New Vista Service Pack Boosts Gaming Performance

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Windows Vista users who apply the just-released Service Pack 1 patch should receive a general increase in gaming performance, according to several benchmarking websites.

Technology site ExtremeTech is showing up to a 46 frame-per-second increase in Crysis low-quality performance after applying the patch, with similarly large 20 FPS gains recorded in World in Conflict.

The advantage of Service Pack 1 was of a smaller magnitude under high quality settings, with only modest 2-5 FPS boosts recorded on average. The performance increase has also shown to be inconsistent across varying games--some benefiting little by the patch--as well as when comparing systems with Nvidia and ATI video cards.

Many gamers have been reluctant to upgrade from Microsoft's Windows XP to Windows Vista due to the latter's widely-known disadvantage in gaming performance. However, comparisons between XP and Vista performance are now neck-and-neck, with Vista actually winning out in a few instances, according to Neowin.

While today's patch seems to generally benefit users running under reasonable settings and hardware, those with beefy quad-SLI video cards may actually see a performance decrease, as bit-tech.net documents.

Service Pack 1 also adds support for DirectX 10.1, which offers shader model 4.1 support and greater control over anti-aliasing options for those users with supported video cards.

The pack can be auto-downloaded through Windows Update, or found on Microsoft's site in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    March 25, 2008 2:50 PM

    I have a friend who got a whole new system and went with XP 64 instead of Vista. I haven't had any problems with Vista 64 and I like it.

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      March 25, 2008 2:52 PM

      Vista 64 is fine, just went up from 32 to a fresh install of 64 and its great.

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      March 25, 2008 2:55 PM

      I heard a lot of talk about XP 64 being total shit, which is why I went with Vista 64 (since I was buying 4 gigs of ram for the new PC)

      No issues so far.

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        March 25, 2008 3:08 PM

        It's not shit, there was just very little point in it outside of graphics workstations, and they should use Vista now

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      March 25, 2008 2:56 PM

      Why would anyone go with XP64? I mean.. srsly?

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      March 25, 2008 2:58 PM

      Vista 64 SP1 is great here

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      March 25, 2008 3:08 PM

      [deleted]

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        March 25, 2008 3:11 PM

        We've got clients with alltogether about 40 users using XP64, they've been very happy with it. Typical CAD and 3D workstation use.

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        March 25, 2008 4:16 PM

        There's nothing wrong with the operating system, just driver support for it is a bit sparse because of how few users there are of it. Vista x64 has pretty much the same support as Vista x86, so there's no reason to not go to it. Especially now RAM is so cheap and it's so easy to get 4gb or more.

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      March 25, 2008 5:28 PM

      I've always heard that XP 64 was and still is a turd. Vista 64 on the other hand is great.

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      March 25, 2008 5:41 PM

      I just built a vista x64 box (my first Vista machine) for a friend this last week. It used to BSOD like a mofo with memory errors when he had 4 gigs of RAM in there and I had to bring it down to 2 (he had 2x2 sticks, tests came out perfect for both sticks). When SP1 came out the problems were solved

      I went from cursing out Vista x64 like crazy to respecting it. I think when my taxes come back I may just be getting it

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        March 25, 2008 10:25 PM

        That's because Vista had http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929777 rolled in. :D

        I personally went through hell and thought I had bad RAM! After I installed w/ a single 2GB stick and installed the update, everything was fine...except for the crap that is the 680i and it's worthless RAID 570 storage controller that's almost 3 yrs old!!

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