Any advice for improving performance under Windows Vista?

I've upgraded my hardware (dual core 64bit intel chip, NVidia 7900) and figured I might as well install vista while I was at it so I put on Vista Ultimate 64bit (this is an official MSDN version, not a pre-release beta)

I find most of my 3d games run fine, but even with the latest NVidia drivers (98.65) I get *very* poor performance. So poor that even if I turn off every type of rendering available using the debug menu and just have the skybox showing I'm at 5 frames a second.


Yeah yeah, Vista is not officially supported LL. I know that. What I'd like to know is has anyone else poked around to see what can be done for Vista performance before I spend time on this?


On a related note, NVidia Vista driver 96.85 "Includes OpenGL driver for compatibility testing."

"Includes OpenGL driver for compatibility testing."

That means that you can test OpenGL programs, but the drivers are not optimized. You cannot do much except waiting for better NVIDIA OpenGL drivers. Actually MS had planned to not support OpenGL in Vista, except a basic function set (OpenGL 1.4) and the decision to include full OpenGL support was made just before they released the first Vista version. Therefore OpenGL had low priority when the graphic card manufacturers developped their first drivers for Vista. OpenGL is about to die off on consumer video cards, and what you see is one of the symptoms. OpenGL is the reason why SL has a huge list of incompatible video cards, and the reason why there are huge differences in performance on cards that have excellent graphic processors on it. The reason why SL still is an OpenGL applications might be that OpenGL works on all operating systems like Mac or Linux, while DirectX/Direct3D is Windows-proprietary. To develop a DirectX-Windows-version of SL, the Lindens would have to redesign the graphics interface from scratch - and I doubt that they have the resources and skill to do that, considering the huge problems they still have with the current version.

I believe they have the technical skill to do it, but the design and time-management skills may be lacking.

If Vista doesn't end up wit decent OpenGL support (which sounds like a possibility) then that puts a nice little deadline on the death of SL; LL can whine all they want about video card manufacturers not supporting OpenGL but they are the one left with a product that only works on old platforms.

OpenGL is not about to die off and will be fully supported in Vista.

While more games will no doubt go to the DirectX route, a ton of existing applications are OpenGL only, including most professional 3d software. Maya, for example, requires OpenGL.

An in your case, nVidia is one of the largest backers of the spec.

-peekay

ram... lots of it ,
2gig is just gone under vista,
anything lower then 4gig just not worth it -.-

I get zero fps diffrence in Vista vs XP (7900gt on both pc's / yer i have 4 gig ram, other pc has 2, not a pretty sight on that one)

Could be cause im using 32bit vista tho , never bothered much with 64bit since nearly everything i use never very get supported on 64bit always something wrong.

Could the OP just be having the dual-core performance problem?

EDIT: To see if the dual-core issue IS the problem, try the steps listed in this post:
/111/be/92821/1.html#post930684

If you follow those steps and your FPS instantly shoots up, that's your problem. There are other people here who know a lot more about how to address the dual-core issue than I do.

Alongwith setting the Affinity to one core, there is another thing you can do to try improving performance.

Right-Click on the SecondLife shortcut and choose the Compatibility tab.
Check the box to turn off Desktop Composition.
Hit OK.

What happens in Vista is that the clear windows, real-time updating of task thumbnails and other flashy stuff is handled with Direct3D. So if you run an OpenGL program in windowed mode, you are essentially runing one API within another. The end result is a 50% reduction (or so) of your framerate.

Disabling Desktop composition while the program is running or using the OpenGL program in Full Screen mode will eliminate this.

Yes. Yes I am. Changing affinity to one CPU boosts it to 40 fps in a quiet area. Then I switch it back to dual CPU.. and it stays at 40. And I restart SL, and it defaults to dual-core affinity, and it's running at 40.
*shrugs*
Needs more experimentation, but thanks!


New problem: alt-drag camera control works on monitor one, but not on monitor two. That's a minor issue though.

I doubt ATI and nVidia will dump OpenGL since they need to implement it *anyway* for the Mac version of their cards, and the difference between the Mac and Windows versions on anything produced this century is minimal. And there's been some indication that Intel is finally going to start taking 3d performance seriously again after they got roasted over the shonky GMA950 chipsets in the low end Macs.