Gaming Performance
Users expecting to use the current Vista beta as a gaming platform are going to be the most disappointed. The results of our gaming benchmarks largely speak for themselves.
The overall performance penalty on the current version of Vista depends largely on what the game is. Among the games tested, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why some games do worse than others. The only clear pattern is that Vista gaming performance is almost universally worse than under XP.
With antialiasing off, with the exception of Black and White 2, everything takes a moderate to significant performance hit. 3DMark, which we normally shy away from but tends to make a good diagnostic tool in situations like this, shows Vista x86 only trailing XP by a small margin, whereas the x64 version is doing significantly worse. However, in the games that would work under Vista x64 (HL2 would not work; its 64-bit binary would not accept our benchmark), Vista x64 is doing no worse than Vista x86.
If this means that Vista x64 is only suffering under a fraction of games or if this is an issue with 3DMark isn't something we can determine, but we're leery of the x64 version of Vista at this point anyhow, due to other reasons (more on that later). As for the slightly more compatible Vista x86, half of our tests have it coming in 25% slower under XP when antialiasing is off, which doesn't bode well for the fledgling operating system at this point. How much of this is early drivers, an early OS, or the result of still-active debugging code remains to be seen.
Antialiasing seems to be a significant sticking point for Vista right now, as our entire suite of test scores dive hard with it enabled on Vista versus XP. Half-Life 2 ended up facing the largest drop, more than 30% off from its numbers under XP, and while Doom 3 actually suffered less of a drop than without antialiasing, it's clear that there's something holding up our test bed when antialiasing is enabled. This unfortunately is a double whammy for gaming enthusiasts using top of the line cards like the 7900 and X1900 series, as this kind of slowdown affects them the most since they're the most capable of using antialiasing in the first place. It's hard to recommend gaming under the current Vista beta given that these performance drops are the largest for those who are most likely to be able to cope with a beta operating system and the high system requirements.
It's also worth noting that with our OpenGL title, Doom 3, we did not encounter any issues other than the normal performance slowdown. There had been some concern earlier about how using a full OpenGL client driver will force Vista to disable the desktop compositing engine since OpenGL takes full control of the GPU, and that GPU makers may switch to a slower OpenGL wrapper for Direct3D to keep the compositing engine working. While firing up Doom 3 did indeed disable the DCE, it's not a problem since Doom 3 is a full screen game that doesn't even normally allow Alt+Tabbing. OpenGL engines may not be as popular as they once were (largely in part to the slower adoption of the Doom 3 engine), but between the gaming market and the professional workstation market, both of which desire a full-performance OpenGL implementation, it doesn't seem like OpenGL is going to suffer on Vista as much as earlier feared. We may yet see some issues with certain professional applications, but many of the workstation users we know are still running Windows 2000 anyway.
Users expecting to use the current Vista beta as a gaming platform are going to be the most disappointed. The results of our gaming benchmarks largely speak for themselves.
| Gaming Performance (1280x1024) | |||
| XP | Vista x86 | Vista x64 | |
| 3DMark 2006 | 2749 | 2533 | 2088 |
| Doom 3 | 79.3 | 59.5 | 60.5 |
| Doom 3 4xAA | 58.8 | 47.7 | 49.3 |
| Half-Life 2 | 81.46 | 61.19 | N/A |
| Half-Life 2 4xAA | 76.25 | 49.73 | N/A |
| Black and White 2 | 22.3 | 23.3 | 23.6 |
| Black and White 2 4xAA | 19.5 | 15.3 | 15.3 |
The overall performance penalty on the current version of Vista depends largely on what the game is. Among the games tested, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why some games do worse than others. The only clear pattern is that Vista gaming performance is almost universally worse than under XP.
With antialiasing off, with the exception of Black and White 2, everything takes a moderate to significant performance hit. 3DMark, which we normally shy away from but tends to make a good diagnostic tool in situations like this, shows Vista x86 only trailing XP by a small margin, whereas the x64 version is doing significantly worse. However, in the games that would work under Vista x64 (HL2 would not work; its 64-bit binary would not accept our benchmark), Vista x64 is doing no worse than Vista x86.
If this means that Vista x64 is only suffering under a fraction of games or if this is an issue with 3DMark isn't something we can determine, but we're leery of the x64 version of Vista at this point anyhow, due to other reasons (more on that later). As for the slightly more compatible Vista x86, half of our tests have it coming in 25% slower under XP when antialiasing is off, which doesn't bode well for the fledgling operating system at this point. How much of this is early drivers, an early OS, or the result of still-active debugging code remains to be seen.
Antialiasing seems to be a significant sticking point for Vista right now, as our entire suite of test scores dive hard with it enabled on Vista versus XP. Half-Life 2 ended up facing the largest drop, more than 30% off from its numbers under XP, and while Doom 3 actually suffered less of a drop than without antialiasing, it's clear that there's something holding up our test bed when antialiasing is enabled. This unfortunately is a double whammy for gaming enthusiasts using top of the line cards like the 7900 and X1900 series, as this kind of slowdown affects them the most since they're the most capable of using antialiasing in the first place. It's hard to recommend gaming under the current Vista beta given that these performance drops are the largest for those who are most likely to be able to cope with a beta operating system and the high system requirements.
It's also worth noting that with our OpenGL title, Doom 3, we did not encounter any issues other than the normal performance slowdown. There had been some concern earlier about how using a full OpenGL client driver will force Vista to disable the desktop compositing engine since OpenGL takes full control of the GPU, and that GPU makers may switch to a slower OpenGL wrapper for Direct3D to keep the compositing engine working. While firing up Doom 3 did indeed disable the DCE, it's not a problem since Doom 3 is a full screen game that doesn't even normally allow Alt+Tabbing. OpenGL engines may not be as popular as they once were (largely in part to the slower adoption of the Doom 3 engine), but between the gaming market and the professional workstation market, both of which desire a full-performance OpenGL implementation, it doesn't seem like OpenGL is going to suffer on Vista as much as earlier feared. We may yet see some issues with certain professional applications, but many of the workstation users we know are still running Windows 2000 anyway.
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Squidward - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Having beta tested Windows XP when it was released, I have to say that so far I'm not very impressed with Vista. Granted there is still quite some time before final release but even with RC1 of XP it was a rock solid stable OS that I used as my full time OS and never had any issues whatsoever (especially security cause no one was writing viruses and malware for it back then). Quite frankly I don't see how the beta 2 I've been looking at and the final polished out the door product is going to happen in 7 months for a Jan. launch. The real problem however lies in the fact that I know I will move up to Vista at some point, but not because it's a better OS than XP but that I'll be hindered by continuing to use an older operating system. I just haven't seen anything in it yet that made me go. "Now that's the kind of feature I've been needing!", and the few features that did make me feel that way were removed to be implemented 'at a later date'. Fancy graphical effects are nice and all, but they don't make an OS. As it stands in the betas the UAC feature is just a complete hinderance that to me seems to punish the end user because of security risks that are out there. The end user shouldn't get a pop up on every single application or item they open to be sure it's 'safe'. There are far better means of controlling permissions within an OS that would have made a lot more sense that what we have now with UAC. That being said, I believe in time and with Microsoft really listening to customer feedback they'll work out a lot of the kinks, but I won't consider purchasing Vista until they do... or force me to upgrade. :)Pirks - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Besides this thing being early beta, also keep in mind that it's not a cosmetic chaneg akin to upgrade from W2k to XP or from OSX 10.3 to 10.4 - this is a major OS overhaul not too far from migration from 9x to NT, of course early beta of such a grand release will be total crap (at least for many people, but some others seem to enjoy it a lot). So, comparing this early beta release to XP release candidate is indeed pretty stupid. I don't even expect Vista release to be 100% usable out of the box, ESPECIALLY x64 version - Vista 64 will take another year or two to mature, get drivers/apps ready and such. And you should also keep in mind that MS is in a big hurry to avoid Apple to chop its balls off - some more delay and you'll see Apple market share well over 10% which is pretty dangerous to MS if they wanna keep enjoying their desktop x86 OS monopoly status. Hence MS does stuff quickly, cuts off features and will probably release something buggy just to avoid serious threat from Apple. Expect something usable only after SP1 and give it at least a year - in a meantime read some rumours about Leopard and salivate a little - that'll keep you going ;-))Yet another nice point - you think MS will sit still and let Leopard to chew its (MS's) private parts with impunity? I doubt that - MS will very likely release those nice sweet WinFS and other toys there were promising for years and integrate them in the next Vista release (I hope Leopard or whatever Mr. Jobs is up to isn't going to eat that for lunch - 'cause WinFS is the last hope for MS, really - DX10 won't count, too small a market it seems). So, in two years or maybe earlier you'll get those new sexy features you want, I believe... well, Apple could probably beat MS's ass here again, which is even more likely judging how well Apple devs were performing so far, so maybe you won't be interested in Vista at all - OS scene moves very fast - bang bang and u'r dead :) Especially now when Ballmer replaced BG - I'm worried, I don't quite trust Ballmer and Ozzie and others - ol' Bill was da man, not sure Vista survives w/o him when his archrival Jobs is only started to accelerate before real takeoff (Leopard?), but we'll see, we'll see...
Oh, interesting, tell stupid us what is this "far better means of controlling permissions within an OS" instead of annoying ugly UAC, this must be something revolutionary and ingenious - maybe MS will pay you big bucks for that, who knows ;-))
ChronoReverse - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
You tested RC1 of XP. Release Candidate 1.This is BETA 2 of Vista. Maybe when they release RC1 of Vista you can compare again.
Frallan - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Well i found 1 thing to be more interesting then the rest: Gaming Perfomance!!That means that at least til the games I want to play are DX10 combined with the fact that DX10 games get better results im going to stax with my XP.
Sorry M$
/F
Googer - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
There are so many versions and the feature sets will confuse most of us.Here is a screen shot from Paul Thurott's Win Super Site.
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Googer/Windows_Vista_...">Windows Vista Versions.
Ryan Smith - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Keep in mind that that's an old chart. Small Business Edition no longer exists, and Professional is now Business Edition.Googer - Saturday, June 17, 2006 - link
Thanks forthe update. Here is the now silghtly out of date chart but still has some usefull information.http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_edit...">http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_edit...
slashbinslashbash - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Page 8, "regulated" should be "relegated"Also in the same sentence, "Superfetc.h" (which might not be a typo)
A 14-page article with 2 minor problems.... The quality ratio here at AT just kills DailyTech.... please impose AT quality control on DailyTech!
JarredWalton - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Fixed - DT runs a lot of short, quick articles, and unfortunately that means they get more typos and errors. Anyway, since they are a separate entity, there's not much we can do. Feel free to post and tell them, though, but remember they're looking at probably 10X as many press releases as we do. LOLDerekWilson - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
1) vista is perfectly capable of being a stable light weight desktop system (with some quirks) at the beta 2 stage ... but try to do anything fast or power hungry and you'd be better off sticking with xp until vista is released. right now, at beta 2, vista is a neat toy. don't try to use it for everything.2) after all the spit an polish dries, i will still prefer os x to vista
3) final verdict? same as it ever was -- i'll be running vista for games and linux for programming. and since i've recently been bitten by the switch bug, os x for everything else.