The truth is out - XP runs games faster than Vista

[Domarius]

The numbers are out, and XP runs games faster than vista, and they look identical in terms of image quality, even the DX10 ones.

 

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html...W50aHVzaWFzdA==

As you can see, XP comes out on top EVERY TIME, and in some cases, by an offensive amount - Need For Speed Carbon runs nearly HALF the speed on Vista. FSX is in that list too, which is a DX10 game, so that dispels any hope we're seeing bad DX9 support in favor of better DX10 support.

Here are the final charts if you don't feel like reading the article and looking at the pics.

8800 GT

7800 GT

As you can see, there is one tiny exception - in World Of Warcraft, only on the 8800GT, Vista gets a few more frames. But both OSs are running the game above 90 FPS, where the human eye can't tell the difference anyway.

 

 

Crysis I can tell you about - it also claims to require DX10 to look its best, and the "Very High" detail setting is disabled if you're running XP.

However, all you have to do is edit the config files and copy all the "Very High" settings into the "High" settings, so that choosing "High" has the same effect as "Very High" - and boom - the game looks as good on XP as it does on Vista. I've done this myself, and you can see comparison shots here (mouse over image captions to flick to the vista version)

http://au.gamespot.com/features/6182140/index.html

 

And a funny story - When they were making Flight Simulator X, they were pushing Vista SO hard, saying "Well, yeah you CAN play it on XP if you really wanna, but you're hardly going to get the full experience. On Vista, it will be faster, and look better." Same story - XP runs it faster, no visual difference. Well I bought the game myself, and it comes with a little readme file, and it almost reads like a confession! Something like "FSX was created while Vista was still in development. For this reason, there are some tweaks you have to do to get it running", including restarting vista when a certain problem happens, and disabling the Vista Aero interface so that it looks like XP, to get the game running at all!!

 

You just know MS is behind it all, making them push for DX10 so we have a reason to get Vista. But all is not lost - someone is hacking up a version of DX10 to run in XP

http://www.techmixer.com/download-directx-10-for-windows-xp/

But don't pay attention to the DX9 vs DX10 comparison screenshot - those are literally photoshopped mockups that MS did for marketing purposes, those images have been thrown around the net since 2006, before a real FSX screenshot was even available. That scene exists in NO game, and no game looks like that. If you see the big version of the screenshot, you can see the fuzzy bits around the shoreline, where the real water photograph was pasted over.

[Ombrenuit]

 

Oh the irony.

[HappyCheeze]

Crysis is just eye candy.

 

The Dark Mod will be mind candy :-P

[SplaTtzZ]

I'm not a programmer or anything like that but I recall someone saying somewhere (i think a videogame site like IGN) that there were no games released that 100% used the DX10 architecture stuff; only parts of it? Dunno if thats true or not, just something i remember reading somewhere ; but damn that crysis comparison is funny

[sparhawk]

Yeah, I noticed such things in other games earlier as well. For example, I was trying to install a gameand it complained that it doesn't support the german version of Windows 2000 (was quite some time ago). I changed the language settings to english, and installed it fine. Switched back to german, run the game, everything works as it should. So I always wonder why developers tell us such bullshit? Is it only because they haven't tested that configuration and so they claim only the config that they tested with, to evade regressions? Or is it that they try to make the impression that the user doesn't know anyway and must be spoonfed, so that he gets into the habit of folowing corporate advice more easily?

[Domarius]

@HappyCheeze - Crysis is an awesome game, the graphics are only a part of it compared to what else happens - one big reason is the stealth approach is handled really well. But that's an entirely seperate issue.

 

@Spar - well this XP vs Vista issue with Crysis is nothing more than Microsoft paying Crysis to force XP out of the very high detail settings so that people will buy vista. In the case of your german vs english game, I can only think they were just covering their arses in some way.