Strange performance drop in Vista

[Guest]

Hi all,
I purchased Vista a month or so ago, and I really enjoyed using the new
operating system, but unfortunately it caused a significant impact on my
gaming performance - so significant that I was forced to go back to XP. I'm
talking around 30-50% worse framerates, depending on the game. Here are my
system specs:

Motherboard: ASUS M2N-SLI AM2 PCI-E SATA2
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 AM2 3800+ ~2.4GHz
Memory: 2048MB OCZ Gold DDR2-667 Dual Channel RAM
Hard Drive: Seagate 7200RPM SATA2 320 GB
Video Card: Radeon X1800 XT 512MB
Sound Card: Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 4

As you can see, I don't have the highest-end machine but it's pretty decent.
I know Vista is a new operating system and it requires more resources, but
there's no way it should be causing a 30-50% drop in performance. Plus, I
know first-hand that it's not necessarily a problem with Vista itself causing
my performance decrease: my brother is running Vista on his gaming PC, which
is similar to mine but slightly weaker (only 1GB of RAM, graphics card isn't
as good, etc) and he gets superb framerates in the same games that cause my
machine to chug along painfully in Vista. And in fact, my own benchmarking
with 3DMark '06 indicated only a 2% drop in performance, so I'm puzzled as to
why actual game performance would be so much lower. I realize 3DMark is just
a benchmark and therefore not entirely accurate, but a 28-48% discrepancy is
hardly reasonable.

I'm kind of at a loss to what the problem might be here. My only guess is
that it could be a driver issue, but I always stay up to date with the latest
drivers and it didn't help my performance at all in Vista. Are ATI's Vista
drivers just sub-par, or is there something else going on here?

Any helpful suggestions or personal accounts would be much appreciated, as
I'm anxious to solve this problem and get back on to Vista.

Thanks!

 

[Mike Hall MVP]

Dag

Video drivers are still in their infancy.. you are suffering the same was as
many.. it will get better..

Hi all,
I purchased Vista a month or so ago, and I really enjoyed using the new
operating system, but unfortunately it caused a significant impact on my
gaming performance - so significant that I was forced to go back to XP.
I'm
talking around 30-50% worse framerates, depending on the game. Here are my
system specs:

Motherboard: ASUS M2N-SLI AM2 PCI-E SATA2
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 AM2 3800+ ~2.4GHz
Memory: 2048MB OCZ Gold DDR2-667 Dual Channel RAM
Hard Drive: Seagate 7200RPM SATA2 320 GB
Video Card: Radeon X1800 XT 512MB
Sound Card: Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 4

As you can see, I don't have the highest-end machine but it's pretty
decent.
I know Vista is a new operating system and it requires more resources, but
there's no way it should be causing a 30-50% drop in performance. Plus, I
know first-hand that it's not necessarily a problem with Vista itself
causing
my performance decrease: my brother is running Vista on his gaming PC,
which
is similar to mine but slightly weaker (only 1GB of RAM, graphics card
isn't
as good, etc) and he gets superb framerates in the same games that cause
my
machine to chug along painfully in Vista. And in fact, my own benchmarking
with 3DMark '06 indicated only a 2% drop in performance, so I'm puzzled as
to
why actual game performance would be so much lower. I realize 3DMark is
just
a benchmark and therefore not entirely accurate, but a 28-48% discrepancy
is
hardly reasonable.

I'm kind of at a loss to what the problem might be here. My only guess is
that it could be a driver issue, but I always stay up to date with the
latest
drivers and it didn't help my performance at all in Vista. Are ATI's Vista
drivers just sub-par, or is there something else going on here?

Any helpful suggestions or personal accounts would be much appreciated, as
I'm anxious to solve this problem and get back on to Vista.

Thanks!

--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

 

[Dana Cline - MVP]

Does your brother have an ATI card, or an nVidia card? I've found ATI's
Vista drivers to be more stable, currently.

Do use antivirus? Which one? Anything else you loaded might be taking CPU
cycles? Look in Task Manager to see...

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

 

[Guest]

Does your brother have an ATI card, or an nVidia card? I've found ATI's
Vista drivers to be more stable, currently.

Do use antivirus? Which one? Anything else you loaded might be taking CPU
cycles? Look in Task Manager to see...

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

He has an nVidia card. I'd also heard that ATI's drivers were better, but
his system seems to be running fine whereas mine was struggling, so perhaps
that's not entirely true.

I was using AVG Antivirus. I used the SysInternals performance monitor to
check which apps were using the most CPU cycles and memory - everything
seemed to be fine. The indexing service seemed to be using more CPU and
memory than I would have liked, but everything else seemed fine and even with
the indexing service turned off I didn't see a noticeable increase in
performance.

Mike Hall, I hope you're correct that newer drivers will improve my
performance. I hope I won't have to wait too long...

 

[Mike Hall MVP]

I have the same problem as you, and we are not alone.. nVidia are bound to
get it right soon..

He has an nVidia card. I'd also heard that ATI's drivers were better, but
his system seems to be running fine whereas mine was struggling, so
perhaps
that's not entirely true.

I was using AVG Antivirus. I used the SysInternals performance monitor to
check which apps were using the most CPU cycles and memory - everything
seemed to be fine. The indexing service seemed to be using more CPU and
memory than I would have liked, but everything else seemed fine and even
with
the indexing service turned off I didn't see a noticeable increase in
performance.

Mike Hall, I hope you're correct that newer drivers will improve my
performance. I hope I won't have to wait too long...

--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

 

[E J WINK]

Although Vista can run on a GB of Ram it is recommended to have at least 2
to operate more efficiently.

 

[Mike Hall MVP]

I have 3gb, and video performance is not too bad, but could be better..

Although Vista can run on a GB of Ram it is recommended to have at least 2
to operate more efficiently.

--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

 

[Guest]

I have 2GB and gaming performance is dismal compared to XP.

Mike, I think you may have misread my post. My brother is using an nVidia
card (256MB Geforce 7900 GS, factory overclocked by BFG) and his performance
is fine. I'm using an ATI card (Radeon X1800 XT 512MB) and my performance is
very poor...

 

[Charlie Tame]

I have 2GB and gaming performance is dismal compared to XP.

Mike, I think you may have misread my post. My brother is using an nVidia
card (256MB Geforce 7900 GS, factory overclocked by BFG) and his performance
is fine. I'm using an ATI card (Radeon X1800 XT 512MB) and my performance is
very poor...

Vista is never likely to run as fast as XP since they have stuck another
layer of "Protection" in between the hardware and the drivers in order
to reduce the possibility of bad drivers crashing the enttire system.

The result is that more CPU time is required for processing and the
extra layer (Bloat) does nothing much to prevent bad drivers from
crashing the system but seems to make "Good" drivers harder to develop.

Instead of applying constructive criticism to these issues some MVPs
will simply tell you it's the hardware manufacturer's fault for
producing late / bad drivers - but will not address the question of how
a manufacturer is supposed to write quality drivers when the OS is not
"Finalized" and is still being cobbled together a week or two before
release. Note the many comments about the Beta and the RTM "Should" be
the same... which indicates that those making the comments are NOT using
the public released version

This is working here http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_158.18.html

but useless in SLI mode...

Card is 7950 - also BFG X 2 but of course unable to use the 2nd one.

You might see if you have the best chipset drivers and tell your brother
to make 100% sure he keeps a copy of the working driver set, new drivers
may fix one thing but break another.

Also, you must UNINSTALL Nvidia drivers completely before updating, you
should not install over the top. My experience is that sometimes over
the top works, often it does not.

Good luck

 

[Charlie Tame]

Vista is never likely to run as fast as XP since they have stuck another
layer of "Protection" in between the hardware and the drivers in order
to reduce the possibility of bad drivers crashing the enttire system.

The result is that more CPU time is required for processing and the
extra layer (Bloat) does nothing much to prevent bad drivers from
crashing the system but seems to make "Good" drivers harder to develop.

Instead of applying constructive criticism to these issues some MVPs
will simply tell you it's the hardware manufacturer's fault for
producing late / bad drivers - but will not address the question of how
a manufacturer is supposed to write quality drivers when the OS is not
"Finalized" and is still being cobbled together a week or two before
release. Note the many comments about the Beta and the RTM "Should" be
the same... which indicates that those making the comments are NOT using
the public released version

This is working here http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_158.18.html

but useless in SLI mode...

Card is 7950 - also BFG X 2 but of course unable to use the 2nd one.

You might see if you have the best chipset drivers and tell your brother
to make 100% sure he keeps a copy of the working driver set, new drivers
may fix one thing but break another.

Also, you must UNINSTALL Nvidia drivers completely before updating, you
should not install over the top. My experience is that sometimes over
the top works, often it does not.

Good luck

 

[Guest]

Say, ATI just released new Catalyst 7.4 drivers... has anyone seen a
significant performance increase under Vista after upgrading to these? ATI
is claiming that these new drivers may offer a 15-30% performance improvement
for OpenGL games in Vista, but I was having trouble with both OpenGL AND
DirectX, so I'm not sure they'll solve my problem.

Also, I wonder if anyone has had any luck using Omega's Radeon drivers under
Vista. I know they're meant for XP, but I wonder if they might offer
improved performance anyway...

 

[Julian]

Say, ATI just released new Catalyst 7.4 drivers... has anyone seen a
significant performance increase under Vista after upgrading to these?
ATI
is claiming that these new drivers may offer a 15-30% performance
improvement
for OpenGL games in Vista, but I was having trouble with both OpenGL AND
DirectX, so I'm not sure they'll solve my problem.

I updated when it was released.
No noticeable affect with my x1300 pro.

 

[Guest]

Dag - Been running Vista for 4 weeks with an ATI 800 series AGP card. From
the initial install I could not get the graphics and gaming index higher than
1. Installed the 7.4 drivers the day after release and graphics index went to
5.9 gaming index to 5.3. System running stable ever since. No issues
whatsoever.

PJ Andrews

 

[Guest]

Thanks... my 64-bit DVD should be in the mail, so as soon as I receive it I'm
gonna try installing Vista 64-bit and see how that goes.