-----Original
Message-----
From: Ian
Lowe,
Wintermute Consultancy [mailto:ian@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 25 November
2001
14:58
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] [OT] WinXPro - IPX Support?
I have now been faced with a
problem...
I like XP Pro, love the scanning interface, all the new views,
etc..
But I just ripped it off and reinstalled Windows 98.
I play Unreal Tournament, at a fairly good level (Division 4 in the
UTA
League) which is fairly typical of DirectX games. In windows 98, I
get
a
benchmark in 3DMark 2001 of about 6000
When I installed W2KPro, my performance dropped to about 4000:
lower
framerates, poor USB mouse performance, juddery screen etc. Even
two
driver updates later, it stank.
Windows XP was *even* slower, of the order of about 2750 on
Identical
hardware. That’s 32fps as opposed to 75fps in normal
gaming.
Basically, Windows XP is pretty, and ncie to use, but it is
*terrible*
for any application you actually want to perform worth a
damn.
Ian.
Do you think perhaps
it
is a driver issue Ian?
I had a bit of a
religious experience a couple of years ago (religious with a small
“r”),
and woke up one morning and didn’t like games any more! I used to be
a
console nut, but for some reason they don’t cut it any
more.
I do however have a
simulator installed on my PC for my RC helicopter stuff which is pretty
heavy
on the hardware – there’s lots of transparency smoke etc plus
an
anti-aliased 3D landscape.
Its been so long
since I’ve
run W98, but I remember taking a slight drop in terms of frame rate (38fps
at
1280x1024x32) down to 36 when switching to Win2k, but that was quickly
surpassed
when Nvidia brought out a set of Direct X 8 native drivers for Win2k
(42fps).
I’ve just had
a
quick look (I still can’t run XP as a production system as I’m
waiting for Compaq to release drivers for the WL100 card) and I get 46 fps
in
Win XP – and that’s using the bog standard Nvidia driver.
Reports
are that NVidia’s beta drivers increase performance even
more.
I’ve been
through
several graphics cards over the years, but for the time being I won’t
buy
anything that doesn’t have NVidia hardware on it. They seem to be
very
good in terms price/performance, and the driver updates come thick and
fast.
While I’ve
been
typing this I’ve actually recalled the grief that I had during the
beta
testing of the simulator. With the introduction of DX8 MS changed the
implementation
of the timer counters that game and sim developers use. There was a
compatibility
problem with the VIA Southbridge on my motherboard, Windows 2000 and DX8,
that
exhibited itself as a stuttering (and also means that 3D Mark gives bogus
figures in the report which in no way relate to the figures you see on
screen
while the benchmarks are running). The developer actually showed some
foresight
(this was about a year ago), and decided that all such issues had to be
fixed
ahead of time simply because the world was moving towards an NT based
architecture.
Die-hard gamers have
through necessity restricted themselves to W98, but I wonder how much of
that
is due to the fact that the developers don’t perform performance
tweaks
under Windows 2000/XP as WELL as W98/ME? Now XP has become the de-facto
standard for new systems they don’t have a lot of
choice.
Tim.