by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko
07/24/2009 | 06:00 PM
It is no secret for anyone that Microsoft’s massive campaign promoting the new Windows Vista operating system was if not a complete disaster, then at least a partial failure. Its outcome turned out to be pretty far from the initial expectations. Although overall the new OS turned out quite OK and boasted a number of innovations that distinguished it in a positive way from the outdated Windows XP, a number of compatibility issues as well as extremely high system requirements did have a serious effect on the popularity of the new Windows Vista among the masses. The extremely aggressive promotion of the new OS also contributed to this outcome, because very often the user was simply left with no choice: first, it was relatively hard to find Windows XP drivers for a number of new hardware devices, and second, only Windows Vista supported the new DirectX 10 API. All these reasons didn’t make the new Microsoft OS a people product. Especially gamers were mostly forced to install it rather than did it out of their own free will due to attractive features and fast performance.
Although Service Pack 1 and then Service Pack 2 did cure some of the “childhood issues”, the developers understood that the new OS was a market failure despite all the innovations. As a result, Microsoft undertook an unprecedented measure having forced the development of their next operation system that was coming to replace Vista called Windows 7. The final version of Microsoft Windows 7 should hit the market on October 22, 2009, which is less than three years after Windows Vista came out. It is really something that has never happened before in the entire history of the Redmond giant. They are currently very aggressive in promoting Windows 7: they made Release Candidate 1 version available to general public on May 5, 2009. Moreover, Microsoft again did something they had never done before: they allowed anyone who downloaded Windows 7 RC1 to work in it without any restrictions up until March 2010! This measure speaks better than words showing once again how unsuccessful the Windows Vista marketing campaign was and what a cool welcome it received from the computer user community. Just a few days ago, on July 18, one more thing happened that once again confirmed how extremely accelerated the development of the new OS is: the final RTM version of Windows 7 operating system leaked into the Internet and we have our suspicions that this leak may have been planned by Microsoft as another way of increasing the popularity of the new OS.
All Windows 7 previews state that the new Microsoft operating system will be extremely successful and is almost guaranteed to become very popular. Hardware developers and manufacturers, including AMD and Nvidia, also work closely with Microsoft on developing new drivers for Windows 7. Just recently the leading players in the consumer 3D market announced the release of their unified ATI Catalyst 9.7 and Nvidia GeForce 190.38 drivers. They are especially interesting to us due to the fact that it is for the first time the graphics card drivers are claimed to support DirectX 11 API included with Windows 7.
I would like to point out that Catalyst Control Center 9.7 has been completely redesigned and improved. Instead of a confusing tree-like menu in the left panel, we see a logical tab system. And the control panel itself doesn’t use skins anymore that it is it looks very nicely integrated into the OS interface.
However, the Nvidia GeForce control panel interface for Windows 7 remained the same as for Windows Vista. It is pretty convenient although some owners of Nvidia based solutions still wish they could get back the option when all the settings could be adjusted from the corresponding tab in the device properties.
But we got extremely interested in checking out new ATI Catalyst and Nvidia GeForce driver versions not only because they were new and supported DirectX 11. First, it is extremely interesting to see how gaming graphics cards will perform in Windows 7, and second, ATI and Nvidia both claimed that the 3D performance could improve in Windows 7 as well. Here are some screenshots from the marketing materials that confirm this statement:
Screenshot from Nvidia's marketing materials
Screenshot from ATI's marketing materials
It seems to us that both companies are extremely optimistic about the possible performance gain: they believe that by simply upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 can in some cases provide 10-20% performance boost and sometimes even more than that. Well, we have to check things out ourselves, we can’t just take everything for granted that is why we decided to undertake an investigation of our own. We used the officially available legal copy of the new operating system: Windows 7 RC1 installed onto our primary testbed.
We are going to investigate the performance of new ATI and Nvidia graphics card drivers in contemporary gaming titles running under Windows 7 using the following testbed:
The graphics card drivers were configured in the following way:
ATI Catalyst:
Nvidia GeForce:
The list of benchmarks includes the following gaming titles and synthetic tests:
First-Person 3D Shooters
Third-Person 3D Shooters
RPG
Simulators
Strategies
Semi-synthetic Benchmarks
We selected the highest possible level of detail in each game using standard tools provided by the game itself from the gaming menu. The games configuration files weren’t modified in any way, because the ordinary user doesn’t have to know how to do it. We made a few exceptions for selected games if that was necessary. We are going to specifically dwell on each exception like that later on in our article. Unfortunately, we couldn’t complete our performance tests in Call of Duty: World at War because the game version e had at our disposal worked incorrectly under Windows 7 and wouldn’t let us launch a single-user scenario.
We took one single-processor and one dual-processor graphics solution from each camp. Here are the graphics cards that will participate in our today’s test session:
We ran our tests in the following resolutions: 1280x1024, 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600. Everywhere, where it was possible we added MSAA 4x antialiasing to the standard anisotropic filtering 16x. We enabled antialiasing from the game’s menu. If this was not possible, we forced them using the appropriate driver settings of ATI Catalyst and Nvidia GeForce drivers.
Performance was measured with the games’ own tools and the original demos were recorded if possible. We measured not only the average speed, but also the minimum speed of the cards where possible. Otherwise, the performance was measured manually with Fraps utility version 2.9.8. In the latter case we ran the test three times and took the average of the three for the performance charts.
The game uses deferred rendering and does not support FSAA. Instead, it uses integrated antialiasing algorithms that use the computing resources of the GPU.
First of all we notice that ATI CrossFireX technology works correctly here: Radeon HD 4870 X2 easily takes the lead and outperforms GeForce GTX 295 with the new Catalyst driver version. However, when it comes to performance improvement obtained by switching from Windows Vista to Windows 7, things are not so simple anymore. Yes, performance does improve, and it is more obvious by AMD solutions than by Nvidia ones, which only show some change in 1280x1024 resolution. However, the gain is only 3% at best. It is definitely not the result you should be looking for after putting up with all the inconveniences of OS reinstall.
The performance does increase here. Not dramatically, but it does. Overall the gain doesn’t exceed 3-4% and in 2560x1600 resolution Radeon HD 4870 X2 even runs a little slower in Windows 7 than in Windows Vista. There is an exception, however. In this same resolution GeForce GTX 295 started to perform 9% better, which obviously can’t be explained by a measuring error of any kind. However, there is no real practical value to that, because in reality we are talking about performance increase from 14.3 to 15.6 fps.
We disabled the integrated average frame rate limiter in the game console. The game’s built-in benchmarking options do not provide information about the minimal speed, so there is no such info in the diagrams.
The results are pretty mixed. Overall, the new AMD and Nvidia drivers perform the same in Windows 7 and Windows Vista, with a slight advantage in favor of Windows 7.
The situation here is pretty complicated for GeForce GTX 295: this solution can win as well as lose from the transition to Windows 7. However, these changes do not affect the gaming comfort in any way, because the difference varies between 2% and 7%. However, other testing participants speed up in Windows 7, although really insignificantly. We see no wonder promised to us by Advanced Micro Devices, but on the other hand we didn’t see any performance worsening either, so there is no reason to give up Windows 7 in this case.
There is no breakthrough here. All graphics cards perform almost the same in Windows 7 and Windows Vista, and the slight results difference falls within the acceptable measuring error. Nevertheless, minimal performance of the Radeon HD 4890 is considerably higher in Windows 7. And I have to say that this increase is very stable and can be observed in all resolutions, although it is not high enough to ensure gaming comfort in 2560x1600.
This game is based on Source engine and has built-in benchmarking tools that report no minimal performance readings.
GeForce GTX 295 is stably 4-5% faster in Windows 7, while GeForce GTX 275 speeds up by about 6%. At the same time, ATI Radeon barely benefits from the new Microsoft operating system. Only in 1280x1024 the average performance of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 increases by 11%, although the release notes for Catalyst 9.7 claimed a much more substantial performance improvement in high resolutions with enabled FSAA 4x.
To achieve playable speed in this game we disabled FSAA and such resource-consuming options as Sun rays, Wet surfaces and Volumetric Smoke. We used the Enhanced full dynamic lighting (DX10) mode and additionally enabled the DirectX 10.1 mode for the ATI cards.
We see no performance increase on transition to Windows 7, and in some cases the performance even drops, though not dramatically. The losses make no more than 2-3%. Only in 2560x1600 average performance of Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 drops down by 5%. The minimal performance in the latter case remains unchanged, so it doesn’t affect the gaming comfort at all.
Only AMD/ATI solutions win from the transition to Windows 7. Namely, the average performance of Radeon HD 4890 improves by 5-7% depending on the resolution. The readings off the dual-processor Radeon HD 4870 X2 increase by about the same number, except 1280x1024 resolution, where something else not connected to the graphics card specs, must be limiting the performance of this accelerator.
Like in most other cases, installing Windows 7 instead of Windows Vista provides minima performance boost of only 2-4%. Nothing has seriously changed in the minimal performance levels, either. I would like to stress that Radeon HD 4870 X2 did lose some speed in 2560x1600 and ran almost 3% slower.
Fallout 3 fans won’t benefit from installing Windows 7, but won’t lose anything either. The maximum performance gain is only 2% demonstrated by GeForce GTX 295 in 1280x1024 resolution. Just like in other popular contemporary games, the player won’t feel a thing change by switching to the new Microsoft Windows 7 OS.
Another game and another confirmation of what we have just seen: the performance of the same graphics accelerator will at best improve by 2% when you replace Windows Vista with Windows 7. It is obviously absolutely unnoticeable from the practical standpoint when the general performance level is around 90-140 fps.
We used the in-game benchmarking tools that do not allow measuring the minimal frame rate. We also enabled DirectX 10.1 support for ATI’s solutions.
The performance of AMD/ATI solutions leaves much to be desired in Windows 7. Other than that everything we have already said above is true for this game, too. If there is any performance improvement provided by the new OS, it is for most part very small, no more than 3-4%.
This game has one peculiarity: with maximum level of detail the minimal performance is extremely low even if the average performance is quite acceptable. And it doesn’t matter what graphics card is used: ATI Radeon HD or Nvidia GeForce. As for the performance differences between Windows Vista and Windows 7, there are none: the obtained results coincided with up to 0.2-0.4 fps precision.
It is one of those rare cases when we managed to detect more or less significant differences in the performance of a single graphics card working in Windows Vista and Windows 7. However, for GeForce GTX 295 the use of the new OS brings over a 2-6% performance drop, while for Radeon HD 4870 X2 the same change results into an improvement of 2-11% depending on the resolution. In the latter case, in 1280x1024 resolution we recorded a 27% increase of minimal performance.
We minimize the CPU’s influence in 3DMark Vantage by using the Extreme profile (1920x1200, 4x FSAA and anisotropic filtering). We also publish the results of the individual tests across all display resolutions to provide a full picture.
The tests in 3DMark Vantage didn’t reveal any advantages of Windows 7 vs. Windows Vista, which we had actually expected.
With a few exceptions the results of individual tests confirmed the total score. Only in 1280x1024 Radeon HD 4870 X2 demonstrated about 6% improvement.
The results of our today’s test session turned out quite predictable: even if the use of Windows 7 instead of Windows Vista did provide a gaming performance increase, it was really minimal in most cases. We didn’t reveal any serious performance worsening as well, which is also quite normal. The Operating system should in fact be transparent to the user because it is simply an interface where the user’s applications, including games, are launched.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as flawless as planned. One of the games that is usually included into our standard benchmarking set – Call of Duty: World at War – refused to work correctly in Windows 7. However, there is still a lot of time before the final version of the new Microsoft system comes out, so the problem will definitely be fixed by then: in the OS, drivers or game updates. It is also possible that it was a unique encounter that occurred only on our specific test platform.
Let’s take a closer look at the performance comparison between Windows Vista and Windows 7:
GeForce GTX 295 demonstrated maximum performance boost from the use of Windows 7 in 1280x1024 in Crysis Warhed game, but even in this case the gain never reached 10%. The anti-record also belongs to the same graphics adapter: a 7% performance drop in Far Cry 2 and 5% drop in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. In most cases the difference varies between -4% and 5-6%, which doesn’t affect the gaming comfort in any way. The gamer who doesn’t really care about the numbers in Fraps won’t really feel these tiny performance fluctuations.
In 1680x1050 the delta is even smaller: performance varies between -6 and 7%. The average performance gain changes from 3.5% for GeForce GTX 275 to 7% for Radeon HD 4870 X2. Theoretically it may indicate better quality of ATI driver optimization, especially since the worst result again belongs to Nvidia. However, in reality the difference is too small to make any definite statements at this point.
Advanced Micro Devices software developers have definitely done a better job on optimizing their drivers than their colleagues from Nvidia: ATI Radeon HD performance gain from the use of Windows 7 hits almost 8% and occurs much more often than by Nvidia GeForce. Overall, the gamer won’t really feel any significant difference between the two operating systems, so transition to Windows 7 may only be justified by new features and convenience of use that this new OS has to offer.
Nvidia takes over the leadership here with a 9% performance improvement by GeForce GTX 295 in Crysis Warhead, but it also loses 7% in Far Cry 2. AMD /ATI solutions demonstrate smaller performance fluctuations, and although the performance increase doesn’t reach the levels promised in catalyst 9.7 release notes, it is nevertheless pretty stable. Looks like AMD is indeed the leader in Windows 7 driver development today, even though they tend to exaggerate their leadership a little.
Overall let me say once again that replacing Windows Vista with Windows 7 won’t become a panacea for super performance and won’t deliver free tens of percents to you. Moreover, it would be really strange if it did. Yes, Windows 7 seems to be nicer to work with, however, it hardly has anything to do with performance in contemporary games. We don’t see any serious reasons that could require mass transition of gaming platforms from Windows Vista to Windows 7, although the new Microsoft OS does look very successful. Many users will surely like it, but “increased gaming performance” is very unlikely to become a reason for transition.
As usual, we recommend updating ATI and Nvidia graphics card drivers with the latest official versions independent of the OS type you use, because they not only improve performance but also fix certain existing issues. Namely, Catalyst 9.7 is worth installing due to improved user interface and correct implementation of CrossFireX technology in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, and GeForce 190.38 – due to OpenGL 3.1 support. Both drivers also support the involvement of GPU resources for video encoding in 64-bit Windows 7 version.