Prey

Prey (OpenGL)


Prey is the latest title to be released using the Doom 3 engine, and since we have learned how to tweak the engine a bit more since then, it makes sense to include this major title in our testing suite. 

Windows Vista Gaming Performance - NVIDIA and ATI Compared - Graphics Cards 83

Windows Vista Gaming Performance - NVIDIA and ATI Compared - Graphics Cards 84

Windows Vista Gaming Performance - NVIDIA and ATI Compared - Graphics Cards 85

Windows Vista Gaming Performance - NVIDIA and ATI Compared - Graphics Cards 86

Windows Vista Gaming Performance - NVIDIA and ATI Compared - Graphics Cards 87

Windows Vista Gaming Performance - NVIDIA and ATI Compared - Graphics Cards 88

Windows Vista Gaming Performance - NVIDIA and ATI Compared - Graphics Cards 89

Windows Vista Gaming Performance - NVIDIA and ATI Compared - Graphics Cards 90

The only OpenGL game I tested for this article, I knew that the results for Prey performance were going to be interesting.  Here in my NVIDIA testing I found that performance with the 7900 GTX was pretty good under Vista, falling only about 3 or 4% at 1600×1200.  The 8800 GTX also does just fine at 1600×1200 under Windows Vista, but beyond that it’s a nightmare.  At the 2560×1600 resolution, where we used to be able to play the game fine under Windows XP, Vista performance is 37% slower on average with a 60% lower minimum frame rate.  Obviously, OpenGL performance under Vista is something that needs dramatic work from NVIDIA.

As for AMD’s driver, I could not get Prey to run at all.  So, that equates to a 100% drop in performance…  AMD is still working with me to find the problem here as they say running Prey on their end hasn’t been an issue.  I’ll update here as I find out more!

Update (2/13/07): AMD was able to get me a driver that would fix this problem and it seemed to be merely a bug in the driver installer itself not setting the ATI OpenGL driver to be the default OGL renderer over the built-in Microsoft driver.  We’ll be updating our Prey performance data in a future Vista Gaming Performance Update article.

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