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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redpriest_ - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Did you guys run the 64-bit tests solely on the Intel Conroe platform? Or did you test an AMD based platform as well? Recall that Conroe has a few performance enhancing features that *only* work in 32-bit mode (branch fusioning, for one - some decoder limitations as well).That could explain why a Core 2 Duo system might have seemed slower in 64-bit than in 32-bit mode.
Jeff7181 - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
SuperFetch is by far my favorite new feature of Vista. I put my first copy of Vista on my laptop, which has a 5400 RPM hard drive. Opening apps Outlook and VB .NET 2005 EE weren't really slow under XP, but there were those few extra seconds it took to load that would often leave me tapping my finger on the palm rest while I waited. Now under Vista, Outlook, VB .NET 2005 EE, and IE7 all seem to be able to fit in the SuperFetch cache, as they all open nearly instantly with just 1 GB of RAM. I'm considering upgrading to 2 GB just to see what else I can get to open really fast. :Dbldckstark - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Was superfetch disabled when you tried the Readyboost feature in Vista? Whichever way you ran the test it bears mentioning. If it was off, then how does it do with it on? If it was on, it may make a difference in how it relates to XP.Also, as I understand it Vista has a system backup now that creates a "ghost" of the drive. Could you check out this feature and get back to us?
JarredWalton - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
I'm not sure it's possible to disable SuperFetch, so I'm pretty sure all testing was done with it on. As far as the "ghost" goes, that's part of System Restore which can be disabled quite easily. I'll have to let the other editors say whether it was enabled or not, though.WT - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
What drives me nuts are the plentiful comments about how slow Vista is compared to XP. I mean, anybody hear this before when MS came out with a new OS ? Same thing for XP,W2k,98 ... ad nauseum. Yea, its a new Operating System with more 'toys' built in, what were you expecting ? You aren't gonna load it on your P3/256 RAM rig and enjoy the Vista 'experience'. Damn, this thing runs better than XP on my rig !It's understood that it won't be as quick (keep in mind the OS has been available for retail purchase ... 2 days now) as XP, but drivers will improve that performance gap to a smaller number within 3 months time. I waited until just last year to upgrade to XP (W2K all the way for me !) but find myself with 2 copies of Vista and would prefer to dual boot one and go Vista all-out on the other one.
I griped back in my W2K days about being forced to upgrade due to content (MS games were announced that would only run in XP) so this time around I will be ready.
DX10? Marketing genius !!! We shall force an upgrade upon the masses !! I upgrade frequently, so DX10 and its graphical splendor is a priority, but if I would have to fork over $200 to actually buy Vista, I would be less than impresssed with DX10 eye candy.
EODetroit - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Hopefully, now, finally, Anandtech will start testing motherboards for stability while loaded with the maximum amount of memory. So if the MB supposedly supports 8GB of RAM, you test it with that much, and make sure its stable. I've wanted this done for years... memory is expensive and it sucks to load a MB up and find out it doesn't really work or only works if you cut the speed in half.Thanks.
manno - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
... no mention of DRM then? No mention of Linux? Personally I hate Linux, but I've switched to it because of Vista's use of DRM. Not all Microsoft's fault, but they put it in there... My computer, my hardware, I choose what to do with it, not MS, not media companies. Why shouldn't I be able to watch High def content on my old, and once expensive non-HDMI LCD screen?Get a Mac, Apple is the lesser of 2 evils, they aren't the 800lb gorilla in the room. MS could have told media companies to stuff it. Apple has no choice, it's too small, yet their the ones that forced DRM-Light(TM) on the media companies. MS had the media companied force DRM-Oppressive(TM) on them... how the heck does that work?
I can't believe you left Linux out of the final comparison, is it as capable an OS, yes. Not nearly as user friendly, but it also has 0 DRM, doesn't phone-home isn't beholden to any one entity. I'm not against DRM, as a whole, just Vista's implementation. BS like MS creating D3D to subvert open standards like OpenGL, then removing it from the OS, using it's monopoly-based-ridiculous-margins(TM) to finance D3D's uptake, again rather than take an existing standard and expanding on it. They create their own to reinforce their monopoly. I know why they do this stuff I'm just peeved so many people don't give two flying f...
grr...
-manno
mlambert890 - Friday, February 2, 2007 - link
Youre insane dude.. No offense but there just isnt anything else to say. Posts like these always read like the transcript of a Weather Underground meeting in the sixties. "FIGHT THE POWER!!! FIGHT THE POWER!!!"Look out! The black helicopters have deployed from the underground helipad in Redmond and are circling!!! Send up the penguin symbol to summon the dynamic duo - Torvald and Stallman!
Reflex - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
There is no more or less DRM in Vista than in XP, or even OS X. The platform does not determine the playback of DRM'd media, the content does. The choice is simple: If you want to play back DRM'd media, then you have to support the decryption scheme that the media requires to decode it. In so doing you have to legally accept the limitations defined by that DRM scheme.It is no different for OS X, Linux, XP or any other OS. They either support the DRM schemes or they do not get to playback the media that uses them. This is why it is unlikely that you will be able to play DRM'd High Definition content anytime soon on Linux. That is the alternative, no support for the content at all.
Also, you can play high definition content on Vista just fine without HDMI/HDCP on your monitor. You simply cannot play back such content if it is coupled to a DRM scheme that requires HDCP, but that is true of every OS. Any other HD content will play back without issue.
Again, there is no difference between DRM on Vista from DRM on any other platform.
pmh - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
The DRM in vista is the major reason that I will only install it if physically forced to. Having bought a new Dell in order to get their very nice 24" LCD last december, I have an upgrade coupon which will lie unused until/unless the DRM can be disabled. MS refuses to display HD on my new monitor using Vista? Screw em.