To go Vista or not

[vintank]

yeah Ultimate is what I am going to do but probably going to download a trial version first before I buy

well June/July isn't that bad and yeah lots of stock hard to say when they would sell out

[Thund3rball]

Originally Posted by Mars

If you have any recent (past 2-3 months) reviews with benchmark scores comparing equal setups with XP and Vista, I'd love to see them. There were a lot of benchmarks done when Vista launched with rather shoddy drivers from both ati and nvidia, but nothing much since then.

Here ya go

********************

Just to add some fuel to this fire... Looking at a recent review of the Crysis 1.1 patch and performance changes I noticed the poor scores in Vista 64 compared to my XP machine on this TechSpot article.

At 1680x1050 on High settings they are getting avg of about 24-25 FPS in DX9 and 22-23 FPS in DX10 (Crysis v1.0 & v1.1). On my system (not even close to this testing monster) I get about the same avg 25-26 FPS on "VERY HIGH" settings (XP Very High cfg tweaks) at 1680x1050.

I know this is just one recent example but it backs up what I was saying earlier. For the most part I would concur that performance in Vista = Poopy.

Their test rig below, mine in my sig:
- Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (3.00GHz) LGA775
- x2 Corsair DOMINATOR Twin3X2048-1800C7DF G Module(s)
- ASUS P5E3 Deluxe (Intel X38)
- ASUS Striker II Formula (NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI)
- OCZ GameXStream (700 watt)
- Seagate 500GB 7200RPM (Serial ATA II)

- Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit)
- Nvidia Forceware 169.28

My Score



Their Score

[Shadowmeph]

Like I posted a while ago there is a new OS coming out and they will be testing it this spring it won't be public until around mid 2009 so if you still are going to be buying a new os I would wait until then and buy the new os and just stick with XP for now.

[Mars]

Thund3rball: Interesting, I don't suppose you have Vista installed to run the tests on as well?

I have an 8800 card on order from directcanada, and my system is almost identical to yours (but S939), I'll clock everything the same, and run through the timedemo to see how it compares when I get my new card.

[Thund3rball]

Originally Posted by Mars

Thund3rball: Interesting, I don't suppose you have Vista installed to run the tests on as well?

I have an 8800 card on order from directcanada, and my system is almost identical to yours (but S939), I'll clock everything the same, and run through the timedemo to see how it compares when I get my new card.

No I don't but I have been very tempted to buy Vista just for that reason. Seems like an expensive curiosity though :\. I am looking forward to seeing your results

Edit: However I am seriously contemplating trying my hand at writing a game guide. Not for Crysis but some other title(s) that don't really have any encompassing tweaking info. So if I did decide to that, I would definitely need Vista.

[Mars]

I was trying to compare Crysis benchmarks from reviews at techspot, but am finding some weird numbers.

Crysis 1.1 patch performance with Multi-GPU testing - TechSpot
Crysis demo performance in-depth - TechSpot




The systems are nearly identical, both Vista 64-bit, 2GB of ram. The SLOWER system has a QX9650, while the faster performing one only has an E6700. The nvidia cards are doing far more poorly in the XQ9650 system... maybe a driver problem in the latest betas?

Or maybe I just shouldn't be trying to compare separate reviews/benchmarks...

Originally Posted by Thund3rball

No I don't but I have been very tempted to buy Vista just for that reason. Seems like an expensive curiosity though :\.

I didn't have XP for this rig when I bought Vista, so it's not as if I'm letting an XP license go to waste. ;)

[Thund3rball]

Wow that's a big difference in results. Skimming through some of the initial article w/benches you found it seems like CPU scaling is practically non-existent in Crysis despite what Crytek is claiming. So the move from a E6700 to a QX9650 shouldn't have much impact on performance (especially in the negative ) although it's a little more than CPU scaling with 2 cores vs 4 cores? But still.

The only other thing I can think of is that they were using the SP demo in the first article and the full retail in the second, which could have some impact. Drivers are always important here to but you would think drivers get better not worse? So without a dedicated rig with both XP and Vista it's really hard to compare. I benched the game on High once when I first got it but can't recall what my result was. Currently I have the Natural Mod installed as well (but not on that Time Demo I posted) so it would be hard to compare ATM. Hmm the confusion only grows...

[vintank]

shouldn't dx9 vs dx10 also be an issue, everyone that I know absolutely refuses to run Crysis in a DX10 setup because the game just seems laggy at parts and just all around poor performance, haven't tested for my self, as I am in the process of installing XP Home and then going to add Vista Ultimate 64bit to see which runs better for me but probably won't be for a little while, as I am still playing with overclocking

[Thund3rball]

Originally Posted by vintank

shouldn't dx9 vs dx10 also be an issue, everyone that I know absolutely refuses to run Crysis in a DX10 setup because the game just seems laggy at parts and just all around poor performance, haven't tested for my self, as I am in the process of installing XP Home and then going to add Vista Ultimate 64bit to see which runs better for me but probably won't be for a little while, as I am still playing with overclocking

Well that's kinda what I'm saying. Mars and I have been going back and forth about this for a bit. The problem we are having is ATM neither of us have a machine with both Vista and XP installed on it. So it's difficult to make good comparisons from benches done on different machines or just using Vista in DX9 vs DX10. When you get setup it's be great if you can run some benches on both OS's :)

[vintank]

I can definately do that, what programs do I need to run benchmarks?
will let ya know when I get it fully setup. will that mean I have to install Crysis twice right, once for XP and the once for Vista?