Poor Vista performance

[Brinael]

After searching the forums for a few hours, I've found no solution for my problem, so any help would be appreciated. Running Vista 32 fully updated, lastest drivers, all hotfixes, as admin and under compatibility mode, the game will run at 60fps for about 20 seconds, then drop to about 15. It looks as though it's being frame limited for some reason, and no matter what setting I've tried, the problem persists. Full screen, windowed, 1920x1200 or 1024x768, vsync, tripple buffered, ultra high or low, it's exactly the same. I've also tried multiple video and sound drivers, swapped video cards (although they are both 8800 GTX), tried different RAM configurations, used my onboard sound, installed to RAID and normal drives...

Other games I've run in Vista, including Crysis, CoD4, Mythos, The Witcher, Dirt, HL2, FEAR, LoTRO, they all run fine. They only thing I haven't tried is the hi-res DDO which is downloading now.

I'm very familiar with all flavors of Windows and computer hardware, and please no Vista sucks, go back to XP posts (it runs fine in XP, but for reasons beyond my control, I'm stuck in Vista).

I'm running QX6800, 4 GB ram, 8800 GTX , 2 WD Raptors in RAID 0, X-Fi sound

[Eladiun]

Did you exclude DDO from DEP? I've seen DEP reek havok with a number of games on Vista.

[GeneralDiomedes]

Try disabling the window manager service.

That restored my FPS to XP levels.

[pcgammerm]

as someone that actually likes the overal feel of vista (yeah it has issues) it comes down to saying upgrade to XP



yes i said upgrade, i say that because at anything above 1280x1024 res the vista performance blows monkey nuts. its not just a DDO thing, it even does it with WoW.

i've heard from many people that the vast amount of games have major issues in vista at high res, i haven't tried some of them, but the sources are very reliable gamers and computer nerds

[BurnerD]

You said you have tried different RAM configurations.. when you did that did you try only having 2GB in the machine. The only reason I bring this up is becuase with your Video card ram your addressable RAM is currently 4+GB. I'm not saying this is the problem, but there have been reports of issues when running over 4GB total. I'm guessing you already tried 2GB though.

[Theboz]

8800 series of cards has had problem with what you describe. I have seen many post about how they will be running high frame rates and then they drop. One way to fix it is to hit Alt-Tab and back again. But, i think its been fixed.

Also, you may not have this problem persay, and you may not want to hear that Vista sucks but you may also maybe stuck with this problem too.

I have a 8800 gts and i usually get about 60fps and it does drop with Vista just like what you describe.

With XP I dont notice it because I am over 100fps, allt the time.


You also say that you have 4gigs of ram vista 32 only recognizes upt o 3gigs, try taking out a gig to see if it helps, you need vista 64 bit to get the use of 4 gigs of ram.

[Nexx]

Your problem is Vista.... get rid of it :/

[Khyron]

Check this out. PC Magazine Rated Vista #1... of the top 15 Tech Dissapointments of 2007! LOL :D

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140583-page,5-c,techindustrytrends/article.html

Vista is the issue. I downgraded to Vista last month and it crushed my framerates enough to effect gameplay too. Not to mention the constant crashing. Upgraded back to XP and all is right with the world. Vista's a Lemon.

[Brinael]

I specifically exempted DDO with DEP, disabled the window manager service, but unfortunately it had no effect. Going with the high-res DDO actually raised the frame rate a bit. FRAPS shows a rock steady 30fps now, so at least that's better than what I had before.

When I first load up the game, hit create a char and sit there, it's 60fps for about 30 seconds, and without doing anything it'll drop to a solid 40. In game, same thing, except it'll cap at 30 after it drops.

Vista 64 isn't really an option for me as the x-fi drivers are real flaky and my tv tuner doesn't function for more than 2 seconds. I wish it did so I could use all of my ram. Windows reports 2.8 GB with one GTX and when I had both GTXs in it was only 2.6 GB. Now it's sitting on my desk as a 5 lbs paperweight since Vista still doesn't do SLI properly.. even with the patches/hotfixes it never worked, at least not for me.

Thanks for the help guys. I'll keep screwing with it and figure it out eventually, but if you've got anymore ideas I'll gladly try them. The 20% performance penalty for running Vista never really bothered me that much, but getting Crysis-like frame rates from DDO is pretty annoying.

[pcgammerm]

Check this out. PC Magazine Rated Vista #1... of the top 15 Tech Dissapointments of 2007! LOL :D

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140583-page,5-c,techindustrytrends/article.html

Vista is the issue. I downgraded to Vista last month and it crushed my framerates enough to effect gameplay too. Not to mention the constant crashing. Upgraded back to XP and all is right with the world. Vista's a Lemon.

i heard about that, but one thing to note about that article is that they are calling it a top disappointments because all the things that were promised, but never delivered.

you may have heard of leo laporte, he has a podcast (This Week In Tech (TWIT)) and they talked about that one time, with the same note i just said coming from one of the people on it and they are very reliable sources (based on what they do for a living... ie. one is a writer for engadget)

[GlitterKill]

OK, I have gone through the whole Vista torture last year. Firstly, I run a PC Hardware review website for a living (http://www.pcapex.com) and spend my time testing stuff thoroughly. Both with mid grade and high end hardware. I ran Vista Ultimate for 6 months and tried my hardest to tweak it to run right... it never would. Network transfers are ATROCIOUSLY slow, hard disk transfers are stupid slow, all games get a 10% to 20% DECREASE in framerate compared to XP. If you are lucky enough to run 4GB of RAM then you can expect a whole new set of wierd issues with various programs thanks to an odd Vista memory handling bug. Last December I gave up and went back to XP Pro 64 bit and have been in heaven ever since.

The PC I use is an Intel Q6600 Quad Core CPU (2.4GHz is stock, overclocked to 3.2GHz) on an EVGA 680i motherboard with 4GB of SuperTalent DDR2-1000 RAM (Running @ 1000MHz), a Soundblaster X-Fi soundcard and an EVGA 8800GTX 768MB video card which is overclocked as well. I could barely run DDO at a 1024x768 resolution, without any antialiasing, and get smooth framerates. It was REDICULOUS! Now that I am on XP 64bit I get use of all 4GB of my RAM and can run the game at 1600x1200, totally max details, with x4 AntiAliasing and it is smooth as glass. Right now, the bottom line is that Vista IS worse for gaming. There is a SP1 almost ready for release for Vista that promises around a 5% - 10% increase in gaming performance which is close to what you lost by going with Vista to begin with. After SP1 has been out for a while I MIGHT try Vista again.

I do have a wierd issue with my X-Fi and DDO now, which is wierd. I have to use my motherboards onboard sound in ddo.

[Shade]

Easy to fix:
Step 1: Get windows XP
Step 2: Delete Vista
Step 3: Install XP
Step 4: Enjoy great performance and graphics in games.

Or if you must have vista, just dualboot both of them together.. Games in XP and whatever in Vista.

[Quenai]

I had a simular experience. Framerate would drop dramatically after about 30 seconds. I changed a line in the DDO UserPreferences.ini file located at "My Documents\Dungeons and Dragons Online" to AllowFakeFullScreen=False. After making the adjustment to the ini file, if you get a black screen when exiting the game hit the "Enter" key.