[insert generic font funny picture of Vista here]



I just got my copy of SP1 (service pack 1 for the "huh what?"s of the world) for Windows Vista. Folks, it's time to upgrade. My test program was Crysis, running at Very High on everything, I managed to actually play the game with a few hickups. Before SP1, I was able to cook a potato in a microwave for every frame I saw. I'm finishing the game up on High settings with sound options on medium (Sound Blaster Audigy 2 isn't going to kick like it used to). The game looks amazing and I'm averaging around 40FPS. In Windows XP with everything on High I was only getting around 25-30 fps with hick ups during the movies on a first load. I'm actually really impressed. Whatever SP1 did, it did it well.

I also tested out World in Conflict and with everything as high as it would go (including the 3D clouds with shadows on the ground from the clouds), I pulled an impressive 30FPS average, my highest going to around 54. Company of Heroes was managing to get an average of 40FPS with everything kicked up. Call of Duty 4, averaging around 80FPS with everything highest. That's with V-Sync enabled as well. I'm trying more games tomorrow, such as Unreal Tournament 3, Team Fortress 2, Hellgate: London, and The Witcher. If you're interested in how that goes, you can message me on Xfire. I'd post a link, but I'm generic today. My name is.... dryvby. Big shock there.

In the raw side of the news, I'm still unable to play Soldier of Fortune: Payback in Vista. Then again, why would I want to?




DryvBy's Specs:
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+
Motherboard: ASUS nForce 570 SLI-Deluxe
Graphics: Gigabyte GeForce 8800GT 512MB (256-bit memory)
Memory: 2GB GeiL DDR800 (Lat: 4-4-4-12)
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Gamer Edition (2003, baby!)
Harddrive: Samsung 500GB SATA 2.0 7,200RPM (loaded with over 60 games... even Kingpin: Life of Crime). Also a WD EIDE 7,2000RPM 8MB Cache 250GB and an external (same drive).
OS: Microsoft Windows Vista SP1

Folks, toss your XP. You'll be sailing smooth with everything in this SP1. Now, if only SP2 will fix this generic crash on Soldier of Fortune: Payback and allow me to show my wife System Shock 2 (since she was impressed with BioShock)...

-dryvby

Oh, and my tax refund is huge so I think I'm upgrading from my 1080i HDTV to a 1080p 120hz HDTV. The joy of 2008! Now bring on the Smash Bros!!