it underperforms) that's fine, but don't drag your dribble into EVERY topic with Vista in the title. Nobody wants to hear it.

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Originally Posted by Sly Fox

Of course it's the most "bloated," it's the newest.

XP was more "bloated" than 2000 as well, yet I don't see you history-rewriters complaining about that. Don't even get me started on Windows ME...

If you guys want to ignore the fact that in the past the same crap happens with every new OS (waah, it's bulky. waaaah, it crashes. waaaaah, it underperforms) that's fine, but don't drag your dribble into EVERY topic with Vista in the title. Nobody wants to hear it.

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I agree 100%, Sly Fox! :up:

Just the good news I like to hear right after I bought a 4870X2 for my Vista Ultimate 64bit machine. Oh no! All my machines are Vista, four PCs at home and many more in the office.

It's amazing how people deny the fact that ATI drivers for the 4870 X2 are shown to be better in Vista then Nvidia by going on a "I love Vista" routine. Could this be some sort of defense mechanism... :shakes:

i dont know i think it has more to with 3dmark and crysis for NV people instead of IQ for IQ FPS in real games. but this lets them come over without saying that they were wrong

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Originally Posted by Sly Fox

Of course it's the most "bloated," it's the newest.

XP was more "bloated" than 2000 as well, yet I don't see you history-rewriters complaining about that. Don't even get me started on Windows ME...

If you guys want to ignore the fact that in the past the same crap happens with every new OS (waah, it's bulky. waaaah, it crashes. waaaaah, it underperforms) that's fine, but don't drag your dribble into EVERY topic with Vista in the title. Nobody wants to hear it.

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I agree 100000%
It's about time someone said this.

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Originally Posted by zanzabar

i dont know i think it has more to with 3dmark and crysis for NV people instead of IQ for IQ FPS in real games. but this lets them come over without saying that they were wrong

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Interesting hypothesis.

In any case, I had no idea of the gap when using 8x AA in vista:

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# Going from 0xAA to 8xAA

- Geforce GTX 280 under XP: -26%
- Radeon HD 4870 X2 under XP: -25.8%

- Geforce GTX 280 under Vista: -28.7%
- Radeon HD 4870 X2 under Vista: -15.4%

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Under XP the difference is minuscule but under vista there is a large gap.

are there 4870x2 drivers for windows mohave experiment?

:p:

I wish same applied for nV cards. Still if you check the FPS numbers only then Vista numbers aren't that amazing. It may be a lower AA perf drop but it's still most of the time lower fps in Vista to begin with. :p

Need some XP-64 vs Vista64 numbers.

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Originally Posted by STEvil

Need some XP-64 vs Vista64 numbers.

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Very true, we need valid comparisons between the x64 versions.:up:

Bordering OT:
The reason why we see better performance on Vista x64 is simply the fact is that there is where the focus lies for the driver development, simple as that.

Vista WILL have better performance in future compared to XP, but that is only due to the shifted focus on driver development. Vista is dragging along that driver polling DRM related crap that effectively will hinder it from perform as good as XP, period and end of story. (and no matter how quick you think the "swishy-swooshy" windows opens in Vista)

Taken the same attention is given to both OS'es when developing drivers and such XP is allways going to be faster, due to the simple fact is has not as much load to carry (driver polling) that is built in in Vista.

Btw, Vista is not a "new" OS, it shares the same old NT base as XP...essentially 95% the same as XP (even Win2000). But as I said, has the (very heavy) driver polling load to carry. It all boils down to simple logic folks,
read up on the matter.:D

unfortunately I have to agree with you there, yes Vista takes more resources due to the overhead of DRM I hope there is a software that strip the DRM from windows Vista maybe soon with litePC? , Windows lite?, Vista lite? but if I am not mistaken it is embedded in the kernel?

on the other hand Vista 64 bit is improving but still has some crash with it could be form driver or from vista

haven't tried Vista 32bit though

I like my 4870x2 way better than my GTX280. the sad thing I can't get both of my 4870x2s working on my DFI even with the latest bios 8/29.

edit: the image quality is much better on my 4870x2 compared to my gtx 280.

Really safan?
What is the differencde exactly?

[QUOTE=Sly Fox;3267973Windows ME...[/QUOTE]
Windows ME is dead, long live Windows MEII

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Originally Posted by Miss Banana

Really safan?
What is the differencde exactly?

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clarity

If this driver shows positive strides in performance what will be said when Cat 8.54 is finally released? I've read a few posts saying how good the current betas are. :yepp:

i run 4870 CrossFire on a machine that dual boots Vista and XP. i can say from experience that the Radeons' better performance in Vista is strictly due to better drivers from ATI. it's not that Vista is better than XP in any way - it's just that ATI's driver team has made Vista their top priority now. even the driver installer for Vista has a whole new design that isn't used on the XP drivers yet.

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Originally Posted by Sly Fox

Of course it's the most "bloated," it's the newest.

XP was more "bloated" than 2000 as well, yet I don't see you history-rewriters complaining about that. Don't even get me started on Windows ME...

If you guys want to ignore the fact that in the past the same crap happens with every new OS (waah, it's bulky. waaaah, it crashes. waaaaah, it underperforms) that's fine, but don't drag your dribble into EVERY topic with Vista in the title. Nobody wants to hear it.

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can it. so far you're the only one trying to start a Vista vs. XP war.

well by your own admission then the OS plays no great part in the performance of the card compared to the drivers. Which is practically what most of the vista power users have been saying for a year now. Most of the terrible *game* performance in vista has been due to crappy drivers (mostly from the nvidia camp). I still remember the whole "driver stopped responding" mess with nvidia drivers, how long did it take for them to sort that out.

Also don't get me started on the ability to disable lcd scaling which in XP is broken on the 8series card but in vista works. If i didn't need nvidia cards for CUDA, I'd be using ATI.

CPU performance has been near identical to XP since the launch of vista, i got the exact same times on my simulations in XP and vista, the only issue regarding performance was in games. (I'm ignoring guys trying to run vista on 512mb of ram).

I am glad that driver focus in now on vista (where it should be) and that ATI is taking the effort to improve on their drivers, it might force nvidia to get their asses in gear.

Aside: As for the higher memory usage in vista, all the people :banana::banana::banana::banana::banana:ing about it must just shut up, i like it using my ram to cache apps thank you, XP's memory model was "broken" from the start, so your ram sat idle until it was needed, i like vista caching my apps in my free ram, so when i need them they start up instantly.

I have been using Vista X64 for a long time now, it is very stable and mature OS now.

64 bit OSes perform better than 32 bit because of the memory management. If you have a 4870X2 with 2GB of memory and a system with 2+GB of system memory (4GB+ recommended for that config) both the GPU and system memory are handled more efficiently. Remember, even with PCIe we still cache graphics data in GPU memory (or at least the OS sets aside a certain amount just in case).

ATI's dual GPU's run better under Vista, like Crossfire and 4870x2/3870x2

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Originally Posted by xMrBunglex

can it. so far you're the only one trying to start a Vista vs. XP war.

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:clap::rofl::yepp:

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Update 07-09-2008:: Some readers pointed out that NVIDIA uses different AA rendering modes compared to ATI and for fair comparison sake the following needs to be taken into account:

- NVIDIA 8xAA = 4xMSAA, 16xAA = 4xMSAA (CSAA mode), 16xQAA = 8xMSAA (CSAA mode)
- ATI 16xAA is a superAA mode where each core will render the same frame with a different AA pattern resulting in superior image quality.

This does put in perspective the performance of the Geforce GTX 280 when the high quality AA levels are forced to match ATI's levels, as the performance of the GTX 280 is really trailing then. Of course you have to consider how much AA you need for the game to look smooth to you, this changes from person to person.

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^^ if IQ is your thing, apples vs apples put ATI HD 4870 X2 in the lead.

They claim performance in DMC4 goes up on ATI with AA applied? umm what?

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Performance Scaling XP to Vista

On average with the Geforce GTX 280 you lose -1.6% by switching to Vista 64-bit, so in short: same performance and no loss!

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 does even better, if we leave out the numbers of Stalker and Tomb Raider (as Crossfire failed to run properly under XP) we see a +5.8% boost in average FPS going from XP to Vista. If we add the two game titles and let them enjoy CF-scaling the number jumps up to +27.7%!

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This is laughable because it's such poor logic. What you'd want is that there be NO difference between XP and Vista. They paint the "gains" in Vista as a plus.. when in fact it's just a testament to poor ATI XP performance...

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Originally Posted by Sr7

This is laughable because it's such poor logic. What you'd want is that there be NO difference between XP and Vista. They paint the "gains" in Vista as a plus.. when in fact it's just a testament to poor ATI XP performance...

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and why would ATI bother with driver optimisations for XP if 99 out of 100 new desktop systems come with Vista?

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Originally Posted by Cooper

and why would ATI bother with driver optimisations for XP if 99 out of 100 new desktop systems come with Vista?

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That has nothing to do with what I said.. I'm faulting the reviewers poor logic in the statement I quoted, not AMD's optimization decisions.

The point was that he says Vista "does better/gains" on ATI when in fact it's just that XP loses... it's just funny because it seems like it would make a perfect marketing statement.

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Originally Posted by Sr7

That has nothing to do with what I said.. I'm faulting the reviewers poor logic in the statement I quoted, not AMD's optimization decisions.

The point was that he says Vista "does better/gains" on ATI when in fact it's just that XP loses... it's just funny because it seems like it would make a perfect marketing statement.

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Agree on that. Well with so many websites and reviewers trying to make some bucks final product will loose objectiveness or lack in-depth investigation of the results. Though in this case making decision just by result of single driver version does not show statistics in performance changes. But at the same time it's very hard if not impossible to narrow the changes down to driver only since the hardware used are rather new thus only 2-3 driver packages with pre-mature initial versions could've been used.

i am confident that ATI's XP CrossFire performance will catch up to Vista soon. my fear was that XP would always be trailing behind Vista by a month or two. that is the only reason i got myself a copy of Vista 64.

so far i've noticed:

-Race Driver GRID runs well with CrossFire enabled in Vista. it was buggy in XP.

-Gears of War runs a little better when i use DX10 w/ AA. in XP i had to run DX9 and force AA through the driver. i like the Vista method better. i imagine this applies to most or all UE3-based games. any UE3 game with DX10 AA is going to be better in Vista.

-ATI's driver installer for Vista is like a whole new generation of software. this style of installer hasn't been used for XP drivers yet. i really like the new interface.

Lol. I just mentioned yesterday that testing in XP-64 then Vista x64 on 8.7 Beta, I went from 33 Crysis to 50fps, and on Fear I went from 150 to 260. There was a substantial increase in performance from going from XP to Vista. My 2900 XT tests however, show almost the opposite in effect. The X2 performs better in Vista (64 at least) regardless of the reason (better drivers or something with Vista).

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Originally Posted by xMrBunglex

...any UE3 game with DX10 AA is going to be better in Vista...

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With that I can agree 100%, DX10 AA on XP won't perform much...:D

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Originally Posted by Clint

With that I can agree 100%, DX10 AA on XP won't perform much...:D

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you know what i meant. i meant forcing AA through the driver in XP versus DX10 AA in Vista.

also, this thread is specifically about CrossFire. none of this should apply to people with single GPU's. it isn't that Vista performs better. we all know Vista runs games slower than XP. it's just that ATI's CrossFire drivers are better in Vista right now. for all we know, next month's driver release can improve XP and even things up.

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Originally Posted by xMrBunglex

you know what i meant. i meant forcing AA through the driver in XP versus DX10 AA in Vista.

also, this thread is specifically about CrossFire. none of this should apply to people with single GPU's. it isn't that Vista performs better. we all know Vista runs games slower than XP. it's just that ATI's CrossFire drivers are better in Vista right now. for all we know, next month's driver release can improve XP and even things up.

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Sorry, couldn't help myself.:D

You are perfectly right, it's just a matter of focus on driver development.
I do believe it's going to get even worse though, and XP x64 will lag after the worst.:shakes:

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Originally Posted by Clint

Sorry, couldn't help myself.:D

You are perfectly right, it's just a matter of focus on driver development.
I do believe it's going to get even worse though, and XP x64 will lag after the worst.:shakes:

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Well, it does make sense because, who are the majority of Vista owners that play games? Enthusiast. Who is most likely going to be using CF setups? Enthusiast. It would make sense to forcus driver developmetn on a platform where most of your users are going to be.

I am sure that since most sites test with Vista that has a little to do with it as well.

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Originally Posted by Sr7

They claim performance in DMC4 goes up on ATI with AA applied? umm what?

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they also mention that it's most likely a software bug, only present with ATI on using the DX10 path. Don't see what else could be added, it was not a single bugged run, it did it every time.

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Originally Posted by Sr7

This is laughable because it's such poor logic. What you'd want is that there be NO difference between XP and Vista. They paint the "gains" in Vista as a plus.. when in fact it's just a testament to poor ATI XP performance...

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wait... what? it's not a poor logic, it's just mentioning the performance effect going from XP to Vista. Nothing more, nothing less. CF scaling fails in XP for two games, but even without those performance overall is better on Vista compared to XP for ATI. NVIDIA is not bad either, where XP and Vista performance are basically on par. Only when AA is thrown in the mix you really see a nice boost under Vista using ATI (-20% in XP, -10% in Vista performance hit going to 4xAA);

only the facts are mentioned, and if you are a gamer, you are better of with Vista when using ATI, no poor logic there...

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Originally Posted by safan80

I like my 4870x2 way better than my GTX280. the sad thing I can't get both of my 4870x2s working on my DFI even with the latest bios 8/29.

edit: the image quality is much better on my 4870x2 compared to my gtx 280.

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Yeah ,I noticed that as soon as it booted up DAMN that looks way better even on the wall paper

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Originally Posted by jmke

they also mention that it's most likely a software bug, only present with ATI on using the DX10 path. Don't see what else could be added, it was not a single bugged run, it did it every time.



wait... what? it's not a poor logic, it's just mentioning the performance effect going from XP to Vista. Nothing more, nothing less. CF scaling fails in XP for two games, but even without those performance overall is better on Vista compared to XP for ATI. NVIDIA is not bad either, where XP and Vista performance are basically on par. Only when AA is thrown in the mix you really see a nice boost under Vista using ATI (-20% in XP, -10% in Vista performance hit going to 4xAA);

only the facts are mentioned, and if you are a gamer, you are better of with Vista when using ATI, no poor logic there...

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QFT :up:

I could not make a response that nice and easy to understand as yours. I get angry when I see posts like that.

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Originally Posted by Cooper

and why would ATI bother with driver optimisations for XP if 99 out of 100 new desktop systems come with Vista?

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Because more people have XP than Vista, and in the end ATI and nVIDIA should optimize for both systems.

Only reason I will get Vista is support for 2 x HD 4780 X2. If it wasn't that I wouldn't bother with it ... for now.

Not that I don't like Vista, it is simply just because I see no reason aside from that one to upgrade from XP to Vista. I am not into getting the latest and new simply because it is just that, I want a somewhat good reason to upgrade and I finally have one. DX10, Aero and everything else new in Vista aren't compelling enough to me.

I am sad to see ATI is not as focused upon XP yet, but it should eventually happen.

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Originally Posted by xMrBunglex

i am confident that ATI's XP CrossFire performance will catch up to Vista soon. my fear was that XP would always be trailing behind Vista by a month or two. that is the only reason i got myself a copy of Vista 64.

so far i've noticed:

-Race Driver GRID runs well with CrossFire enabled in Vista. it was buggy in XP.

-Gears of War runs a little better when i use DX10 w/ AA. in XP i had to run DX9 and force AA through the driver. i like the Vista method better. i imagine this applies to most or all UE3-based games. any UE3 game with DX10 AA is going to be better in Vista.

-ATI's driver installer for Vista is like a whole new generation of software. this style of installer hasn't been used for XP drivers yet. i really like the new interface.

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Ok, here I go..

I've been dual-booting with XP-32bit on my main HD and Vista 64-bit Ultimate on my Raptor HD for a couple months now. The only reason why I got Vista is because of DX10 support (and that I'd need a 64-bit OS anyways to use more than 4GB of RAM).

So far, DX10 fails to impress me much at all.

-Crysis runs with pretty much all the DX10 candy via tweaks in XP, with faster performance.

-For most DX10 games, the performance hit with enabling DX10 is still a bit too much for even my 8800GTX'es (since I usually game at 1920x1200, let alone FSAA).

-Bioshock in DX10 does not allow FSAA, not even if it's "forced" in the drivers. The DX10 benefits only relate to water ripples and a bit of fog, and I would much rather enjoy 4x FSAA instead in XP.

-Fonts are more blurry in Vista. I turned off Truetype font, and it just still rubs me the wrong way--it's not just the font but the whole interface. Hopefully there will be more programs to support Vista desktop customization like Windows Blinds or StyleXP.

-Vista still does not allow for some programs and older legacy hardware products especially in 64-bit mode, thanks to the required driver signing! A program like PeerGuardian 2 is really important to me, but there's nothing like it for Vista! I cant even use my Logitech Wingman Formula Force (the smoothest racing wheel ever made) on Vista 64-bit:down:!

-There's still no way for me to game in stereo-3D with my shutter glasses in Vista. True, Nvidia has Vista support for anaglyph (red/blue) glasses, even in DX10 games :up: but anaglyph 3-D loses red and cyan colors compared to shutterglasses :down:.


Remember how long it took for some of us to finally adapt to WinXP from Win98SE or WinME? I was using WinME for at least 2 years before WinXP finally became feasible with gaming performance and driver support. It's all deja-vu, except that Vista is getting a lot more flak this time IMHO.

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Originally Posted by Sly Fox

Of course it's the most "bloated," it's the newest.

XP was more "bloated" than 2000 as well, yet I don't see you history-rewriters complaining about that. Don't even get me started on Windows ME...

If you guys want to ignore the fact that in the past the same crap happens with every new OS (waah, it's bulky. waaaah, it crashes. waaaaah, it underperforms) that's fine, but don't drag your dribble into EVERY topic with Vista in the title. Nobody wants to hear it.

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Agreed. People that complain about Vista either are idiots that have no business even being near a computer or are just too :banana::banana::banana::banana:ing lazy to figure out how it works.

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Originally Posted by Rob94hawk

Agreed. People that complain about Vista either are idiots that have no business even being near a computer or are just too :banana::banana::banana::banana:ing lazy to figure out how it works.

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Well, I don't really know about that...

But I do firmly believe that too many people obsess over it's flaws to such a degree that they feel they NEED to post it in every single topic that has any relation to Vista. We get it, it's not perfect and XP is much more lightweight, that's great, keep using XP. I'm not here to judge anyone based on their OS choice... I just don't see why every thread needs comments that are more often than not blatant exaggerations or downright inventions.

In any case, I think it's good no matter which way you spin it that it's nice to see Vista drivers catching up to XP in mostly all regards. For people that want 2X 4870X2, I believe you're restrained to Vista. So I think it's important for ATI in particular to keep the drivers in line.

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Originally Posted by Rob94hawk

Agreed. People that complain about Vista either are idiots that have no business even being near a computer or are just too :banana::banana::banana::banana:ing lazy to figure out how it works.

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It's funny how the Vista defenders all to often gets emotional when someome is picking on their shiny new toy. And ofcourse in the next post they excuses a lower performance in game or benchmark with "mind you, this is with Vista".

I have yet not seen anyone that is pro-XP getting emotional like this, actually they tend to show numbers instead of emotions.

Numbers? Right. Last time i showed the numbers from several tests they said they don't trust the source. Right. Every excuse is a good one... And i'm not sure how can you count Vista as "new toy". It's been out for a year and a half... and i've been using it since its release.
The difference was noticeable up to around May/June 2007. And not from the Vista side but from the drivers side. Especially graphics part and partially sound. Today? Sorry, i don't see any reason why i'd even virtually bother myself with how my games run. They run ultra fast entirely maxed out. Sound is also exactly the same as on XP with my X-Fi. But i admit they weren't working that well till May/June 2007.
But that was entirely drivers fault, get it? I get all pissed off because ppl trash Vista and Microsoft, even though it's not their fault for that by milion miles. Has anyone ever ranted on any forum "omg stupid NVIDIA/AMD/Intel, they can't make god damn drivers right" ?
No, it was always "omfg, Vista sucks", "Omfg Microsoft sucks". C'mon, give me a break.

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Originally Posted by RejZoR

Numbers? Right. Last time i showed the numbers from several tests they said they don't trust the source. Right. Every excuse is a good one... And i'm not sure how can you count Vista as "new toy". It's been out for a year and a half... and i've been using it since its release.
The difference was noticeable up to around May/June 2007. And not from the Vista side but from the drivers side. Especially graphics part and partially sound. Today? Sorry, i don't see any reason why i'd even virtually bother myself with how my games run. They run ultra fast entirely maxed out. Sound is also exactly the same as on XP with my X-Fi. But i admit they weren't working that well till May/June 2007.
But that was entirely drivers fault, get it? I get all pissed off because ppl trash Vista and Microsoft, even though it's not their fault for that by milion miles. Has anyone ever ranted on any forum "omg stupid NVIDIA/AMD/Intel, they can't make god damn drivers right" ?
No, it was always "omfg, Vista sucks", "Omfg Microsoft sucks". C'mon, give me a break.

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The truth is they will love all the things they hate now!:eek::D

Agree that creative with vista sucks a bit, cuz i play counter strike source and its not such good as in xp!But i love everything else in vista.

ohh and i have a new quote:clap::rofl:

Well, i find CS:S sound on X-Fi just fine. Just use ALchemy with it and use values 5 for buffers and 10 for duration (in the dsound.ini file). Game mode must be used. Works like a charm really :)

EDIT:
Wow i made it into a quote lol. Though it sounds better if you know the entire context of that line...

... and this thread is officially off topic now.

since we're bashing Vista, i'd like to add that Windows Photo Gallery won't display .GIF images. Micro$oft took something as simple and eloquent as the Windows Pictures and Fax Viewer and they replaced it with a shiny new program that doesn't display .GIF images. my expensive new operating system recommends i use Internet Explorer to view my .GIFs (because we all know web browsers make great image viewers and slide shows).

Vista is all about taking one step forward and two steps back. there are some great innovations in this OS that are often overshadowed by frequent annoyances. and then there are the truly evil things: the extra DRM, using DX10 to lure unsuspecting gamers, charging $400 for the full version and gimping the regular version, etc. and all you guys with sound cards know you got screwed out of EAX, right? now you have to live with hacked audio drivers from Creative to work around Vista's sound stack. and we all know how great Creative is with drivers.

UAC is a great idea, but it just doesn't learn. i want to be able to tell it which programs to trust so it stops bothering me every time i open CPU-Z. but UAC doesn't learn. it just ends up getting disabled by most users, rendering it utterly useless.

this is still about XP vs Vista gaming, all others please go off-topic somewhere else please:)

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Originally Posted by RejZoR

Numbers? Right. Last time i showed the numbers from several tests they said they don't trust the source. Right. Every excuse is a good one... And i'm not sure how can you count Vista as "new toy". It's been out for a year and a half... and i've been using it since its release.
The difference was noticeable up to around May/June 2007. And not from the Vista side but from the drivers side. Especially graphics part and partially sound. Today? Sorry, i don't see any reason why i'd even virtually bother myself with how my games run. They run ultra fast entirely maxed out. Sound is also exactly the same as on XP with my X-Fi. But i admit they weren't working that well till May/June 2007.
But that was entirely drivers fault, get it? I get all pissed off because ppl trash Vista and Microsoft, even though it's not their fault for that by milion miles. Has anyone ever ranted on any forum "omg stupid NVIDIA/AMD/Intel, they can't make god damn drivers right" ?
No, it was always "omfg, Vista sucks", "Omfg Microsoft sucks". C'mon, give me a break.

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And that was the emotional poster.

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Originally Posted by xMrBunglex

... and this thread is officially off topic now.

since we're bashing Vista, i'd like to add that Windows Photo Gallery won't display .GIF images. Micro$oft took something as simple and eloquent as the Windows Pictures and Fax Viewer and they replaced it with a shiny new program that doesn't display .GIF images. my expensive new operating system recommends i use Internet Explorer to view my .GIFs (because we all know web browsers make great image viewers and slide shows).

Vista is all about taking one step forward and two steps back. there are some great innovations in this OS that are often overshadowed by frequent annoyances. and then there are the truly evil things: the extra DRM, using DX10 to lure unsuspecting gamers, charging $400 for the full version and gimping the regular version, etc. and all you guys with sound cards know you got screwed out of EAX, right? now you have to live with hacked audio drivers from Creative to work around Vista's sound stack. and we all know how great Creative is with drivers.

UAC is a great idea, but it just doesn't learn. i want to be able to tell it which programs to trust so it stops bothering me every time i open CPU-Z. but UAC doesn't learn. it just ends up getting disabled by most users, rendering it utterly useless.

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And this was a bit more informative and used facts both for and against.


so I repeat:

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Originally Posted by Clint

It's funny how the Vista defenders all to often gets emotional when someome is picking on their shiny new toy. And ofcourse in the next post they excuses a lower performance in game or benchmark with "mind you, this is with Vista".

I have yet not seen anyone that is pro-XP getting emotional like this, actually they tend to show numbers instead of emotions.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by RejZoR

Sound is also exactly the same as on XP with my X-Fi. But i admit they weren't working that well till May/June 2007.
But that was entirely drivers fault, get it?

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you're dead wrong on that count. Vista eliminated DirectSound's hardware abstraction layer that was used in XP. Vista actually killed EAX, which extended the DirectSound3D API. that's why ALchemy is such a Frankenstein program and it doesn't support all EAX games.

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...and all you guys with sound cards know you got screwed out of EAX, right? now you have to live with hacked audio drivers from Creative to work around Vista's sound stack. and we all know how great Creative is with drivers.

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No, i don't feel i got screwed in any way. Using ALchemy takes me um 5 seconds to copy 2 files and place them in the right folder. Tadah, HW sound and full EAX support.
I just think those without ALchemy are jealous about it. And yeah, when you do try it, it's very hard to go back. I was using onboard ADI AD2000b chip for a while till i fixed one cap on my Xtreme Music. And lack of hardware mixer under Vista was a big pain in the ass. Thank god it's at least OpenAL capable so WinAMP could output the sound through Wumpus OAL plugin.

@Clint
Emotional? No, thats how it actually was. The framerates rocketed off the charts around may or june when NVIDIA released new set of ForceWare. Before that, even Aero Glass hardly worked...

@xMrBunglex
I seriously hope you're talking that from personal experience. Because out of whole bunch of games that i tried, ONLY Rally Championship 2000 failed to use ALchemy properly. Well, it worked with hardware mixing for as long as EAX was disabled. 1 single game. And i enjoy over 50 others like they're using native hardware mixing. You can call it zombiestein if you want, i still have HW mixing and EAX under Vista. I win either way in the end...

Gotta love the threads that degenerate into VISTA SUX/VISTA OWNZ

Nothing wrong with Vista, if you don't like it, speak with your wallet and don't buy it.

@^
+1:up:

sorry if it is already stated but i would like to ask why XP SP3 (32-bit) and Vista SP1 (64-bit)?

Why not 64bit Vista vs 64bit XP?
Why not 32bit Vista vs 32bit XP?

Because XP64 drivers are sometimes hard to find... and 32bits would have been clearly a good idea though... Why haven't they done the comparison, good question :shrug:

If you want to have more than 4GB of RAM there isn't really any choice. And any sane person would chose Vista x64...

yup yup mad the move to vista too.. think SP1 too solved a lot of issues.. :) and i figured id have to use vista sometime or the other to get myself familiar :D