Test System

Windows XP SP2 Fully Patched/Updated (DirectX 9.0c)
Windows Vista 32bit RTM Fully Patched/Updated (DirectX 10)
Forceware 93.71WHQL (XP)
Forceware 100.54 (Vista)
Geforce 7950GX2
2x Asus Geforce 8800GTX
Intel Core2 QX6700
2x1Gb Supertalent DDR2-1000 (4-5-4-15)
EVGA NF680i
Auzentech X-Meridian 7.1
WD Raptor 140Gb
Sony DVD-710A
Enermax Galaxy 850w
Oblivion
FEAR:EP
Need For Speed Carbon
PREY
PowerDVD 7.2
QuickTime 7
Forceware 97.92WHQL (XP-8800)

XP:
The test system was built from scratch, a format of the hard drive was performed (NTFS) and then Windows XP was installed (SP2). Following the completion of the installation, the Nvidia drivers were installed. All updates were applied, including .NET Framework 3.0 (latest service pack) and the latest Media Player version and Patches. Next, the latest builds of the benchmarking tools were installed and finally, the hard drive was de-fragmented. For each test, the Nvidia drivers were set to default quality/optimizations (unless otherwise stated).

VISTA:
The test system was built from scratch, a format of the hard drive was performed and then Vista was installed. Following the completion of the installation, the Nvidia drivers were installed. All updates were applied also. Next, the latest builds of the benchmarking tools were installed and finally, the hard drive was de-fragmented. For each test, the Nvidia drivers were set to default quality/optimizations (unless otherwise stated).

Finally, in order to have NFSC run in Vista we were required to use Win98 compatibility mode.

Good Benchmarking Practice:
Where possible, each benchmark was performed 3 times and the median result for each resolution/setting is shown in the tables that will follow. All applications had their latest patches applied and all hardware features the latest BIOS/Firmware.

7950 GX2
For our GX2 testing we chose to use 1920x1200 for all tests, all but Oblivion use 4xAnti Aliasing and 16x Anisotropic Filtering. Whilst the GX2 doesn’t always provide playable framerates in more recent titles at this setting we’re more looking at performance differences so this is acceptable. Due to time constraints we have chose the 4 games being tested for the following reasons:

Oblivion: Large outdoor environments and HDR.
FEAR:EP : Smaller claustrophobic environments
NFSC: Fast paced action with demanding visual effects
PREY: OpenGL

Looking at Oblivion first it’s great to see that with the latest driver Nvidia have managed to keep performance almost identical to the performance in XP, there is a slight variation in minimum and maximum FPS however overall it would be impossible to tell which OS was running if the two systems were running side by side. In FEAR: EP we see that there is more of a performance difference between the latest WHQL XP driver and Forceware 100.54. The drop of 10% in vista sounds quite bad however looking at the figures to see a drop of only 3fps makes this drop less important. Need for Speed Carbon also provides a very close performance comparison between the two OS’s. Specifically looking at the minimum fps stat we see that they are near identical. Our final GX2 test looks at the performance of an OpenGL title, PREY. Good news again on this front with the performance of the two operating systems being very close making it tough to determine what operating system is being used.