Windows Vista Update: RC1/5728 Preview
by Ryan Smith on October 3, 2006 4:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Conclusion
While we'll hold back on any final opinions on Vista until we have a shipping version, at this point it's becoming increasingly unlikely we'll see any more significant changes between now and when Vista is finished next month. So what we say now we'll likely be saying again.
At this point most of Vista is perfectly fine. Everything works, all functionality is enabled, and driver support is looking good. If anyone had to pick up Vista and use it today, they would be able to do so once they got over the initial shock of just how different it is compared to XP. For doing so, they would be rewarded with a lot of new functionality that XP can't offer, though other operating systems like Mac OS X have offered many of the features for years now.
As the saying goes, it's the little things that matter. Vista isn't perfect - no operating system is - and while we could pick apart things we still don't like about XP 5 years later, Vista's problems are more pressing. Some of the things that Vista does are flat-out quirky and make little sense, and User Account Controls are still going to come across as combative to enthusiasts and other similar user groups. General users will be fine, but as is often the case general users end up adopting some enthusiast practices, and if that includes disarming parts of UAC, it will significantly undermine the security gains of Vista.
Where performance ends up is also a concern. Our general performance numbers are a mixed bag compared to XP, which turns out is a good thing since it would imply that overall Vista is no slower than XP for performance-critical applications. Memory and disk space usage are up, and that's an inevitability of progress, but most recent machines should be no worse off with Vista than XP as far as general usage goes if our numbers reflect the larger whole. This is something we'll investigate much more in depth once we have the final version of Vista.
Unfortunately, gaming performance is still lagging behind, heavily at times, and this is troubling. Gamers will no doubt stay away from Vista if the final version and final video drivers continue to underperform, but there's also the larger issue of how computers are becoming increasingly reliant on the GPU for general tasks, something Microsoft itself is pushing with the new video threading systems for Vista and forthcoming DirectX 10-class video hardware. A large video performance gap could or could not be a problem for non-gamers moving to Vista, but it's too early to tell.
So where does that leave us then? If Microsoft continues to stay on schedule, they will have a shipping version of Vista ready within a month, though retail consumers will be waiting until 2007 to get their hands on it. Whether it will really be ready to replace XP at that time remains up in the air. Early adopters will likely bite the bullet, but many people will probably prefer waiting for the inevitable Service Pack.
While we'll hold back on any final opinions on Vista until we have a shipping version, at this point it's becoming increasingly unlikely we'll see any more significant changes between now and when Vista is finished next month. So what we say now we'll likely be saying again.
At this point most of Vista is perfectly fine. Everything works, all functionality is enabled, and driver support is looking good. If anyone had to pick up Vista and use it today, they would be able to do so once they got over the initial shock of just how different it is compared to XP. For doing so, they would be rewarded with a lot of new functionality that XP can't offer, though other operating systems like Mac OS X have offered many of the features for years now.
As the saying goes, it's the little things that matter. Vista isn't perfect - no operating system is - and while we could pick apart things we still don't like about XP 5 years later, Vista's problems are more pressing. Some of the things that Vista does are flat-out quirky and make little sense, and User Account Controls are still going to come across as combative to enthusiasts and other similar user groups. General users will be fine, but as is often the case general users end up adopting some enthusiast practices, and if that includes disarming parts of UAC, it will significantly undermine the security gains of Vista.
Where performance ends up is also a concern. Our general performance numbers are a mixed bag compared to XP, which turns out is a good thing since it would imply that overall Vista is no slower than XP for performance-critical applications. Memory and disk space usage are up, and that's an inevitability of progress, but most recent machines should be no worse off with Vista than XP as far as general usage goes if our numbers reflect the larger whole. This is something we'll investigate much more in depth once we have the final version of Vista.
Unfortunately, gaming performance is still lagging behind, heavily at times, and this is troubling. Gamers will no doubt stay away from Vista if the final version and final video drivers continue to underperform, but there's also the larger issue of how computers are becoming increasingly reliant on the GPU for general tasks, something Microsoft itself is pushing with the new video threading systems for Vista and forthcoming DirectX 10-class video hardware. A large video performance gap could or could not be a problem for non-gamers moving to Vista, but it's too early to tell.
So where does that leave us then? If Microsoft continues to stay on schedule, they will have a shipping version of Vista ready within a month, though retail consumers will be waiting until 2007 to get their hands on it. Whether it will really be ready to replace XP at that time remains up in the air. Early adopters will likely bite the bullet, but many people will probably prefer waiting for the inevitable Service Pack.
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kristof007 - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
Oh my God I have such a good laugh at that. I saw some Halo 2 vids for PC in some montage video and it looked pretty smooth. I'd say above 40fps but with this article I am sure your going to need like Quad-SLI setup or comparable to run it smooth and high res (1900x1200) or greater.
Locutus465 - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
My experience with vista RC-1 hasn't been that pleasent over all... Firstly, still no support for the Promise Ultra100TX controller card at all, which saddens me greatly. Secondly, whether I did something to mess it up or not I am not sure. But for sone reason I have no optical drive support in my RC-1. I was messing around with nVidia's pre-release vista platform drivers, so perhaps that is a part of the issue. Also, support for doom was absolutly horrendous for my system (running Gefore 7800GT). It appeared to me that there was absolutly no HW openGL rendering. Again, perhaps I messed something up with drives, though I did install the latest available Vista64 build on nVidia's website.Perhaps the 32bit version of vista is just much father ahead of the 64b version in terms of driver support and maturity. If this is the case, then I am rather conserned. MS is trying to move the world to 64b wtih vista, and I would love to join them. But not if it means destroying my already working Windows XP system.
ChronoReverse - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
Unfortunately, Nvidia has dropped the ball with the OGL icd for Vista. ATi, however, has released a working one.OpenGL works fine in Vista just like XP. MS just doesn't ship a driver since that's the job of the video card vendors. When Nvidia and ATi both get their drivers complete, MS will include a WHQL qualified driver with Vista, but you'll still want to update it.
Locutus465 - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
Yeah, but what is weird is that when I tried Beta 2 the drivers worked much better. Doom 3 wasn't fast by any means, but playable, and it looked like doom 3. It seems to me almost as if MS took a step backwards with the driver situation with RC-1. I'm waiting with bated breath for RC-2 on friday. I want to see how RC-2 compares.ChronoReverse - Thursday, October 5, 2006 - link
Well, considering that MS aren't the ones writing drivers, I hardly see why they're to blame. Thay've practically been screaming at the manufacturer to make them Vista drivers =/mmp121 - Tuesday, October 3, 2006 - link
The article states:
Yet never expands on what the video issues are, or even HINTS at what they might be related to. Are the video issues driver related, video playback related, gaming related, what?
Clarification would be GREATLY appreciated.
theprodigalrebel - Tuesday, October 3, 2006 - link
It's the game benchmarks. As much as 40% performance hit (in FEAR @ 1600x1200 with 4X AA). I too would like a clarification on who is to blame for this: 1) Windows Vista 2) ATi's Driver Team.I'm assuming it is a driver-related issue which ATi will most definitely resolve by the time Vista's released. If there was something fundamentally wrong with Vista itself, then 3DMark results wouldn't be near identical to the XP results.
kristof007 - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
I am REALLY hoping it's as simple as a newer (better) patch from ATI. I think it would be doable. We can see patches coming out pretty regularly adding value and features to our existing hardware. So hopefully as said above, the ATI driver should fix things. Did they test with nVidia and look for discrepancies?nullpointerus - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
When I ran F.E.A.R. on Vista RC1, the game had massive stuttering every second or so at 800x600 0xAA 4xAF high quality on an EVGA 7900 GT KO. An old 2D/3D RPG that I had lying around got massive framerate improvements - IOW, it became playable! - simply by moving it to an XP SP2 install with a lowly 6200 TC-256 card. There are definitely major problems for the Vista driver teams to fix. And I still can't get any sound out of my Audigy...gaesaekkiya - Tuesday, October 3, 2006 - link
I think Windows2000 is the most powerful, reasonable Operating System of MS products'.Comparing OSs performances, please, include windows2000, too.
Thank kou.