windows vista and guildwars. experiences. gf8800

Now that vista is in retail im wondering if anyone have any problems with vista and guild wars? im running 32 bit vista and it looks good so far.

my system specs:nvidia gforce 8800gts
asus a8n mb w onboard sound
amd 3000+ (bout to be replaced very soon:P)
1gb ddr (going up to 3gb soon..)

hardest part was getting my gpu working.
heres link to 8800 drivers for vista (beta.. but only one out there that works on vista for the 88s..)
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1554

only problem i can see after some hours of testing is when new maps is loading, the screen goes black a sec. when match/instance starts all is ok.

i do not know how it works on 64 bit, so if anyone tested plz tell if its work or not.

(i tried to search for vista posts but the only i found was for the beta version, so sorry if this has been posted before)

I just got my system formatted and installed with Vista. A few more hours of the -image and I will be playing. I will post in my results.

Im running the following setup:

Athlon 64 X2 5200+
Gigabyte 8800GTX
2gb OCZ ddr2
MSI K9A Platinum

I was getting 150+ fps in most areas (about 80-100 fps in Kamadan 1) at max settings 1280x1024 at full in game AA under XP, so we will see.

I'm guilty of envy! 150+ FPS! I'm running GW on a paltry 15 fps.

Well could be worse I guess.

I feel your pain Chewbacca. I average about 15 fps myself. Saving up for a new rig now though

I average at about 30, but can go to 45 and as low as 15 sometimes. It's ok for me though.

I havent had any problems since RC1, it even ran in Beta2

p4 3gz
radeon x1600xt
1.5gb ram

just a silly old Vaio vgcrb53

Need 2gb ram to have Vista run well.

only for heavier games like battlefield, oblivion etc...
guildwars is a game thats looks amazing yet requires very little of your system... im running gw on vista with no memory problems att all..and i have 1 gb

It's funny how most games (fps'es ) need 20 fps+ to be playable. In PvP I often get below 10 fps and it doesn't harm my gameplay.

I'm running Vista x64 and get the same black screen. I've tested with all drivers so far and it's always the same. The drives in the link you provided are the 1st ones that practically give me good performance (about 75% of FPS in XPs).

The other little problem I notices is that switching from fullscreen to windows takes a bit longer than in XP.

Yeah, I get the screen blink as well, but the switch didn't knock much off my frame rate, maybe 10%, but when I'm over a 100fps most of the time I don't notice anyway.

When I was running Vista Release Candidate 2

Geforce 7600
Amd (Single Core) Athlon 64 3400+ (old 754 pin cpu)
and 1 gb of ram

GuildWars ran fine

Still waiting on my vista upgrade to come in (weeks after Jan 31)

One question, are you guys getting 100+ fps in town with 16xQ AA and 16x AF?

GW has always been buggy as heck with outside AA/AF enabled. I think that all you can do is enable AA through the options menu. This might have changed in the 8800 series, but I don't see why Nvidia would engineer drivers for a game that's easy to run anyways. Typically they only optimize for big titles and benchmarks.

During the vista development there were multiple sources (including respected ones) that were complaining or hinting at Nvidia Driver development and Vista issues with the blame being on Nvidia's end.

This has most likely changed or will be fixed very shortly. Again, it ran fine with me without AA/AF which I normally don't run.

Their support for video is god-awful anyway, supposedly. (As far as Vista's concern). That's not the only issues Vista's had.

I havent tried using higher settings than in game. I use the max of everything that the in-game settings allow. I seriously doubt in a busy town you would get more than 100 with 16af/16aa. If I am looking at a large group of people and the majority of the town, my fps can spike as low as 60. Being in a more enclosed spot with less people, Ive seen it approach 300. For most activities like running to storage or the merchant, I get around 100.

Guild Wars is not in the optimisation list in the Vista Drivers, but many other poprular games are, even NWN2.

=Start Rant=

I don't want to start an Nvidia flame fest, but the 8800GTX is the first Nvidia card Ive bought since ATI made the 8500 and I am very disappointed in thier support. Not that Ive had problems with the card, but to produce and advertise a card as being designed for Vista/DX10, then not have drivers for it for a long time (technically they still don't) is totally inexcusable. The way they policed thier forums when people began to realise that they couldn't use thier $700 dollar card was inexcusable. The lack of a definitive statement announcing that there are no Vista drivers and that they wouldn't be comming any time soon, put a nail in the coffin for me. My initial plan when I purchased this card was to just get me some good performance until ATI released a DX10 card, then if ATI was better, I'd buy a pair, If not, I would buy a second 8800. Now I think I will be getting a couple ATI's unless they have terrible performance, but I definately will not buy a second 8800.
=End=

Firstly, there are drivers available for Vista, but for obvious reasons, like the fact that the operating system the drivers are for not even being released for retail yet, they, like Vista, are still in the Beta/Release Candidate stage and will be until the release of Vista next week!

well technicaly vista was released in december . if youre a technet user (like me) or have a open license or any other lisen thats used for companys etc.. so nvidia is realy slow to get their drivers out... well atleast the beta 100.30 works ok so far..

True. when my fps hits 20~ in battlefield 2/2142, I can see a difference in the gameplay and i'm usually screwed.

But in GW I was shocked to see I was occasionally getting 12-15 fps, I never really noticed it being that low.