XP vs Vista

Posted at: Tuesday 2nd October 2007 by James Morris

James Morris puts Windows XP and Vista head to head in a gruelling set of benchmarks to see which Microsoft operating system runs your games and applications the quickest.

We were particularly interested in how Prey, which uses the OpenGL Doom 3 engine, would perform under Windows Vista, given our earlier experiences with Cinebench. Initially, Prey wouldn't load at all, claiming it couldn't copy gamex86.dll out of its PAK file. In the end, we copied it manually using WinRAR to the location where it wanted to be (c:program filespreybase) and the game loaded. It then recorded a decent average frame rate of 65fps in Windows Vista, although this was still 9 per cent behind Windows XP with Nvidia hardware.

The ATI score of 71fps was even more encouraging. Strangely, Prey was marginally quicker (3 per cent) on Vista with ATI hardware, but other drawbacks were evident. In particular, we noticed some bizarre graphics anomalies, including our Native American hero gaining the ability to shoot fiery arrows using his bare hands during our benchmark sequence, as the bow graphic disappeared, so perhaps the speed should be discounted.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was curious too. With our indoor scene - consisting of an amphitheatre duel - Windows Vista was 12 per cent slower than XP using Nvidia hardware, and 23 per cent with ATI. However, the roles were reversed in our outdoor test, which comprised a horseride and small battle in the country. Vista was 24 per cent faster using Nvidia hardware, although this dropped to scarcely 1 per cent with ATI.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was the game that really bucked the trend, however. It proved to be 47 per cent faster in Windows Vista with Nvidia hardware, and 50 per cent faster with ATI, although with the latter hardware, the frame rate was very erratic, dropping to as little as 9fps at some points. We would still say that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is one game for which you might want to buy Windows Vista to play, and our experiences have been echoed by other Windows Vista users across the Web.

F.E.A.R. was remarkably even-handed, registering nearly identical scores in both XP and Vista. However, F.E.A.R. has its own problems in Windows Vista - namely, sound. Since it relies on EAX and DirectSound3D for its environmental effects, in Vista you're basically getting flat stereo, all because ...

Sounding off

There's no EAX in Vista. Due to the changes in the driver architecture, hardware DirectSound3D acceleration would no longer be available. Since Creative's EAX works through this API, it meant that any title using this system for environmental audio effects would have to resort to basic stereo in Windows Vista. Essentially, EAX 2 and above aren't supported, although a simple software-only DirectSound3D is still available. Most new games are now moving over to OpenAL - and potentially Dolby Digital in the future - but this move will clearly reduce the enjoyment of many well-known current games.

Fortunately, Creative has come to the rescue by creating an OpenAL wrapper, which takes the EAX calls and translates them to OpenAL instructions. It's called ALchemy, and you can find out more about it and download the latest version from http://connect.creativelabs.com/alchemy/default.aspx. There are versions for both Audigy and X-Fi cards, and both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista. The list of supported games is far from comprehensive, but it already includes most major titles. It's free to X-Fi users, although Creative charges you for the Audigy version.