Windows Vista and Games
by Tathlin

So you or someone you know has just recently got Windows Vista and you have noticed your shiny computer that used to run your games at insane speeds seems to be slower. Could it be your new software package has caused problems? Well as a matter of fact yes it does. Due to the recent release of Windows Vista, driver support and optimization has yet to be completed for a majority of the hardware that is available.

 

Actually, there is a lot more to it than just the drivers. Vista has a new kernel. For those of you who don’t know what the kernel does, it is the layer that acts between the operating system on your computer and the hardware. When a kernel is rewritten from the ground up like the Vista Kernel was, you find that things change drastically. For instance, memory management might be reworked. While all of that sounds quite boring, and it is, it can actually adversely affect how your games play. That includes AQ, by the way, since even AQ requires CPU Time and Memory from your computer. Also, considering that Windows Vista requires 512MB of memory by itself and recommends 1GB of memory to run optimally, that is memory your games no longer have to function properly. Again, this leads to games not performing as well as they should. There is also the small matter of DirectX 10 which is incorporated with Windows Vista. While it does provide a certain level of compatibility with the older versions of DirectX, you find that there are issues with how it works. This leads to problems with performance.

 

If you look at your frame rates under Windows XP, using a moderately priced Video Card such as a Radeon X1950 Pro with 512MB of Video Memory, your average system performance in 3D Games is right around 60 to 90 FPS. This is also dependent on some other factors. While under Windows Vista, if you run that same system with the same video card you see around a 60% drop in the FPS.

While testing Vista playing AQ, I found the following: on a Windows XP Machine, AQ in combat runs very quickly at 60 FPS. While under Windows Vista it is only running at 5 FPS which is actually horribly slower.

 

So until newer hardware comes out and the first service pack-- which fixes some bugs in the Kernel and Direct X-- is added to Vista, I would strongly suggest for the best time playing AQ, use Windows XP.