Will Vista Run Your Games?

D

dipdude

Skilled
Review : Will Vista Run Your Games?
We feel that Beta 2 is the appropriate time to start looking at compatibility and performance issues in Vista, and that goes for gaming (one of the big selling points of Vista) as well. So we spent the better part of a week installing a bunch of modern, popular games on the upcoming OS, noting what works and what doesn't, and trying to find some simple workarounds. Has Vista got game yet? Let's find out

Prognosis: Good, But Still Needs Work

Overall, we're pretty happy with the state of gaming on Vista. This isn't a release candidate yet – we're still at beta 2. This is where most things should work, with only a few minor problems to work out between Microsoft, the games makers, and the hardware driver writers. On the whole, that's exactly where it's at.

There appear to be two big problems, from our admittedly limited testing. The first is StarForce copy protection. Its reliance on a hidden Ring 0 driver causes a compatibility problem with Vista that prevents games using StarForce from loading – at least, that's the best explanation we can come up with for the errors we found. It's very disappointing that there hasn't been a fix for this so far. The driver requirements of Vista have been known for quite a long time, and both Microsoft and games publishers should have been pressuring StarForce for a proper Vista driver since at least last summer.

This may be a moot point in the future. Both Ubisoft and CDV, the two largest users of StarForce protection, have announced they're dropping the controversial content protection scheme.

The second big problem is performance. Though many games ran quite well, in many cases "feeling" the same as they do under Windows XP, there is currently a performance drop associated with running games under Vista. It varies from game to game, but it seems as though turning on anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering cause the biggest performance problems. You definitely want some high-end hardware to play demanding games like F.E.A.R. under Vista. Fortunately, today's high-end gear will be mid-range stuff by the time Vista ships, and there are still quite a few months for the video card drivers to improve.

We suspect that most of these issues are driver related. Both Nvidia and ATI have acknowledged that their Vista drivers aren't performance optimized yet. So if you are using Vista Beta 2, and are running games on it, keep an eye out for new video and audio driver releases.

RAM is another sore spot. Vista uses a lot, and you really do want a machine with 1GB to make things run well. Everything – games and normal windows operations – ran a whole lot smoother when we bumped things up to 2GB. For Vista, it seems as though 1GB is the equivalent of running XP with 512MB, and 2GB is like running XP with 1GB.

Bear in mind that Vista itself isn't fully performance-tuned yet. As release candidates come out, we'll update our system and check out performance again.

It's a bit disappointing that only three of the dozen games we tested showed up in the Games Explorer: The Sims 2, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I'm sure if we tested hundreds of titles we would find more there, but the ratio doesn't look good. The games we tested aren't exactly off the beaten path, after all. You can certainly drag whatever shortcut you want into the Game Explorer, but it won't automatically download box art and ESRB ratings info. Given that we saw our first demo of the Games Explorer back at Meltdown last summer, we would expect far better support by now.

So, while the current Vista gaming situation is encouraging, there is clearly still plenty of work to be done. Most games work, but there are some tricky bits with Punkbuster (run games as admin to work around), a big problem with StarForce copy protection, and some performance kinks to work out. With Microsoft proclaiming a "PC gaming renaissance" around the launch of Vista, they need to really deliver a fantastic experience, and it's not quite there yet. They need an A+ games platform, and it's a B- right now.
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It would make sense that they would have some "connection" problems being that vista is not built of of windows.

You would think things as simple as drivers would have been in the porsse of being fixed right now. Hopefully all that will be settled by the time Vista comes out in January 2007? (<-- with buisness version comming November 2006?)
 
^^ Anyways Ubisoft and other developers have Droped the use of Starforce , so it Hardly Matters Now ! But what abt the performance Increase everyone was Talking abt ? Now I am not sure but I Think Vista Beta 2 does have dIRECT X , Right ? But Instead of Performance Increase , wat we r seeing is the decrease in the performance !:(
 
I think we will have to wait for a game that is designed to run on vista. The windows based games will loose performance and that makes sense seeing that vista was not built off of a windows base. Though if they can come out with some good drivers i would hope windowns games games would run at least as well as they do now.
 
I have tried the beta, for some games there is increased performance but for some others there might be a reduction in performance

try most wanted and aeo3 for performance gain.
 
techboy said:
I have tried the beta, for some games there is increased performance but for some others there might be a reduction in performance

try most wanted and aeo3 for performance gain.
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who gives a rats ***.... lets wait till when its out... not missing much sleep on this one :p
 
I think...Windows Vista is a totally changed new windows....but its not worth it...
because first of all..it requires at least 1GB..becuase...it takes 500mb or ram .....

I think...games are not made for vista....they wouldn;t work right....
My opinion....come from what I have experienced.:)
 
well the days of having 512 ram in your computer are baiscly comming to an end. all the newer games are taking at least 512 to run at normal graphics so most people will already have 1G + of ram. for those who don't, prives are dropping so quickly i think it will be only a matter of time before companies liek tell start putting default 1g in your comp instead of 512.
 
says who that prices are dropping?
the best price i got in nehru place for 1gb transcend is 4400!!!
my friend asked HP for the price of 1gb ram and he was quoted 12000
 
I don't know what that translates to in American Dollars as i live in US.

And prices are dropping in general for computers, i don't know about RAM specific, but i think we can all agree prices for an overall computer have dropped.
 
On the contrary, the kind of hardware required to be called a high end computer has raised the prices, if a 2000$ computer was good 5yrs back, something equivalent today is a 3000-4000$ computer.
 
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