Game Performance

Frenzy123 · 10 Oct 2009

I guys im currently running a dual boot, i guess ill start by posting my system setup;
CPU:AMD 9600 Phenom Quad Core
GFX Card:Nvidia 8800 GTX
RAM:2 x 1G 800MHz
Dual booting XP Pro 32bit and W7 Pro 64bit

So my problem is that I am getting bad game performance from Windows 7. Taking 1 game for example (left for dead) in XP i can recieve a range of FPS values from 50-100. In W7 with the same settings, I get half if not less performance. I specifically tested 1 scene on both operating systems, XP pulls around 60fps where as W& achieves less than 20 at best.

So im thinking i may have missed something out on my W7 installation. To start with I have split 1 partition of my harddrive into 2 partitions for both operating systems, each having ~20g of space, my W7 installation has ~5-7G of free space (I only mention this incase space is my problem). I then I have a second partition of ~200G of space for docs, programs and games.

As soon as I installed W7 I downloaded the latest W7 64bit nvidia drivers for my card, I installed my monitor driver and let windows update install its updates mainly for compatabiltiy of programs. I then disabled a few services I know I don't need and setup my virtual memory, I setup ~3G of Virtual memory on the same partition as the W7 installation.

OK thats pretty much it, I have a few concerns that may be the cause of the problem of reduced performance on W7;

The total sum of memory of the W7 installation and the virtual memory nearly take up ~ 16-17 G of space out of 20 not leaving much space free.
The fact that my XP system is 32bit and my W7 system is 64bit has some affect over performance of games.
The fact that W7 has DX11 is causing reducing performance of games not compatible with W7.

I have done some research and I realise W7 current performance is generally slightly lower in games than XP. But a difference of 50% is alot I think there must be something wrong. I was hoping to get rid of my XP installation but my main use for my PC is games and I cant be dealing with 20fps until I upgrade my pc. As a final note I ran the performance test on my system, I didnt get a number less than 5.9 out of (i think) 7 and some values were above 6.5.

Quite a detailed post guys I hope someone can help me out. Thanks in advance for any comments.

sup3rsprt · 10 Oct 2009

I'm in the same boat (as are many others). Gaming is just not as good on Windows 7 for the most part. Although I admit that 50% performance loss a bit extreme..

If I were you I would continue to play my games on XP where they are undoubtedly better performing (anyone who says otherwise is not an experienced PC gamer).

Frenzy123 · 10 Oct 2009

Thanks for the quick post, XP has always been good for games but im still a little suprised by the amount of performance loss, anyone else have some ideas ?

sup3rsprt · 10 Oct 2009

What is the level of AA and AF you are using? What about Vsync? Is it On or Off? What refresh rate are you using? Did you try defragmenting your hard drives? Is there heavy activity on the system before you even start playing the game? How much memory usage before you load the game? Is there enough available memory for the game?

sup3rsprt · 10 Oct 2009

By the way, I've never heard of a 8600GTX before. So I assume your graphics card is actually a GT or GTS? Or is it a 8800GTX?

And what about power options? Do you have it set to Max performance?

Frenzy123 · 10 Oct 2009

yes sorry I meant 8800 GTX and my power settings were not set to high performance so I swapped that over now,as far as individual gfx settings, theyre identical to my XP setup and as Im sure you know W7 has a hell of alot more processes running in the background compared to XP, My XP setup uses ~16% of RAM idle and has 18 processes, W7 has 40 processes and uses 40% of my RAM. VSync is off.

sup3rsprt · 10 Oct 2009

are you getting this poor performance in all games or is it just L4D?

try uninstall your graphics drivers and reboot. Go into device manager and uninstall the driver again (because there's probably a Microsoft driver also, so delete it). Reboot once more and then install the latest driver from NVIDIA. I am using 191.07.

Frenzy123 · 10 Oct 2009

also getting poor performance in garrys mod I will try ur gfx driver suggestion thanks

sup3rsprt · 10 Oct 2009

garry's mod and L4D probably use the same game engine. In that case any problem affecting one game will affect the other. If you can, try some other games and report.

Maybe there are known issues with Windows 7 and the Source engine.

Frenzy123 · 10 Oct 2009

trying another game will be the next thing I try, I reinstalled my gfx card drivers as u suggested and also changed the power settings, no change. I just ran L4D in windowed mode so I could check my RAM and CPU usage, my cpu didnt go over 55% usage and my RAM didnt go over 75%. I will try running a different game next, I also just checked windows 7 games compatibility list for L4D, it is rated excellent... so there should be minimal difference...