Two additional hard drives were added to my test system to support Vista. All graphics tests were conducted in single GPU mode.

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 - 2.66GHz Conroe Core - 4MB L2 Cache
• EVGA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
• 4GB Corsair CM2X1024-8500C5 XMS PC8500 DDR2 SDRAM 5-5-5-18-2T @ 400MHz
• Western Digital Raptor 74GB HDD, 10000RPM, 4.5ms Avg Seek, 8MB Buffer, SATA
• Western Digital Raptor X 150GB HDD, 10000RPM, 4.5ms Avg Seek, 8MB Buffer, SATA 2
• Seagate Barracuda 300GB HDD, 7200RPM, 8ms Avg Seek, 8MB Buffer, SATA 2
• Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB HDD, 7200RPM, 8.9ms Avg Seek, 16MB Buffer, SATA 2
• Western Digital Caviar SE16 160GB HDD, 7200RPM, 8.9ms Avg Seek, 8MB Buffer, SATA 2
• Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZX
• PC Power and Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR Power Supply
• Dell 3007WFP LCD Monitor
• 32-Bit Color / Vsync Disabled / 60Hz Refresh Rate
• Windows XP Professional 32-Bit with Service Pack 2 / DirectX 9.0c
• Windows Vista Ultimate 32-Bit / DirectX 10

Graphics Cards, Drivers, and Settings

• EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX ACS³ Edition - 575MHhz Core / 1800MHz Memory (Effective)
• ForceWare 97.92 for Windows XP
• ForceWare 100.25 and 100.65 for Windows Vista
• High Quality Texture Filtering, 8x Anisotropic Filtering, Gamma Correct Antialiasing

Test Applications

• 3DMark05
• Dark Messiah
• Doom 3
• F.E.A.R.
• Guild Wars
• Oblivion
• Medieval II: Total War Demo
• World of Warcraft

Notes

• Antialiasing was set to "application-controlled" unless otherwise noted.
• Anisotropic filtering was set to "application-controlled" unless otherwise noted.
• Supersampling transparency antialiasing was always enabled unless otherwise noted.

3D performance is measured using FutureMark's 3DMark05, Doom 3, and F.E.A.R. The following charts display the results under Windows XP (blue bar) and Windows Vista (green bar) at three different settings - 1280x800 with no AA, 2560x1600 with no AA and 2560x1600 with 4x AA and 8x HQAF.

In 3DMark05, both operating systems provided similar performance, although Vista slightly outperformed XP at the highest quality setting.

3DMark05 Performance

In Doom 3, Windows XP was the better performer although differences were unremarkable when it came down to gameplay at equal settings.

Doom 3 Performance

Windows Vista provided the fastest performance for F.E.A.R. However, as with Doom 3, gameplay was largely unaffected.

FEAR Performance

Next Page: Gameplay Performance and Conclusion