S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Although the game is not out yet, THQ gave Driver Heaven and some of our community the amazing opportunity of testing out the multiplayer beta of this upcoming title. The game is still a bit rough around the edges, but it already looks amazing and runs at decent speeds. Better be on the lookout for this one. AA was not enabled because it does not work with dynamic lighting.

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Stalker may still be a work in progress, but it already runs admirably in both Windows XP and Vista. Although the average framerate is slightly better in Windows XP, the overall performance favors Vista – it was more consistent and wasn’t affected as much by lighting effect such as lightning strikes or weapons fire. There was also no artifacting visible in the Vista installation; whereas we experienced minor geometry distortion under Windows XP on both cards (could be a bug in the game).

Neverwinter Nights 2

The follow-up to one of the best RPG games of the last decade, NWN2 delivered a strong single-player experience and one of the most powerful game editors ever. The game engine may not be as good as the one in Oblivion, and it certainly isn’t as optimized, but the game can still look amazing.

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We tested NWN2 because we’ve seen reports on various internet forums that the game performs better under Vista than it does in Windows XP. As you can see from the figures above, our experience with the game was pretty similar under both operating systems. Under Vista the framerate was certainly less stable and while the game was smoother at moments, the overall experience was marred by freaky drops in performance. The average framerate turned out to be pretty much the same, but if we had to choose the winner we’d go with Windows XP because of the more stable framerate.

Observations

Overall the performance in Vista is comparable to the one attained under Windows XP. Memory hungry games seem to fare a little bit better in Microsoft’s new OS – Vista is much better than Windows XP at managing the available system memory, even though it appears to use more. Dual-core support is also supposed to be better, but the F.E.A.R. benchmarks seem to suggest otherwise. Supreme Commander and Oblivion back Microsoft’s claim however, so there must be at least some truth to it. Our findings suggest it may just be specific to F.E.A.R.

Of all the tested games, two were particularly more enjoyable under Vista: Supreme Commander and Stalker. The first was not only performing better with higher framerates and less stuttering, but also didn’t exhibit any audio issues, which are quite common in Windows XP. Stalker, on the other hand, lost some fps in the XP to Vista transition, but no longer displayed any artifacts. Overall, exceptionally good for a system that has only been out for a month especially when one of the newest and most intensive games currently available (Supreme Commander) is a much better experience on Vista. The shape of things to come? Let’s hope so.