Vista DRM to slow down high-end graphics? [update 1]
by Kyle Orland 
{ Dec 25th 2006 at 12:45PM }
We've posted before on how the Vista brand will change the PC gaming market. But how will the OS affect the gameplay experience itself? An in-depth analysis of the operating system's draconian digital rights management features suggests gamers might not be too happy with some of the system's unintended performance effects.The write-up itself is long and rather technical, but the main section of interest to gamers deals with unnecessary CPU resource consumption. Apparently, Vista does a sweep of all computer hardware over 30 times every second to make sure no one is trying to leech a digital video signal through a modification. Besides taking up valuable computing cycles, this method also makes it harder for the computer to perform video decompression, especially in low-end graphics chips.
While it remains to be seen how these "features" will actually impact Vista games, the fact that it's even an issue is enough to make us question Microsoft's devotion to Vista gaming. As the analysis' author puts it, "I wonder how [the gaming] market segment will react to knowing that their top-of-the-line hardware is being hamstrung by all of the content-protection "features" that Vista hogties it with?"
[Update: Fixed typo in headline]
[Via Boing Boing]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
nick @ Dec 25th 2006 12:55PM
I don't think you can blame Microsoft for the DRM required by HD DVD or Blu-Ray. They're merely supporting the requirements to play those formats.
If anything, blame the corsortiums that created HD DVD and Blu-Ray.
Jeramy @ Dec 25th 2006 1:03PM
"to slows down"
riiiiiiiight.....
Extinction @ Dec 25th 2006 1:01PM
MS is a member of that consortium
v2micca @ Dec 25th 2006 1:05PM
Ouch. Wow, I was kind of on the fence regarding Windows Vista but this article clenched it for me. I see know reason to upgrade to an OS that is going to handcuff my system that dramatically. The only thing Vistas is even offering that I want is the next version of DirectX and I'm fairly certain that I'll be able to get it without subject my system to the prison sentence that is Vistas.
azesino @ Dec 25th 2006 1:07PM
#2
MS didn't help created HD DVD, Toshiba did it all by them selves, MS just happen to be a member of the consortioum that is backing them, not that help them create it.
Erwos @ Dec 25th 2006 1:14PM
The entire idea seems nonsensical. HDCP is only required by copyprotected _media_. Games aren't going to require or use it, thus, there's going to be no polling overhead. Ditto for the microphone thing.
SowKnee @ Dec 25th 2006 1:40PM
I'm not usually one of the anti-Microsoft crowd, but I have to say I am not looking forward to Vista. I have been using RC1 on a desktop unit for a couple of months, and while the OS looks pretty it is significantly slower. I hope this is due to the beta version I am using and will be resolved with the true launch. I guess it's "wait & see" for me.
linex7 @ Dec 25th 2006 1:58PM
I've actually been trying out RC2 on a computer since it came out, and on my machine it runs noticeably faster than XP did on it. It is a higher end system though, which Vista is optimized for.
AndrewNeo @ Dec 25th 2006 2:21PM
I run Vista RTM, and even with Aero Glass running, HL2 -still- runs faster than it did in XP. Of course, it slows down when I do the Win+Tab (the 3d switcher) but that's probably to be expected.
uh_oh @ Dec 25th 2006 3:36PM
Well we can say this or that but we won't know for sure until its in our hands. I dont really care for bluray hddvd on my computer anyway. Ill get one of the hddvd drives for my 360 and watch it on the nice tv. Not a big deal to me, im getting vista for free through microsoft.
Skip @ Dec 25th 2006 2:49PM
There is a slight amount of real information in this article amid all the scare-mongering, but not much. The author seems to be postulating some circumstance where your system might be silently "infected" with protected content that would silently degrade all other content on the system. This is simply not so.
The requirements for DRM basically say that IF you're playing some protected content, the entire channel that the content passes through has to be secure, or it has to go down in quality or be blocked if the content provider wants it. That's it. What does this mean for games? Not a darn thing, because game content won't be protected with DRM.
Now, I _suppose_ that there might be some really contrived circumstances. Say, you're listening to some DRM'd mmusic while playing a game, or have a dual-monitor setup and are watching some protected content on one screen while playing on another. But those are fairly contrived.
ymmv @ Dec 25th 2006 3:39PM
I agree that the heading is misleading and the article is mostly scare-mongering. The DRM in Vista only applies to (guess what) DRM protected content. When you're playing DRM-free music and video the DRM protection won't kick in. The DRM in Vista is mostly there to keep HD-DVD movies from being ripped. If you don't play HD-DVD, you won't notice any difference with XP.
I find it also very hard to believe that is has any impact on games, since they don't have DRM but other forms of copy protection. Any form of protection will use CPU cycles, perhaps even 30 times a second but I wonder if those additional DRM/copy protection instructions will be noticeable on PCs that can do a billion computer instructions each second. If you're so worried about your computer doing 1% below expectation while playing DRM protected movies, switch off any unneeded Windows service and you've got your performance back.
Hamza @ Dec 25th 2006 3:45PM
This is just a scare article. Vista runs games perfectly fine.
http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6543881.html?tag=blog
DeejayKnight @ Dec 25th 2006 4:08PM
So, if this is true, wouldn't this be a notice to those wishing to rip HDDVD movies to use another OS for their ripping purposes?
This will merely send more people to an OS that doesn't check 30 times a second to see if you're ripping.
Not that it really matters to me.
ryan @ Dec 25th 2006 4:18PM
vista eats babies
ban vista
zOMG FUD
Jau_Peacecraft @ Dec 27th 2006 5:36AM
once again people shit their pants...
come on guys, its WINDOWS, there's always a way to disable shit in windows.
Shibathedog @ Dec 28th 2006 11:07AM
this is so stupid, Vista seems like it just adds tons of new lockdown features. What is the point of having a computer when everything is locked down so hard? Screwing with the computer and getting it to do new things/things its not supposed to do is half the fun of owning one.
If it weren't for the games i would be using linux right now. I might even switch to mac.
AbleJames @ Dec 25th 2006 6:06PM
"There is a slight amount of real information in this article amid all the scare-mongering, but not much. The author seems to be postulating some circumstance where your system might be silently "infected" with protected content that would silently degrade all other content on the system. This is simply not so.
The requirements for DRM basically say that IF you're playing some protected content, the entire channel that the content passes through has to be secure, or it has to go down in quality or be blocked if the content provider wants it. That's it. What does this mean for games? Not a darn thing, because game content won't be protected with DRM.
Now, I _suppose_ that there might be some really contrived circumstances. Say, you're listening to some DRM'd mmusic while playing a game, or have a dual-monitor setup and are watching some protected content on one screen while playing on another. But those are fairly contrived."
It seems like you're not responding to the assertions in the article, which is that the entire channel is downgraded. I don't know about you, but Windows has a mixer because there are more than one sound channels often utilizing the speakers at once, and it sounds like all of them would be downgraded if ANY protected content was played from any application.
Further, video and other graphic applications utilize (wait for it) windows, making it a very common occurance that you will have multiple applications using screen space at once, all of which, according to this spec, seem to be part of the same downgraded video interface.
But more to this issue: You can say whatever you want about the effects of it currently, but at the very least, the fact that Vista technology deputizes your computer as an agent for Microsoft and other content providers that polices your actions, is very real and very scary. Besides, if you have read the NGSCB / TCPA spec, which is what evolved into Vista's DRM technology, the first steps were always supposed to be relatively painless. You hand over the keys to your computer, and Microsoft and partners don't flex their power for a period of time, to wait for enough of the 'trusted' technology to reach the proper market penetration. However, at that point, when 80% or more of the market has computers that trust Microsoft more than their users, I wonder if you'll be surprised to find how little control you still enjoy over your computer.
Does your stuff work now? Sure. But take Apple as a very good example of selling you something based on a certain set of DRM rules and changing the rules after the fact. After you've 'signed' the agreement with your cash, Apple can decide at any point to alter the terms of that agreement without any consent, authorization, or chance of recourse. Microsoft's NGSCB/TCPA/Palladium/Etc specs go far beyond FairPlay/iTunes DRM.
So, think past the 'what does it matter right now' implications. We'd do well to think about the full implications of handing the keys to our computers over to a court-affirmed monopolist with a history of strong-arm market manipulation. Their goal at some level is to give us the most full-featured OS they can, but only so long as they give us an OS that will create Microsoft's position as keeper of the electronic entertainment distribution channel.
We are scientific people, and we do want a 'but really, how does it affect us' analysis. However, we're not animals incapable of foresight, and the fact should be considered that in adopting Vista, the rights we enjoy now as owners of our computers will become instead privileges granted or revoked by Microsoft without any oversight, justification or chance of recourse.
I'll say it again. We lose rights to our own paid-for hardware. I think a relevant and scarier question is: seeing as how the right to property has been an inalienable right for centuries, we should ask at what point, in losing the privileges normally conferred by possessing something, do we cease to own it?
I hope that communicates just why a change of principle, even lacking specific harm, can be a very scary thing.
Erwos @ Dec 25th 2006 6:35PM
"
It seems like you're not responding to the assertions in the article, which is that the entire channel is downgraded. I don't know about you, but Windows has a mixer because there are more than one sound channels often utilizing the speakers at once, and it sounds like all of them would be downgraded if ANY protected content was played from any application."
Be real. People aren't going to be viewing an HD-DVD while playing Quake 5. This is, at best, a contrived situation. His comments about not being able to use digital audio outputs are apparently _wrong_, since all HDMI receivers I'm aware of provide optical output capability.
His comments about HDCP "slowing down your system" seem to be predicated on your graphics card not being able to handle this in hardware. That seems equally absurd to me.
Peter Gutmann's a smart guy, but he's way off the mark for this one, and reads basically like a "holidays Windows bash!" screed.
Skip @ Dec 25th 2006 6:50PM
Sure. The entire channel is degraded while you're playing protected content if there are any insecure components in the chain. That's what I said. But that's not what the article said. It implied that the mere presence of protected material would cause the system to be degraded.
If you don't like this, don't play any protected material. It's that simple.
So what's the situation today? Basically nobody has a secure channel. I certainly don't. So no content provider that actually wants sales will set the flag requiring this, if the content is intended for PC consumption. Did you know that Windows Media has had the ability to require a secure audio path for several years? Nobody uses it.
Now, what's the situation, say, 5 years from now. Maybe it's the same. But maybe not, maybe at that point HDCP-enabled hardware (or comparable stuff) will have the market penetration to let people turn stuff on. What happens then? Well, at that point I probably _do_ have the hardware. And as long as I'm not trying to steal the content, guess what? I have no problems.
You're worried about Microsoft having the keys to your hardware. Guess what? If you run any form of Windows, they already do. Sure, you probably run linux. But if you run linux, you weren't going to load vista anyways. So, one again, there's no net change here.
epobirs @ Dec 25th 2006 7:11PM
THe article is pure FUD and extremely inaccurate in numerous areas. Gutman plainly has an axe to grind against Microsoft and has resorted to just making stuff up in some areas.
For instance, where he suggests that this will effectively be a tax on non-Windows users of PC hardware. How? Apple is going to be in the same boat in regard to HDCP. They've already come out for Blu-ray and will be shipping Blu-ray equipped machines in 2007. They have a big vested interest in being the content creation platform of choice for Blu-ray and will push playback as part of their own living room strategy. Likewise for Linux users who want access to simple playback of HD optical disc content. They'l do what they can to get around it but if they want Linux to be taken seriously as a consumer PC choice, it has to just work for consumer who don't derive any special joy from a belief they're sticking it to the Man.
At no point during the rant does he offer any real proof that the secure channel design will degrade performance for any operation other than the playback of protected media. Even then 'degrade' is a relative term. The system has to be able to perform the HD content playback, which is not a trivial task, yet it must be done by a relatively cheap PC to be in step with market requirements. This suggests that a serious gaming machine would scarcely show any loss of performance when the massive advances in CPU/GPU capability entering the market are factored in. By this time in 2008, quad-core systems with DX10 GPUs w/512MB of dedicated video memory are going to be middle of the road systems. Each one of those cores will be up to the task of the HD playback, leaving three high-end CPUs for whatever else the machine must do simultaneously. Performance degradation will be moot when users are still getting a grip on how to use it all.
Likewise, his final footnote where he suggests Chinese companies putting out $50 HD content players care more about consumers than Microsoft. No, what Chinese hardware makers have is a complete and utter disrespect for the IP of othercompanies if it means they can make money off of it. Gutman is also pulling numbersout of his hindquarters by calling it a comparison between a $1000 Vista PC and a $50 player. I can build a pretty decent Vista machine for well under $1K right now. Adding an HD-DVD OEM drive would add less than $100. An HD-DVD player for anything close to $100 isn't happening anytime in the next couple years. Perhaps by around 2010. An entry level Vista machine which include one or both of the HD content disc standards will be around $500 then and will do a hell of a lot more than the little player.
epobirs @ Dec 25th 2006 7:11PM
BTW, Microsoft is a member is the consortium because that is the only way to insure they have a seat at the meetings where this is being created. The alternative is having a spec handed to them that could include anything and everything.
portorikan @ Dec 25th 2006 7:14PM
AbleJames said:
"Does your stuff work now? Sure. But take Apple as a very good example of selling you something based on a certain set of DRM rules and changing the rules after the fact. After you've 'signed' the agreement with your cash, Apple can decide at any point to alter the terms of that agreement without any consent, authorization, or chance of recourse. Microsoft's NGSCB/TCPA/Palladium/Etc specs go far beyond FairPlay/iTunes DRM."
Someone remind me, has Apple changed any rules after the fact? As far as I know, they've been the same since they started and I haven't had any problems whatsoever. They're actually the most flexible DRM on the market, if you're into that sort of thing.
ymmv @ Dec 25th 2006 7:16PM
The funny thing is that the folk who are most worried about DRMed movies run Linux on their PCs. And Linux is going to be just about the last OS on the planet with support for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movies since its not going to have secure channels and therefore will get no official support to play those movies.
The thing is: Windows will run your illegal movies just fine, but it will also be able to run the ones with DRM if you so please. Best of both worlds.
AbleJames @ Dec 25th 2006 8:06PM
"Be real. People aren't going to be viewing an HD-DVD while playing Quake 5. This is, at best, a contrived situation. His comments about not being able to use digital audio outputs are apparently _wrong_, since all HDMI receivers I'm aware of provide optical output capability."
It equally sounds like you're contriving an unrealistic straw-man situation to make the issue trivial. Since you asked...
Graphics-wise, I often switch in and out of DVDs to do other tasks. If I understand correctly, the crux of the assertion is that the ENTIRE video channel is degraded. I don't want to have to close my video software each time I want to work in an environment that is higher than 800x600. And if you are thinking "No, the video WINDOW for the HD-DVD will be 800x600, not the whole environment," then you must know something I don't, because I only see the spec mentioning one video channel, which is tied to the physical output from the card, and that channel is what will be degraded.
The sound channel is also a big deal. I have music-making software on my computer that I use quite often to work in 24-bit, 192k sound. I also have media players that I use to play back legally acquired music, oftentimes against which I 'ear-check' when I'm mastering. What the spec and this paper seem to tell me is that my music making software's output will be degraded as long as I have any other protected content open.
I think it's a pretty legitimate and real complaint, but for the reasons stated in my last post, it's almost not even worth arguing about compared to the principle at stake, and the implications of that. Because, in all the justifications I've seen given, I continually see the very weak premise that "It doesn't mean much right now."
We couldn't play a game of chess, much less safeguard our rights in the face of the Trusted Computing initiative, with such myopic vision. There is no protection for the consumer in the Vista world--Microsoft has all the keys. Revocability makes every purchase only a rental. Degraded paths make every use a privilege. And the longer our actions support that situation, the harder it will be to extricate ourselves from it.
Ry_Trapp0 @ Jan 10th 2007 11:05PM
who cares. it wont be hardly any time before someone comes out with a modification to disable the "sweep" thingy. besides, if no one can modify the whole "sweep" thingy, the hardware companies will just adapt. now people who just spent $600 on the latest ultra mega g-card will be bitching at that fact, dont worry, just wait six months until your ultra mega g-card is below average.
Matt @ Dec 28th 2006 4:32AM
There's a reason Vista recommends 1GB of RAM MINIMUM, and it's NOT because of the slightly prettier graphics. ;)
Vista has overall much higher system requirements than Windows XP, and I would wager the vast majority of users (read: us normal people, gamers or not) would find the all that additional "minimum required" power to be gone to waste.
Burnt Meatloaf @ Dec 25th 2006 9:21PM
FUD for sure. I'll believe it only when I see hard evidence, using a variety of hardware, with mature drivers.
Gamers complain if one video card is 2% slower than another one for the same price. MS isn't that stupid.
I've also heard rumors that OpenGL games run at a crawl, to make Direct3D look good. Not true. I've heard that the new security model intentionally prevents Apple software from running. Have people considered that Apple software does REALLY nasty things to the system and Vista just doesn't allow that, anymore?
mocax @ Dec 26th 2006 10:45AM
In other words, I'll still buy Vista.
Autocrawler @ Dec 25th 2006 10:01PM
As I see it, setting up a Windows XP/Vista dual boot is the solution to this problem.
Roflmon @ Dec 25th 2006 10:37PM
Also, I have Vista RTM and have been running it for about a month.
My biggest complaint so far is that Lexmark hasn't released printer drivers!
It's faster than my last XP installation... I don't know, I adore Vista. It's spectacular.
Roflmon @ Dec 26th 2006 2:12AM
Eh for some reason it didn't post the comment before last.
I said I have Vista on my laptop and I've been playing Dark Messiah (very intensive), Oblivion, and CS:S without significant hitches. I am using the ATI beta driver (for RC2), and it runs almost as fast as the XP build.
I would have to wait till the final ATI driver and an XP installation to do a thorough test but I can play all those games on High with my ATI X1400.
mprobins @ Dec 28th 2006 8:21AM
AbleJames, you are a moron. The "video channel" is the video stream being played off of the dvd.
The "protected" content output is degraded, not the entire computer's 'output'. This isn't rocket science.
But if you want to run around screaming like a retard about stuff you have no clue about, then by all means go ahead.
Rob @ Dec 26th 2006 10:32AM
@epobirs:
So? They can still say "No, we won't implement this"
Herman Munster @ Jan 1st 2007 5:51PM
There is certainly no FUD here. The only FUD I see is from those supporting this Vista heavy-handedness. He's reporting what was measured experience with an implemented feature in Vista.
The Content Protection is done at the driver level. This means you can't turn it off. The only way around it is to have the driver vendor not desire driver certification (and probably signing--which means no 64bit Vista support).
As well, most of the protected content won't be advertised as protected so the average consumer won't know that they are being subject to these issues. So, technically it won't be through choice that protected content is purchased.
What needs to happen is that information such as this gets disclosed so those trying to make a decision about whether to deal with this DRM is worth it for an OS that essentially delivers little added except DRM (when you consider the facts that there are several security holes already known and were known before the official RTM.
Consumers need to know that Microsoft, a convicted monopolist, is implementing features into their purchase that reduces their choices, was done without their negotiations, and reduces control of their own purchase. Microsoft is not the government. Governments can force a license to drive a car, to keep it in operating shape, to keep it insured. Those are laws enacted by voters. Microsoft is doing so without regard to what the majority of the population would desire given the knowledge and the choice.
Mystiq @ Dec 28th 2006 2:25PM
This is going to be quite lovely when I'm playing DRM music on my computer (like that'll ever happen) and trying to play a game at the same time, which I often do (with the game's music turned off). This means my speakers turn off because my computer is connected to a receiver through SPDIF. Whoops!
ianam @ Dec 27th 2006 11:57PM
DRM, sucks, but so do the sort of lying and stupidity found in this article.
Thad @ Dec 27th 2006 4:53PM
"The funny thing is that the folk who are most worried about DRMed movies run Linux on their PCs. And Linux is going to be just about the last OS on the planet with support for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movies since its not going to have secure channels and therefore will get no official support to play those movies.
The thing is: Windows will run your illegal movies just fine, but it will also be able to run the ones with DRM if you so please. Best of both worlds."
Er, are you aware that you can play DVD's under Linux? No official support isn't the same thing as no support.
And your last paragraph seems to point out just how self-defeating this whole thing is -- you wholeheartedly acknowledge that people will still be pirating content. DRM and other anti-piracy protections don't work, they just inconvenience legitimate users. (Take, for example, XP locking up and refusing to function if I remove a few cards and drives because I'm troubleshooting an unknown hardware problem. Guess what? Wouldn't have happened if I'd just pirated the damn thing instead of paying for a legitimate copy.)
scoobs22 @ Dec 27th 2006 5:03PM
To all you nay-sayers: you are forgetting one thing. This protection _will_ be beaten and cracked and it will be all for nothing. This is simply a waste of CPU cycles, not to mention the massive implications for hardware manufacturers, the added cost of developing the technology, and the fact that this DRM in no way actually benefits consumers. Secure channel or not, I guarantee all this 'protected content' will be floating around on IRC eventually
Jason Cross @ Dec 29th 2006 1:17AM
This article's headline is misleading.
The DRM features in Vista are:
1. Not doing anything at all to game performance. They're only "active" when playing DRM'd content like Blu-ray, HD-DVD, or possibly future online video downloads that use HDCP content protection, AACS, etc.
2. Not more draconian than the content protection stuff in stand-alone HD-DVD or Blu-ray players. It's the same requirements about protected video and audio paths, protected decryption modules, and so on.
Unless you're playing a game that used HD-DVD or blu-ray VIDEO with AACS protection (never going to happen), it won't affect game performance at all.
Game performance *will* be slightly slower on DX9 titles in Vista because the graphics driver is required to do a bit more work with regards to resource management, dealing with the 3D desktop, etc. You may suffer 5-10% frame rate losses on games that are entirely graphics-bound (less, or no performance drop, when you're CPU-bound).
When you get to DX10 hardware and driver and games, there are actually quite a few things in the new driver model and DX10 that make the CPU have to do LESS work in the graphics stack. If you were to display the same exact thing on screen in a game using both DX10 hardware, the DX10 API, and Vista, as you did with DX9 under Windows XP, the Vista version would run quite a bit faster. Of course, game devs won't do that - they'll eat up that performance headroom by adding more detail, clutter, objects, and interactivity in the DX10 version.
-Jason Cross
ExtremeTech
Holiday @ Dec 28th 2006 12:06PM
I agree DRM will eventually be cracked: where there's a will there's a way. If it really does eat up the cpu that much it needs to be sorted out because it won't win favours with anyone
Ace_The_Fire @ Dec 27th 2006 7:25PM
Article says: "Apparently, Vista does a sweep of all computer hardware over 30 times every second to make sure no one is trying to leech a digital video signal through a modification."
This clearly implies that these sweeps occur all the time not only when you play DRM content. If this is not true then DRM could be easily circumvented. As soon as you log in Vista these scans start and if you try to stop them Vista disables itself.
Matt Giuca @ Dec 29th 2006 11:46AM
To #37, mprobins: AbleJames is not a moron. He's almost the only one here who actually understands the weight of the situation.
Assuming the original article is correct, AJ is also correct in his assertion that the entire audio and video output of the ENTIRE SYSTEM will be degraded if playing protected content (even if it's only audio).
From the original article:
"Beyond the obvious playback-quality implications of deliberately degraded output, this measure can have serious repercussions in applications where high-quality reproduction of content is vital. For example the field of medical imaging either bans outright or strongly frowns on any form of lossy compression because artifacts introduced by the compression process can cause mis-diagnoses and in extreme cases even become life-threatening. Consider a medical IT worker who's using a medical imaging PC while listening to audio/video played back by the computer (the CDROM drives installed in workplace PCs inevitably spend most of their working lives playing music or MP3 CDs to drown out workplace noise). If there's any premium content present in there, the image will be subtly altered by Vista's content protection, potentially creating exactly the life-threatening situation that the medical industry has worked so hard to avoid. The scary thing is that there's no easy way around this - Vista will silently modify displayed content under certain (almost impossible-to-predict in advance) situations discernable only to Vista's built-in content-protection subsystem"
Why don't the rest of you think about the potential for future harm if you have only limited access to what your computer is capable of - where Microsoft controls what those limits are. It's not about whether it will run your game 2% slower now. It's about whether it will run a non-Microsoft-sanctioned game/movie/music in the next 5 years.
(With their DRM technology, they could easily ban you from listening to non-protected music, or even lock you out of your computer altogether if Windows decides it doesn't like you. Think, people.)
Alex @ Dec 30th 2006 6:45AM
I´m running Vista Ultimate edition, commercial version (downloaded from MSDN). Vista performance on games realy sucks. The fame FIFA 2007, for example, is very very SLOW on Vista. It´s performance was OK at the same computer running XP. Specs: Pentium-D 930 with GeForce 7800 GT 256 MB.
Ray Lynch - Dublin @ Jan 2nd 2007 7:05AM
Well I have been running Vista RC1 and 2, which sucked, and now the RTM on a dual boot machine with 32bit Vista and 64bit XP. Just as an example I can run Ghost Recon: Advanced warfighter in full complement of settings in XP but it absolutely dies with the same settings in Vista. Even with all of the latest drivers installed. Now all the drivers are not RTM but they should still provide most functionality. Strangely enough though if I run the game in window mode it runs better, still not as good as XP though.
PC spec is AMD 64 4000+, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 6800GT. Now if that’s not going to run the games nothing will.
You want proof I will post tech data but believe me games run like a dog.
windi @ Mar 18th 2007 7:36PM
Sorry, but Vista does slow down games. On my computer all D3D games suffered from slower FPS while many OpenGL games had texture problems. Switching manually from Aero to the "windows standard" theme helped these problems only slightly. It might be due to the geforce GPU that some say have poor Vista drivers (latest installed at the moment), but with how popular the chips are I think the problem is more common than rare. Also SDL based and some other full-screen applications cause Aero to automatically switch off, which makes one of the reasons why to upgrade to Vista unavailable. With myself and others running into the same problems I have to conclude that in many ocassions Vista does cause games to run slower than in XP and whether that changes in the future is to be seen. I also have to conclude that this is the first Windows version since Windows 95 that has a major impact on directx and opengl graphics performance. It might be the Aero, DRM or the fact they've moved some graphical systems from kernel to user space, but the problems are definately there.