Windows Vista and Performance

[JediKitsune]

I own Windows Vista and have been trying to play FFXI on it. Well, I can do that much, but I want it to run well. My specs are as follows:

AMD Athlon64X2 4600+ (2.4Ghz Dual Core CPU)

2GB RAM

Nvidia GeForce 7600GS (256MB PCI-E interface) running on latest drivers

120GB HDD running at about... 7,200RPM (Probably shouldn't make a difference. When I tried to run FFXI it was was right after a fresh format in and install of Vista).

Running Vista Home Premium (32-bit), I noticed a sharp decrease in performance compared to XP. I ran the Vana'diel Bench on both XP and Vista to test, and Vista I remember scoring around in the 3500-4000 range while XP Scored above 5500. Keep in mind this was with both machines running similar environments (no extra background stuff like anti-virus, etc.) with the same graphical settings for FFXI.

Now, I don't remember any other games having any performance hits on Vista, so I'm completely stumped. I tested Vista with Aero running and disabled (the Windows Classic theme) and there seemed to be no difference.

Any ideas? At the moment I'm running XP, but I'd like to finally get this sorted out so I can finally feel good about keeping this OS I paid for on my machine. I'm aware I probably need to upgrade my GPU at some point, but it runs most of what I want to play fine, plus I figure it would have the least impact on FFXI at this point.

[Mhurron]

You might not remember it, but depending on the version of your graphics drivers and the game just about every game has minor to very noticeable performance deficiencies compared to running on XP.

[Kailea]

only thing you can do, is right click on the POL.exe icon, then click compatibility tab and check the last 3 check boxs under the "Settings" area, that will help some.