From a graphics perspective, Darren Polkowski offers a snapshot of the RTM Vista build and a critique of the drivers supporting it.

Is this really a huge surprise? Everything I've read about Vista says that it was built from the ground up to help prevent the unauthorized copying/use of protected files... considering I don't create any protected content this "feature" is nothing more than CPU overhead for me. It'll be a sad day when they pull the plug on XP.

Maybe it's one of the reasons why some game developers extended their game's release to the third quarter of this year. Still I don't see much advantage of Vista right now, for gaming otherwise since no games that are coming out that would fully supports it. And the price, oh well, I heard that the Ultimate version is the way to go for enthusiasts for gaming but at $400 and piece, I'm better off buying a good graphics card or a cpu and motherboard upgrade. I'll just have to wait for now.

$400 for the Premium edition DEFINITELY sounds steep considering that same amount buys you a full-blown XBox 360... yes, I know that console is subsidized by game revenue/licensing, but come on... you don't think Windows helps generate revenue via SQL/Exchange/Office/etc?!? To me it looks like Microsoft realized that people were paying up to $600 just for a graphics card to play games and said "Man, I bet they'll pay $400 for this if we strip out features from the other versions" Bastards.

The upgrade edition is $250. Ars is reporting that there might be a "family pack" where Ultimate users could buy additional Home Premium licenses cheap. But I agree with you. There's no reason to upgrade to Vista at this stage. And OpenGL support is pathetic, at least from ATI.

Great article, lousy OS. And as for the HW driver devs, they better get to work. Though I do like what I see in some of ati's drivers using vista. For them being this new, to have any increase is at least incouraging. Maybe vista will work...

No big surprise. Heck, I waited until SP1 to install XP, let alone jump on the Vista bandwagon. Just another reason to wait until Vista matures a bit and gets put through the ringer first.

Given the cost, I'll most likely wait until the OEM versions of Vista hit the market. Bill Gates isn't the richest man alive because he gives windows away, but c'mon already. $400?!?!?!

Drivers issues aside, because I know they are problems that will eventually be fixed, it's the built in DRM that's gonna make or break Vista for me. I can imagine more enthusiasts migrating to linux (Ubuntu has come along way and is really polished) depending on how restrictive Vista actually is.

I would definitely give Vista a few months to let the drivers catch up. XP wasn't so hot when it was first released either.

Man, those were some TERRIBLE Doom 3 numbers with the ATI card... I know it's not the hardware's fault, but still... the hardware manufacturer released those drivers.

It looks to me like way way way way way way way way way too much emphisis programming and effort was put into the feel of the GUI rather than functionality as usual. This thing is very pretty at the expense of any kind of productivity. If microsoft didn't own the government and the vendors forcing it to be the standard they woudn't be able to give this crap away.

Nvidia DX10 interview
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/?article_id=544280

As someone who went through the transition from Win 3.1 to Win 95 and again from Win 9x to XP I feel a sense of Deja Vu. The earlier transitions had their share of problems as will the transition to Vista. Earlier migrations took place over a span of years as will the migration to Vista. DOS games were slow on Win 95, 9x games were slow on XP. Within a year or so we'll have multithreaded 64 bit games using DirextX 10 - specifically written for Vista and the gaming community will be raving as loud as they are dissing today. In the meantime, feel free to continue using XP. There is no law requiring you to upgrade

I'd love to see the benchmarks repeated with an 8800 and the leaked DX10/vista nvidia drivers:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/foru [...] opic=12229

Why are Toms still using old GPU hardware and even older benchmarks (doom 3, 3dmark 05? puhlease.. ) even for a supposedly DX10 OS?

Nvidia's drivers are abysmal and they've only released one update since RTM two months ago.

Civ4 is completely unplayable and I'm sure thats not the only game. I'm actually surprised you had so few problems with testing.
SLI support is in beta

So for now Vista just sits in a spare partition, waiting for the rest to catch up. I really liked some of the new features, but its unusable for gaming currently.

It doesn't sound like you've tried the new leaked drivers, although I absolutely agree that gameplay perfomance under vista sucks badly (and probably always will) when compared to XP.

This is exactly what i was curious about. In a few months when they can benchmark the first DirectX 10 titles, i wouldn´t even be surprised if they ran just as fast on DX9 and XP because of sloppy drivers.

How can you make such a statement about a product that has not even been released yet.

On Page 3 of the article, the driver model representations shown for XP and Vista are the same. Could you verify if this is correct?

I was hoping Microsoft LEARNED something from those shaky starts. Do they lack the ability to launch a rounded product?
-cm

Well the only thing that could be considered 'old' would be 3Dmk05.

D3 is the engine on which pretty much all the current OGL games are based, and F.E.A.R. and Oblivion are the two most widely tested 'stress tests' for current modern gaming.

The wide availability and 'known quantity' factor of all of them make them ideal for testing. 3Dmk06 is arguably a good addition, but still keep 05 for comparo. Something to consider 3Dmk05 gives you a tough test, but large enough numbers to expose greater variability, with 3Dmk06 the scores are lower, any differences get muted. Personally I'd rather see 3Dmk01 and 03 added to see system effects as well as just VPU.
Also If they tested something like World of Warcraft the latest version, then people would complain about ATi and nV not having the chance to ensure driver compatability/stability with the new game. There's pretty much no excuse for the titles they picked, if anything the ones they picked should be the baseline for performance.

As for the leaked drivers, reviewers shouldn't compared leaked drivers, only mention that they may exist, and then mention the impact they witnessed, but for straight up comparison, until the IHV releases the driver, then it's not something that deserves to be in a test, this goes back to the floptimizations and magic drivers fiascos of two years ago. With that history, stick with those available on nV's site. If they put them on their open Dev page, then test it, otherwise it's only worth a reference.