Kokul’s World

Well now that Windows Vista RC1 is out, and more features are being released to the public, I think I can say a bit about it’s load on graphics card.

Well a lot of the Windows Vista appeal to consumers will probably be it’s new AeroGlass theme with all the flashy 3D and transparent effects it will boast. Obviously this means that your graphics card has some work in store for it. But the question i’ve been pondering is whether Vista will kill computers with older graphics cards like mine’s (ATI Radeon 9000 Pro 128 mb) or computers with integrated graphics cards when games are run, or whether it might breath some life back into the performance of games and other graphic applications for those with old or integrated graphics cards.

On my card, the desktop graphics will probably run smoothly, unless I open up over 4 windows at once (which I usually do). Then it might become a problem. Another thing is the transition between the desktop and a game. Will the graphics card be allowed to unload the Vista desktop to make room for games or will the Vista desktop have to reside in some part of the video card’s memory or the system RAM. How long is it going to take to switch from desktop to game and vice versa. Just by looking at screenshots, all that eye-candy seems graphics intensive, which might be the final nail in the coffin for integrated graphics cards or for my old graphics card.

But on the other hand, Vista does have some promising features that might improve the perfomance of games on those with integrated or older graphics cards. Vista has a feature that reserves part of your system RAM for your video card. So it’s like having extra onboard RAM for your graphics card. Such a memory increase will most definetely mean more performance and framerates. What if you run out of RAM to reserve for your video card or don’t have enough to begin with? Well that’s no problem too. Thanks to Vista, you just have to plug in a USB flash drive and you’re all set. Instead of having to pay like $40 for that stick of RAM, you can just buy a 512mb-2gb USB flash drive on sale and use that to boost your RAM for a cheap and affordable price.

So in the end, it still remains to be seen whether Vista will be a graphics card killer or saviour. The new features it offers will help improve performance, but they probably won’t be enough to justify running the desktop on those older graphics cards or those onboard ones. So when I get Vista, I probably will have to crank down all that eye-candy and perhaps revert to the Windows XP default theme.