A Few Notes on Graphics
While performance under CPU-limited situations is solely in Microsoft's hands, the same is not true about graphics performance. Due to the need to undertake massive driver rewrites for the new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) API, all of the GPU makers have been spending the last couple of years hammering their drivers into shape for Vista with varying results. What has changed and where we're at depends a great deal on what company we're talking about.
AMD
AMD has chosen to use the Vista ramp-up to work on their OpenGL drivers and the widely-loathed Catalyst Control Center. Their OpenGL driver in Vista is what AMD is calling a re-architected driver, something we've been hearing rumors about for quite some time now. Although eventually we expect AMD's efforts with their OpenGL driver to pay off, this is something that will happen in the future, not today. Their new driver is stable and compatible but it's still rough around the edges; AMD has made it clear not to expect it to match their XP performance for a while. On the DirectX front, performance is closer, but AMD has actually told us that Microsoft expects gaming performance on Vista to be 5% to 10% short of XP performance (due in part to the changes brought about by the new WDDM).
As for the Catalyst Control Center, complaints about its long load times and high resource usage did not fall on deaf ears, resulting in AMD rebuilding it for Vista. The result is something that's still not going to rival the old ATI Control Panel or 3rd-party tools like AMD Tray Tools, but it is a greatly improved package that helps rectify CCC's biggest flaws. AMD has claimed a load improvement on the order of 400%, and while we can't immediately confirm that number we can confirm that it is much faster to load. Startup times are now reasonable for the GUI at about 4 seconds on our X6800 system, and the system tray version is fast enough that most users will be satisfied with it. This is being back-ported to XP as of the Catalyst 7.2 drivers in February, at which point we'll be able to better gauge the difference.
The CCC has also picked up a couple new features in the redesign, the first of which is a new Installer solely for Vista. The main attraction here will be that the installer is no longer a collection of multiple installers for GPU drivers, VIVO drivers, and the CCC, but instead it's one installer that can handle multiple items directly, making the whole installation process faster and a requiring a little less attention from the user. The 3D preview has also been updated; the car scene has been replaced with a side-by-side courtyard scene that in our opinion does a better job at showing the difference between two modes. The car preview was also programmed using OpenGL, whereas the courtyard uses DirectX.
It's worth noting that with this first version of the Catalyst suite for Vista, a couple of things are still outright broken/not-included. Chief among these is complete CrossFire support, as right now it's missing under OpenGL entirely. The universal AFR mode is also absent right now, meaning that it's back to profile-based CrossFire for the moment. Both of these features will be put back in at a later date. Also missing exclusively for Vista x64 is HDCP path support - HDCP is a big issue for Vista since it fully supports the standard, and while HDCP path support is in the 7.1 Catalysts for Vista x86, it will not be in the x64 version until the 7.3 drivers in March. Movies should still be watchable with a 3rd-party application like PowerDVD or Intervideo, but the ability to play protected content directly will not be there.
NVIDIA
For NVIDIA, they have not used the Vista migration to launch such sweeping changes. Going into Vista they had two driver sets: one for the G80-based 8800 series and another for everything else. Now with the new Vista WDDM, they have four driver sets to maintain. As a result what features are and aren't working depends on the video card used, as some additional features work for the 8800 series that aren't yet working for previous cards. This isn't entirely surprising given that the 8800 series needs to support Shader Model 4, which means extra attention has gone into it anyhow. During the lifetime of the new 100 series driver, NVIDIA plans on merging its code back into a unified driver architecture, leaving out support only for end of life products like the FX series and earlier models. This will certainly be nice, but for now they are still stuck with juggling multiple packages.
For all cards, due to the now-exclusive use of the Vista control panel NVIDIA introduced last year, a few features are missing. Overclocking is not supported, and neither is GPU temperature monitoring or custom monitor timings. TurboCache memory usage is also capped at 255MB for systems with 1GB of RAM and 271 for 2GB or more, so cards capable of using 512MB will not be able to access it all. SLI support either exists or does not exist, again depending on the card. The 8800 series cards now have SLI support, while everything else does not. This will be taken care of in the future, but in the mean time it's especially problematic for GX2 cards which require SLI in order to reach their full potential.
For both parties, it's clear that they still have some ground to cover. As we'll see in the benchmarks, performance is generally good, but at least initially it's going to need to be judged on a per-game basis. Generally speaking, the more popular the game, the more likely it will run well on Vista.
While performance under CPU-limited situations is solely in Microsoft's hands, the same is not true about graphics performance. Due to the need to undertake massive driver rewrites for the new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) API, all of the GPU makers have been spending the last couple of years hammering their drivers into shape for Vista with varying results. What has changed and where we're at depends a great deal on what company we're talking about.
AMD
AMD has chosen to use the Vista ramp-up to work on their OpenGL drivers and the widely-loathed Catalyst Control Center. Their OpenGL driver in Vista is what AMD is calling a re-architected driver, something we've been hearing rumors about for quite some time now. Although eventually we expect AMD's efforts with their OpenGL driver to pay off, this is something that will happen in the future, not today. Their new driver is stable and compatible but it's still rough around the edges; AMD has made it clear not to expect it to match their XP performance for a while. On the DirectX front, performance is closer, but AMD has actually told us that Microsoft expects gaming performance on Vista to be 5% to 10% short of XP performance (due in part to the changes brought about by the new WDDM).
As for the Catalyst Control Center, complaints about its long load times and high resource usage did not fall on deaf ears, resulting in AMD rebuilding it for Vista. The result is something that's still not going to rival the old ATI Control Panel or 3rd-party tools like AMD Tray Tools, but it is a greatly improved package that helps rectify CCC's biggest flaws. AMD has claimed a load improvement on the order of 400%, and while we can't immediately confirm that number we can confirm that it is much faster to load. Startup times are now reasonable for the GUI at about 4 seconds on our X6800 system, and the system tray version is fast enough that most users will be satisfied with it. This is being back-ported to XP as of the Catalyst 7.2 drivers in February, at which point we'll be able to better gauge the difference.
The CCC has also picked up a couple new features in the redesign, the first of which is a new Installer solely for Vista. The main attraction here will be that the installer is no longer a collection of multiple installers for GPU drivers, VIVO drivers, and the CCC, but instead it's one installer that can handle multiple items directly, making the whole installation process faster and a requiring a little less attention from the user. The 3D preview has also been updated; the car scene has been replaced with a side-by-side courtyard scene that in our opinion does a better job at showing the difference between two modes. The car preview was also programmed using OpenGL, whereas the courtyard uses DirectX.
It's worth noting that with this first version of the Catalyst suite for Vista, a couple of things are still outright broken/not-included. Chief among these is complete CrossFire support, as right now it's missing under OpenGL entirely. The universal AFR mode is also absent right now, meaning that it's back to profile-based CrossFire for the moment. Both of these features will be put back in at a later date. Also missing exclusively for Vista x64 is HDCP path support - HDCP is a big issue for Vista since it fully supports the standard, and while HDCP path support is in the 7.1 Catalysts for Vista x86, it will not be in the x64 version until the 7.3 drivers in March. Movies should still be watchable with a 3rd-party application like PowerDVD or Intervideo, but the ability to play protected content directly will not be there.
NVIDIA
For NVIDIA, they have not used the Vista migration to launch such sweeping changes. Going into Vista they had two driver sets: one for the G80-based 8800 series and another for everything else. Now with the new Vista WDDM, they have four driver sets to maintain. As a result what features are and aren't working depends on the video card used, as some additional features work for the 8800 series that aren't yet working for previous cards. This isn't entirely surprising given that the 8800 series needs to support Shader Model 4, which means extra attention has gone into it anyhow. During the lifetime of the new 100 series driver, NVIDIA plans on merging its code back into a unified driver architecture, leaving out support only for end of life products like the FX series and earlier models. This will certainly be nice, but for now they are still stuck with juggling multiple packages.
For all cards, due to the now-exclusive use of the Vista control panel NVIDIA introduced last year, a few features are missing. Overclocking is not supported, and neither is GPU temperature monitoring or custom monitor timings. TurboCache memory usage is also capped at 255MB for systems with 1GB of RAM and 271 for 2GB or more, so cards capable of using 512MB will not be able to access it all. SLI support either exists or does not exist, again depending on the card. The 8800 series cards now have SLI support, while everything else does not. This will be taken care of in the future, but in the mean time it's especially problematic for GX2 cards which require SLI in order to reach their full potential.
For both parties, it's clear that they still have some ground to cover. As we'll see in the benchmarks, performance is generally good, but at least initially it's going to need to be judged on a per-game basis. Generally speaking, the more popular the game, the more likely it will run well on Vista.
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BPB - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
If you want Quick Launch to work that way, just add the icons you want into the Qucik Launch folder. Then unlock your taskbar and drag the bar which allows the display of the Quick Launch icons all the way left. Then lock your taskbar. Now you can just click the arrow that shows in the taskbar and it will display all your Quick Launch icons snd "disappear on the fly". It's not perfect, but it's closer to what you want. No wasted space AND you get your Quick Launch icons.
darklight0tr - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Quick Launch is one on my favorite features in Windows, because it allows you to quickly launch commonly used programs. I just wish Microsoft would have enhanced it with additional functionality. I have to use a 3rd party program to the features I want to Quick Launch.Despite the issues with x64, that's the version I will get when I migrate to Vista. I just wish Microsoft would have been able to release Vista as a x64 only OS. The availability of a 32bit version of Vista will keep the migration to x64 to a crawl.
creathir - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
I cannot stand it... it does drive me nuts...Will most users not use it? I highly doubt that. Turning it off is not as easy as "1...2...3... OFF!"
It does involve some tinkering to get it to turn off...
The problem is, this is how things should have been from the beginning, but we have been spoiled by the lack of security. I really do not find that it gets in the way or anything like that.
I'm not sure if I would QUITE go that far... given the vast majority will have NO CLUE on how to turn it off…
Just my thoughts.
- Creathir
Locutus465 - Friday, February 2, 2007 - link
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/turn_off_user_account...">http://vistasupport.mvps.org/turn_off_user_account...One of the many links I found by going to start and typing into the new Windows Search box located there in Vista :)
Search is going to be one of the biggest selling points, works much better in Vista than it did in XP (I've used it in both).
Aikouka - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Jarred's right, it's actually very easy to turn off. Although if you turn it off, Windows will bug you to no end in their protection center to turn it back on (which you can turn that off too :P). I ended up turning it off when trying to install drivers for my Realtek ALC888 codec on my Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6, because at first, the driver install kept looping and asking if I really wanted to install unsigned drivers. I kept hitting yes, they kept going back and prompting me. After Vista said the driver install failed and asked if I'd like to run it in a higher privileged mode, I did so. Then the install told me that I needed to be <b>ON VISTA</b> to install the drivers. I ended up installing a different set of drivers that I didn't even expect to work with the ALC888-DD.Also, to add in with drivers, UAC caused a weird issue with the 100.54 drivers from nVidia. When UAC prompted you, the screen fades into a B&W gray-ish hue ( kind of like when shutting down XP ), but when you're running DualView on Vista and you hit a button to close the prompt (being it accepting the action or whatever), the other screen literally freaks out. It goes to some weird graphical pattern for a second and then goes back to normal. Although the problem doesn't stay, it's quite noticeable out of the corner of my eye.
JarredWalton - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=vista+tur...">Easy as 1-2-3, or just http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/libr...">get it from Microsoft. My feeling is that most people will *want* it off, even if they don't know how to shut it off, and I'll reword that sentence appropriately. :)Jedi2155 - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Is there still Memory Address limitation with the 32-bit version of Vista?Like say, I had a SLI board (eVGA 680i in particular), and I wanted more than 2 GB, would I still hit the 2.25 GB wall due to address bus or does Vista gets around this and is actually able to address the 4 GB if I had that installed? Or is my only option is still go with x64 version of Vista....
JarredWalton - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
It depends on motherboard and BIOS as well as the OS. AFAIK, you can't get more than 3.5GB (and often only 3GB) of accessible memory with any 32-bit OS on x86. The top 512MB is reserved. Perhaps it is OS dependent and you can get closer to 4GB, but for MS operating systems I think it's always been 3.5GB max. Whereas in XP you needed to use the /3gb switch for the OS, on Vista you use:BCDEDIT IncreaseUserVA [size]
Or something like that. I don't know if the maximum is any different on 32-bit Vista than 32-bit XP, but I would bet it's the same.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
You're almost right. It's possible to get all 4GB(and more) on a 32bit system when using Physical Address Extension. However most consumer level boards don't implement this at the hardware level past what's required to support the NX bit(which also requires PAE), so most people can not get all 4GB in 32bit mode. With XP and Vista, you can get all 4GB as long as PAE is fully supported, however actually using PAE to get 4GB+ brings about some compatibility/performance problems, which is why 64bit addressing is a cleaner solution.The /3gb switch is an entirely different thing, it adjusts the 2/2 split between user processes and the kernel so that user processes can go up to 3GB by taking some memory from the kernel's space(which also can cause problems, oy).
Spoelie - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
I haven't read the article yet (am doing so in a minute) but just a thought by having a first look at the article index: I was wondering what impact Aero would have on power consumption. We know that it runs the UI on the graca, so the graca would be in use all the time. Is the load on it high or low? You can collect a lot of data on such a thing (power consumption while idling, moving windows around, ... on vista with aero, without aero, on winxp...)It could be that it gets a mention in the review, it's just not apparant from the index. I'll apologise beforehand if it does.