by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko
09/19/2006 | 04:02 PM
Microsoft’s new operating system Windows Vista, previously known under the codename of Longhorn, won’t be released until the next year, but we should be already preparing for it, especially those of us who are into computer games. Gamers’ interests are rather neglected in the published previews of the new OS, and this is not quite right, in our opinion. Yes, it’s exciting and useful to know as much information about a new OS as possible, but each OS, however innovative it may be, has no practical value for the end user without applications.
<%BANNER[article]%>Games are a most widespread and popular variety of typical applications that people run on their desktop computers. It goes without argument that quite a lot of future users of Windows Vista will play games, so it’s important to know how your graphics subsystem will perform in the new OS. Moreover, although the transition to the new OS is going to be a smooth and steady process for the computer world, gamers won’t avoid it just because the upcoming gaming titles will require support of technologies that can only be delivered by Windows Vista.
That’s the background behind this review. We want to fill in the blank and carry out a test of today’s graphics cards in the publicly available version of Windows Vista using a few popular games.
We took part in the Windows Vista customer preview program Microsoft offered in June. The company placed a Beta 2 version of the new OS (build 5384) on its website and made it available for download by ordinary users. We took the opportunity and downloaded the 64-bit version of Vista Beta 2 because the share of systems with 64-bit processors will only be growing in the future whereas the share of 32-bit systems will be shrinking.
This customer preview program for Windows Vista Beta 2 has been finished by now and the new OS isn’t available for download anymore. But those who have participated in the program will have an opportunity to test Windows Vista RC1, so this review will hopefully be complemented with new information soon. When you are reading and analyzing the results of our tests, you should always keep it in your mind that we got them with a beta version of the new OS. A lot of components in Windows Vista Beta 2 are not yet optimized, so our results may differ greatly from those you are going to have in the final or in the RC1 version of Microsoft’s new OS. You should regard them as a very, very rough estimate because the OS itself and the appropriate graphics drivers from ATI and Nvidia will yet undergo numerous changes until they reach the end user. It will take a long while till they take their final shape and are installed on our testbed and in your gaming computers for everyday use.
Before testing graphics cards under Windows Vista, we’d like to tell you about the new OS from Microsoft and our experience with it, focusing on the graphics technologies implemented in Vista.
Microsoft Windows Vista is the next step in evolution of the Windows NT family. This OS series was developing independently from the Windows 9x family and traces its origin a decade back to Windows NT 4.0, released on July 29, 1996. Earlier operating systems that belong to the third version of Windows NT aren’t interesting today.
Windows NT 4.0 proved to be a breakthrough in comparison with Windows 95 in terms of reliability and stability. This was largely achieved by hardware virtualization, i.e. by replacing direct hardware access with a system API that provided such access. As a result, the new OS was capable of working for a long time without failures and reboots which were too frequent with any Windows 9x machine. But notwithstanding the use of the Windows 9x interface, Windows NT 4.0 didn’t suit well for home use, mostly due to its poor compatibility with games and some other software.
This situation changed after the February 17, 2000, release of Windows 2000, but that OS, although free from the compatibility issues typical of Windows NT 4.0, was oriented at the corporate market; there was no version of it for a home user. Ordinary users, and PC gamers too, were supposed to use Windows 98 and, later on, Windows Me, which were both rather unreliable and capricious in comparison with Windows NT. Quite a lot of PC enthusiasts eventually transitioned to Windows 2000 Professional and are still using this OS even today when Windows XP is predominant on the OS market.
Windows XP was released on October 25, 2001, and made the Windows 9x architecture obsolete. Its Home Edition version was offered specially for home users and lacked certain features that were then only called for in the corporate sector, particularly support for multiple processors. In other words, for the first time in Windows NT history, an OS from that family was oriented at a home rather than a corporate user. As opposed to Windows 2000, Windows XP was more user-friendly, also because of its new graphical interface you should be familiar with. The NT architecture with additional mechanisms for system restoration and to avoid the so-called dll-hell made Windows XP the first consumer OS from Microsoft to be tolerant to incorrect user actions.
Windows XP eventually became the most widespread OS in the world and is in fact the single OS used on high-performance gaming platforms. However, the development of the successor to Windows XP was started in July 2001, even before the official release of XP. The project was originally named Longhorn and was expected to yield a new OS at the end of 2002 or in early 2003. That OS would take an intermediate position between Windows XP and Blackcomb, Microsoft’s next project.
Under the changing circumstances, however, the Blackcomb project was postponed far into the future whereas the Longhorn project was indeed started anew in 2004. They took the code of Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 as the basis for it whereas Longhorn builds earlier than 5000 had used the Windows XP code. Starting with build 5112 (Beta 1), released on July 27, 2005, the project changed its name from Longhorn to Windows Vista and the OS has acquired its main features. From that moment on, the development process was moving along the finish lane, so to say.
The Beta 2 version of the new OS (build 5384) was compiled on May 18, 2006, and it was made available for everyone who took part in the customer preview program on June 6. We’ve got this version of Windows Vista and will describe it in the next section.
The new Windows will hit the market in as many as five versions, three for home users (Vista Ultimate, Vista Home Premium and Vista Home Basic) and two for corporate users (Vista Enterprise and Vista Business). These versions will differ in their capabilities scope. Particularly, the simplest version Vista Home Basic will even lack the new Aero interface and some multimedia functions.
Vista Home Premium is mainly targeted at the home user who is interested in viewing and processing multimedia content and in playing games. The Enterprise and Business versions, as their names suggest, are meant for corporate environments. They lack a number of multimedia capabilities, but offer those features that are needed by the corporate user like enhanced security, file system encryption, support for smart cards, enhanced support of faxes, scanners, etc.
It is the Ultimate Edition that will boast the widest functionality, embracing all the features of other Windows Vista versions. This version will suit ideally for those users who are going to use one PC for both work and play and it is this version that was made available for download as part of Microsoft’s customer preview program we’ve mentioned above. Each version of Windows Vista exists in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors, but we chose the 64-bit one as the future-oriented one. An ISO image of the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Beta 2 Ultimate weighs 4.2GB (the image of the 32-bit version is smaller at 3.2GB) – the new OS will obviously be shipped on a DVD. Its installation files have a much larger total size than the files of Windows XP that used to fit easily on one CD.
According to Microsoft, a computer must meet the following hardware requirements to be touted as a Windows Vista Capable PC:
This hardware configuration will only suffice for the basic functionality of the new OS. To have the status of a Windows Vista Premium Ready PC, the computer must have the following:
What is an Aero-compatible graphics card? Microsoft defines it as a graphics card that has WDDM drivers (Windows Display Driver Model, earlier known as LDDM or Longhorn Display Driver Model), provides hardware support for version 2.0 pixel shaders, and supports a color depth of 32 bits per pixel. You also need at least 128MB of graphics memory with a memory bandwidth of 1.8GB/s and higher to enable resolutions above 1280x1024. So, there is no cause for worrying – an overwhelming majority of today’s graphics cards meet these requirements.
The amount of system RAM is a tricky issue. It seems that PC gamers will have to install at least 2 gigabytes of memory to use Windows Vista with comfort (the 64-bit version of Vista Home Basic supports up to 8GB of system memory while the more advanced versions of the new OS put almost no limitations on the amount of memory you can use). The 32-bit versions are limited by the scope of 32-bit addressing, but even they support 4GB of RAM and, unlike in Windows XP, applications can use all of that amount. Apart from games, 1 gigabyte should be quite enough for comfortable work in the Vista environment. For simple office work like typing and editing text, even 512MB of system RAM may be enough.
The rest of the requirements are obvious and provoke no questions.
An important and very interesting innovation in Windows Vista is the new graphics driver model which is called Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM, it had earlier been known as Longhorn Display Driver Model or LDDM). WDDM became necessary as it is closely related to the new Desktop Window Manager within whose framework the Aero interface works. From a technical point of view, DWM resembles the Quartz Compositor from Mac OS X. In DWM, application windows are drawn not directly on the screen as in previous versions of Windows, but are rendered into off-screen buffers which are then combined by the manager and output to the display device, hence the term desktop composition. Each window is an independent area for rendering. This allows using various graphics effects of the Aero interface, but requires support on the graphics driver side.
Although Windows Vista supports both driver models, the new user interface can only be used with a WDDM driver that supports the new WGF 1.0 API (and, later on, WGF 2.0). The abbreviation WGF spells out as Windows Graphics Foundation. This is the name of new APIs that replace DirectX. WGF 1.0 is based on a modified and enhanced Direct3D 9 API, so it is sometimes referred to as Direct3D 9.L. Working together with DWM, which architecturally sits on top of WGF 1.0 and WDDM-compatible drivers, this API runs the Windows Vista interface on an integrated or discrete DirectX 9-compatible graphics processor installed in your system. WGF 1.0 doesn’t bring about some great improvements, although simplifies the work of application developers to some extent. As for OpenGL support, there is no news. This API is supported either by using a driver provided by the GPU developer or by translating OpenGL calls into WGF 1.0 calls.
The WGF 2.0 API is sometimes referred to as DirectX 10 and is the next step in the evolution of the Windows Graphics Foundation. For this API to function properly, it must be supported by a WDDM driver as well as by graphics hardware with necessary functionality, namely graphics cards with a unified graphics pipeline, e.g. cards based on the ATI R600 GPU. Such graphics cards will be able to execute version 4.0 shaders and work with a new type of shaders, geometry shaders. These and some other features will make them compatible with WGF 2.0. In other words, it is WGF 2.0 that can be regarded as a truly new API, providing new capabilities, improving graphics quality in games and achieving a new level of realism. It is from WGF 2.0 that gamers will profit the most.
Another important feature of WGF 2.0 or Direct3D 10 is the lack of the so-called “capability bits”. Instead, the new standard defines a uniform list of minimum functionality for the graphics card to support. A graphics subsystem must support all the features from that list to be touted as Direct3D 10-compatible. Otherwise, there is no compatibility. This guarantees unification among next-generation GPUs and allows game developers to use WGF 2.0 without taking into consideration the architectural peculiarities of a particular GPU irrespective of its manufacturer, AMD/ATI Technologies, Intel or Nvidia Corporation.
We will see if games that make use of the new API will be able to run under WGF 1.0 only after such games, drivers, etc. are released. This is unlikely, however, considering the hardware requirements of WGF 2.0, but still it’s yet too early to discuss the advantages of the new API in earnest. Let’s get back to WDDM for now.
The WDDM architecture, which is the foundation for the Desktop Window Manager and, accordingly, for the Aero interface, is based on three key features:
The first feature is actually nothing else but multi-tasking, but for the GPU rather than the CPU. This allows running several threads of code generated by different processes simultaneously on a single GPU. It’s like with the CPU: the WDDM scheduler distributes GPU resources among the different applications that request them. The scheduling can be basic or extended. Within the WGF 1.0 framework only the first, basic level of graphical multi-tasking is implemented. It has a number of limitations. Particularly, the execution of a shader program or the rendering of a graphics primitive cannot be interrupted and must be completed before the GPU can switch to another process. This is not an optimal solution in terms of overall performance, so WGF 2.0 offers an extended GPU scheduling mode in which the execution of a program can be interrupted. As a result, the simultaneous processing of multiple tasks can be performed more effectively. The Window Manager in Vista uses the basic GPU scheduling mode so, theoretically, conflicts with user software that makes intensive use of the graphics pipeline are possible. We didn’t see such problems in practice, though.
The memory virtualization technique is alike to the memory paging mechanism in the OS, but works with the graphics card. It allows allotting graphics memory for data needed at the moment and unloading unnecessary data into system RAM or, if there is no free space in system RAM, to the hard drive (a considerable performance hit is unavoidable in the latter case, of course). So, graphics memory virtualization helps avoid problems arising due to shortage of graphics memory and provides for a more efficient distribution of available resources among the competing graphics applications. This concept is somewhat similar to the GART mode of the AGP bus that allowed storing textures in system memory rather than in the graphics card’s onboard memory.
The shared use of DirectX surfaces is perhaps the most important WDDM component because it is this feature that allows applications to render into off-screen buffers so that the contents of the buffers could then be combined and output on the display. This works with all types of windows: GDI, DirectX or mixed. Describing this mechanism in detail is beyond the scope of this review, but we’d want to note that the virtualization of all processes in WDDM prohibits direct access to the primary surface, i.e. to the display. If an application tries to access it, DWM shuts down and the Aero interface becomes disabled, too, until the application that has provoked the exception quits.
Another key feature is that WDDM supports checking of commands and parameters given to the graphics subsystem for correctness. This feature help improve stability of 3D applications. If supported by the driver, this check is performed by the graphics hardware to save CPU resources.
Summarizing this part of the review, we should again say that WDDM is one of the most important parts of the Windows Vista infrastructure because you can’t utilize all the features of the new OS from Microsoft without an appropriate graphics driver. We’ve also told you why Windows Vista will have to be installed on every gaming computer: the new generation of games using WGF 1.0 and, later on, WGF 2.0 will arrive sooner or later, and they will only run in a Vista environment with WDDM drivers installed.
The sequel to the popular sci-fi shooter Halo, scheduled for a January 2007 release, will be the first game of that new generation. Even the full name of the game indicates its OS requirement: Halo 2 for Windows Vista. We don’t know if the game will use WGF 2.0 – most likely not – but it is announced as a game to be run exclusively under the new OS from Microsoft.
On the other hand, next-generation graphics cards with unified shader architecture will be utterly useless outside the Windows Vista environment. They will have Windows XP drivers, but the capabilities of the new graphics architecture won’t be used fully in Windows XP because Direct3D 10 (WGF 2.0) will not be released separately for installation into Windows XP/2000 environments.
In other words, a PC gamer has to transition to Windows Vista not only because this OS offers enhanced graphics-related capabilities, but also because of the unique nature of those capabilities: future games will not be able to run under Windows XP which will lack support for WDDM and Direct3D 10. The transition to the new OS will obviously call for a considerable overhaul of your computer. You may need to enlarge the amount of system RAM and, later on, to install a WGF 2.0-compatible graphics card. But that’s the cost of progress we all have to pay for.
After our first attempt to install Windows Vista we understood the requirement of having 15GB of free space on the hard drive. The OS took as much as 11.5GB on the HDD with a total of over 50,000 files. Moreover, the OS refused to install from a Lite-On LDW-411S attached to a Serial ATA port via an ABIT Serillel 2 converter. We had to use an ordinary Parallel ATA connector and everything went smoothly then. The installation process itself takes about twice the amount of time it does with Windows XP, which is normal considering the total size of Windows Vista files. There are rather few dialogs during the installation, but this makes the process simpler for inexperienced users. After all, you can set everything up the way you want after the new OS is installed.
The new user interface Aero is of course the most conspicuous innovation in Windows Vista. One glance is enough to realize that Vista is completely different visually from Windows XP.
The borders of windows in Aero are transparent so you can see all the windows underneath. The Minimize, Maximize and Close buttons are highlighted when you approach them with your mouse pointer. The system font Segoe UI has been increased from 8 to 9 points and uses antialiasing by default. Subjectively, the system works smoothly, without sudden performance fluctuations, yet we got an impression that all processes worked more slowly in Windows Vista than in Windows XP as if the new OS reacted to user actions with a delay, although not a very long one. What’s interesting, the system reaction speed didn’t change much after we disabled Aero and switched to the Vista Basic and then to the Windows Standard/Classic interface (on our testbed with 1GB of system RAM). The latter interfaces require less of system RAM, though.
Here are a few numbers: if you use Aero, then right after the OS is booted, the memory usage indicator in the Side Bar shows about 65% and the Task Manager reports that about 1.2GB of memory is occupied by the OS. The processes explorer.exe and DWM.exe take up 62 and 137MB of RAM, respectively. If you switch to the Windows Standard theme, the memory usage indicator shows 50-55%, the Task Manager reports that about 960MB of memory is in use, and the processes explorer.exe and DWM.exe take up 16 and 36.5MB of memory, respectively. So, you have to sacrifice some system memory to be able to run the 3D Aero interface. Note that the numbers are only true for Windows Vista Beta 2 and may be different in the final version of the OS.
A curious fact, the CPU usage was 20-25% when the system was idle until we installed the beta version of ATI Catalyst. This indicates that the generic driver included into the OS is deficient in some way or another. Perhaps, it doesn’t fully support WDDM or cannot verify the correctness of commands sent to the graphics subsystem on the graphics card (we used a Sapphire Toxic Radeon X1900 XTX) and does that on the CPU instead.
New in the Windows interface, Windows Flip and Flip 3D are original methods of switching between the running tasks. Windows Flip is invoked by the traditional shortcut Alt+Tab and differs from the classic switching mechanism in that it shows a thumbnail for each task to make the process visual. Flip 3D is invoked by pressing Win+Tab and uses 3D capabilities of the Aero interface: you’ll see a row of windows with the running applications one behind another and at an angle to your line of sight, the contents of the windows being updated in real time.
You can switch between the windows by pressing the mentioned shortcut or by moving your mouse wheel. If you choose the Desktop window, you’ll minimize all the application windows to see your Desktop as if you clicked the appropriate icon in the Quick Launch panel. Flip 3D is a handy feature, but not very beautiful, to tell you the truth: the application windows do not use antialiasing and have the characteristic artifacts, which make them not very pretty to look at. This drawback will probably be corrected in the upcoming Windows Vista builds.
Also new in the interface of Windows is the Side Bar. That’s an arguable innovation, but it seems handy enough to us. You can disable it, though, if you don’t like it. The panel offers flexible setup options and allows installing various plug-ins called gadgets like a clock, RSS reader, calculator, CPU/memory usage indicator, etc.
So, you can set up your Side Bar the way you like while the number of available gadgets will only be growing. New gadgets are being developed right now and become available at the Microsoft website.
In the security field, Microsoft’s new OS offers the User Account Control feature. UAC divides all tasks in Windows Vista in two groups: available for launch by ordinary users and available to the administrators only. This division is based on how deeply the given task can change the system. Even administrators cannot escape UAC: most of the time they will work in unprivileged mode, just like ordinary users. But when they try to commit a system-affecting action, a UAC dialog appears to request a confirmation.
The system actually stops its work at that moment and enters secure more. What you can see behind the UAC window is nothing else but a static screenshot of the Desktop. Upon receiving the administrator’s confirmation, the system unfreezes and continues to work. The ordinary user finds himself under an even stricter UAC surveillance: he gets a dialog box that asks to enter the administrator password. Without the appropriate privileges, the user won’t be able to perform a potentially dangerous action.
The UAC mechanisms greatly improve the security and reliability of Windows Vista, but do not work transparently as yet. You get too many of UAC dialogs, so this protection starts getting on your nerves, especially from the point of view of an experienced system administrator. You can disable User Account Control, but the system will become less secure as the result. We hope that UAC will be improved in the final version of Windows Vista and won’t plague the user with questions and dialogs as it does now. As far as we know, Microsoft plans to make UAC transparent for the end-user, so we expect the new OS will come out with a powerful and reliable security tool.
Talking about Windows Vista, we cannot pass by Internet Explorer 7. The new version of Microsoft’s browser leaves largely positive impressions, although there’s nothing very innovative in it. Most of the new features, like support for tabs, plug-ins, RSS feeds, several search engines, have been borrowed from Opera or Firefox where you could have used them for long. So, the new Internet Explorer has finally caught up with the competing browsers in functionality and even left them behind in terms of security. We mean the option of using it in protected mode and the so-called phishing filter that cuts off websites that try to access your private information (passwords, credit card numbers, etc) without your permission.
As for the protected mode, it means that all scripts and other Web content will be launched in isolation from the rest of the system to increase the overall security of the OS because malicious scripts won’t be able to access anything outside the browser to harm your computer. Among the disadvantages of Internet Explorer 7 there is the lack of a download manager. You still have to download files in the old way, without an option of continuing a download if the connection is broken or pausing a download.
Overall, the new browser is good, but might be better if it were not for certain small things that would make life easier for the user. For example, when you press Ctrl+T to open a new tab, the cursor doesn’t jump into the address bar, like in Mozilla Firefox, and you have to put it in there manually. Perhaps most of such things will be corrected in the final release of IE 7 for Windows Vista.
Speaking in general, Windows Vista doesn’t bring any dramatic changes over Windows XP for an ordinary user. The new OS just contains a lot of improvements here and there: the menus and panels are redesigned and rearranged in many places; the Search option is now more deeply integrated with the Explorer and is available everywhere; the design of all system components has been improved, etc. It’s impossible to enumerate all the changes, and that’s not our goal, after all. But we can assure you that a Windows XP user won’t take long to get used to the Windows Vista environment.
Since we’re discussed a Beta 2 version of Windows Vista, it is natural that the system performance is far from perfect, its requirements to the hardware resources are too high, and its stability is lacking. These are things unavoidable in any beta software, and they will be unavoidably corrected in the final version of the OS. It’s only after the official release that we’ll be able to make our evaluation of Windows Vista and judge its perspectives. Everything written and published before that moment should only be regarded as very preliminary information so that you could have at least a vague notion of what to expect from Microsoft’s new OS.
And now we’ve come to the goal of this review, a practical test of today’s graphics cards in Windows Vista Beta 2.
We performed our tests on a testbed that was configured like follows:
We couldn’t test Nvidia’s graphics cards in the new OS environment because the driver for the 64-bit Windows Vista available at the time of our writing this review at the Nvidia website lacked a control panel and thus didn’t offer us control over the graphics quality settings. That’s why we decided to give up Nvidia’s cards, limiting ourselves to ATI’s solutions only. The Catalyst Control Center in the ATI Catalyst driver for Windows Vista Beta 2 doesn’t differ from the ordinary Control Center, so we could easily choose our traditional settings:
We selected the highest graphics quality in games. We didn’t modify the games’ configuration files and didn’t use the driver profiles optimized for specific applications. The frame rate was measured by the game’s own tools or, if not available, by the Fraps utility. If the game doesn’t support recording/reproducing demo clips, we benchmarked it manually with Fraps. We also measured minimum frame rates whenever possible.
Besides the standard resolutions of 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 pixels, we also used 1920x1200 in games that supported widescreen modes. Windows Vista being a new-generation operating system and quite demanding about the hardware you run it on, we limited our tests to the Radeon X1900 family as to the highest-performing and functional for today. The recently released Radeon X1950 XTX is not included as it is not supported by the beta version of ATI’s graphics driver for Vista.
We realized that Windows Vista Beta 2 was far from perfect right after we tried to launch our standard set of games in it. We had all manner of problems and glitches: Battlefield 2 started up but then stopped to load its data and showed a black screen. Far Cry started normally, but the file that launched the benchmarking scenario probably had a conflict with DWM: we could only switch the display resolutions in that game if the Desktop resolution was set at 1280x1024. If the latter parameter was set at 1920x1200, we couldn’t change from a higher to a lower resolution in the game.
We also couldn’t change the display resolution in Serious Sam 2. Games that use StarForce protection (Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and X3: Reunion) didn’t launch because the StarForce libraries turned to be incompatible with Windows Vista.
Titan Quest started up normally, but showed blinking black screens. Image artifacts could also be observed in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
Quake 4
Serious Sam 2
X3: Reunion
The tested version of Vista offers poor support for OpenGL applications: Prey, Quake 4 and Pacific Fighters wouldn’t start up under the new OS. Many games wouldn’t launch or were very unstable, namely F.E.A.R., Half-Life 2: Episode One, Hitman: Blood Money, Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
The following games ran without big problems and were used in the review: Call of Duty 2, Far Cry (considering the above-mentioned problem), Tomb Raider: Legend, and Age of Empires 3.
This is only four titles out eighteen that we usually use in our graphics card reviews. Not much, especially when you recall that Windows Vista is positioned as an ideal home OS, i.e. as an ideal OS for games! Windows Vista Beta 2 offers poor compatibility with games, at least its 64-bit version does. Microsoft still has a lot of work to do till its new project is ready to be used by ordinary consumers. Anyway, we offer you the results of the tests we could obtain.
There’s a terrible performance hit in Far Cry: about 40% for the senior models in the Radeon X1900 family and 30-35% for the Radeon X1900 GT. In Windows XP, you can run this game on a Radeon X1900 XTX or XT with 4x FSAA in every resolution, including the exotic 1920x1200, but Vista Beta 2 limits you to 1600x1200 or even to 1280x1024 (on the Radeon X1900 GT).
The same can be seen on the Research map, in the underground base. The performance hit from transitioning to Windows Vista is smaller than in the previous case, yet is big enough all the same.
It’s different in the HDR (FP16) mode: the Radeon X1900 XT slows down from transitioning to the Vista environment only in 1280x1024 while the Radeon X1900 XTX becomes slower in every case. The specifics of the HDR implementation in Far Cry for ATI cards combine with the specifics of the operation of the new window manager in Vista to produce this result. Whatever the cause, we’ve still got a performance hit.
A substantial performance hit can be observed in Windows Vista: in high resolutions the powerful Radeon X1900 XTX delivers just a little higher frame rate in the new OS than the Radeon X1900 GT does in Windows XP. It’s possible to play Call of Duty 2 in Windows XP using full-screen antialiasing and anisotropic filtering, but that’s impossible in Vista even in 1280x1024 – the average frame rate is lower than 50fps.
We see performance sink here just as it did in the previous cases. The game is very demanding, so you can’t use it under Windows Vista with full-screen antialiasing even on a Radeon X1900 XTX. The Radeon X1900 GT slows down less for some reason. It may be due to some specifics of the Desktop Window Manager, but we can’t yet give you a precise explanation.
Age of Empires 3 runs more slowly under Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 than under Windows XP. So, even with such a powerful graphics card as Radeon X1900 XTX, you cannot play in 1920x1200 and have just a bare minimum of comport in 1600x1200.
Even without the results of the gaming tests it is clear that Windows Vista Beta 2 is too “raw” a product to be used for everyday activities. Well, its Beta status doesn’t promise anything. The problems in the new operating system are quite expectable at the current stage of its development, but this is only a temporary thing. Bugs will be eliminated, stability will be raised to the necessary level, and the hardware requirements will become more modest than today when a lot of OS components aren’t yet polished off.
Windows Vista Beta 2 can’t be used for playing games because it is just incompatible with many titles and leads to a considerable performance hit in others. This is at least true for the currently available beta version of ATI’s graphics card driver. Windows Vista allows using the ordinary driver, written in the Windows XP framework (XPDM), but that driver does not have even the basic support for WGF and does not allow using such a key innovation of Vista as the Aero interface. It means that gaming tests in Windows Vista with old drivers wouldn’t be adequate.
By the time the final version of Windows Vista is released, most of the compatibility issues will have been corrected and new drivers will have been written to solve the problem with performance in games. We will see all this in the future, perhaps not a very distant future. Beta versions of Windows Vista suit only for us to become a little familiar with Microsoft’s new operating system. And we shouldn’t fall into the mistake of making any final conclusions out of this preliminary experience. As soon as games that demand WGF support to run appear, the transition of gaming platforms to Windows Vista will be inevitable. But so far, Windows XP is the main OS for gaming platforms and will remain such for quite a long while yet.