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Posted: **2006-08-01 08:22am**

Gamespot have run a backwards compatability test on the latest beta version of Vista using a variety of new and old games.

By Sarju Shah - Posted on Thursday July 27th, 2006

Microsoft's new operating system radically departs from Windows XP. The company scrapped numerous legacy systems and upgraded others with improvements in networking, security, the desktop, and the component that matters most to us - DirectX, the technology that lets games talk to the system hardware.

Windows Vista makes a clean break from DirectX 9 and earlier versions by including two versions of DirectX. Vista will come with DirectX 10 and DirectX 9.0L. Older games will function by using DirectX 9.0L, and should, in theory, work fine. Microsoft has stated that games made for Windows XP will function, but games from the days of Windows 98 and DOS probably don't have much of a chance.
Standard Beta Disclaimer

Vista is still in Beta 2, and at least seven months from retail launch, but we had to see how our XP and older, classic games worked on Vista. We tested games from GameRanking's top-ten lists from the years 2000 to 2005, and we also tossed in a few notable games that were released prior to 2000 as well as a handful of games released this year.

We started testing with the GeForce 7900 GTX but quickly switched over to the Radeon X1900 XT after all the crashing games revealed that Nvidia's Vista drivers weren't quite mature enough for live testing. Note that this isn't indicative of Nvidia's final Vista performance levels. The OS is still over a half year away from launch, which gives Nvidia plenty of time to polish up its drivers.

Overall, only twelve games failed out of the thirty-five we tested. Most games worked fine after we patched all of them up to date. A few games automatically disabled the 3D desktop in order to function, but most didn't require us to fiddle around with any Vista settings to work. We encountered severe issues in a few games that made them difficult to play, but the nature of the bugs and the fact that the games could run leads us to believe that the problems have more to do with the immature state of video card drivers for Vista.

Age of Mythology
Plays great!

Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
We could boot up and play the game. However cursor ghosting issues, massive frame rate slowdowns, and extensive rendering problems ruined the playing experience.

Battlefield 2
The single player version works fine, but when we tried to get our online fix, PunkBuster kept kicking us out of servers. We're also not sure if the mic works or not.

Black & White
Plays great!

Civilization IV
Stuck in "Ancient" age. We kept encountering a disk not found error while trying to launch the game. Patching and troubleshooting didn't help.

Command & Conquer Red Alert 2
Plays great!

Counter-Strike: Source
Plays great!

Deus Ex
Plays great!

Diablo II
Plays great!

Fallout 2
Plays great!

F.E.A.R.
Plays great!

Grand Theft Auto III
Plays great!

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Plays great!

Guild Wars
Plays great!

Half-Life 2: Episode One
Plays great!

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
Plays great!

Half-Life 2
Almost! We could get past the splash screen to the loading screen, but then the game crashes back to the desktop. It shouldn't be impossible to fix since Lost Coast worked perfectly.

Homeworld: Cataclysm
Plays great!

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
We could launch the game, but it only loads up the taskbar and a black screen which stays there permanently until you open the task manager and kill the task.

Max Payne
The game loads up, shows the introductory video, but then crashes back to the desktop.

Neverwinter Nights
We experienced a few minor graphical glitches, but the game was still more than playable.

No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way
Plays great!

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Plays great!

Prey
Prey fails to load, and displays the following error in the id software loader: "The current video card/driver combination does not support the necessary features."

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Plays great!

Return to Castle Wolfenstein
The game fails to load, and displays the following error in the id software loader: "The current video card/driver combination does not support the necessary features."

Rise of Nations
The game loads up, shows the introductory video, but then crashes back to the desktop.

RollerCoaster Tycoon
Plays great!

Rome: Total War
Flat out broken, the game never loads up at all. Vista displays a window that says that "Rome: Total War has stopped working."

Sacrifice
Plays great!

SimCity 4
The game loads long enough to display the EA logo video. Then it crashes right back to the desktop.

The Sims
Plays great!

The Sims 2
Plays great!

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
Plays great!

World of Warcraft
Plays great!

There results indicate a failure rate of 34%, which to my mind isn't exactly great. Whether its due mostly to the graphics cards or Vista is questionable, either way they've got some work to do or they can forget this ever kicking off.

Posted: **2006-08-01 09:58am**

My god, they are fucking morons.

The whole point of DirectX is every version will continue working no matter what the latest Greated version is installed.

DirectX 10 also has DirectX9, DirectX8, DIrectX7, DirectX5, DirectX3, DirectX2, DirectX1, etc (might have missed a few versions.)

Just like DirectX 9 has DirectX8, DirectX7, DirectX5, DirectX3, DirectX2, DirectX1, etc (might have missed a few versions.)

Rince and repeat.

Also most of those game not working problems are a) copy protection not working and exploding, b) related to the beta graphics drivers on a fucking beta OS

Posted: **2006-08-01 03:18pm**

Yeah, those results are pretty much irrelevant since compatibility is exactly the kind of thing that gets done in the final beta polish period.

Not to mention that they seemed not to use any of the compatibility modes that would help with running at least a couple of those games.

Let's put it another way. On XP, there is maybe a dozen previous games that can't be run no matter what you do - I fully expect Vista to not be any worse then that.

If it is, I can always run those games in my Win 98 gaming virtual machine (free MS Virtual PC 2004 or VMWare which is currently testing Direct3d virtualisation).

Posted: **2006-08-01 03:43pm**

Xon wrote:My god, they are fucking morons.

The whole point of DirectX is every version will continue working no matter what the latest Greated version is installed.

DirectX 10 also has DirectX9, DirectX8, DIrectX7, DirectX5, DirectX3, DirectX2, DirectX1, etc (might have missed a few versions.)

Just like DirectX 9 has DirectX8, DirectX7, DirectX5, DirectX3, DirectX2, DirectX1, etc (might have missed a few versions.)

Rince and repeat.

Also most of those game not working problems are a) copy protection not working and exploding, b) related to the beta graphics drivers on a fucking beta OS

While that may be true for DX9, DX10 does not contain all the previous versions due to it being completely rewritten. Thats why it includes DX9 as a seperate entity.
And lets not forget that MS themselves say that 98 and DOS games almost certainly won't work, as in, they don't care and won't try to make them work.

And did you miss the whole beta test warning and admission of graphics card problems at the beginning?

Not to mention that they seemed not to use any of the compatibility modes that would help with running at least a couple of those games.

And you know that HOW, exactly?

Posted: **2006-08-01 04:09pm**

Xon wrote:DirectX 9 has DirectX8, DirectX7, DirectX5, DirectX3, DirectX2, DirectX1, etc (might have missed a few versions.)

You missed DirectX 6, and correctly missed DirectX 4, which was never released...

Posted: **2006-08-01 04:16pm**

Lost Soal wrote:And you know that HOW, exactly?

Oh I don't know, maybe because I'm not seeing it anywhere. I'm only seeing "plays great" or a reason why it didn't run. Not one game that they managed to get running with some tweaking. Now admitedly, its possible that none of the remaining games could be made to work with compatibility modes, but past experiance with compatibility modes makes me think that unlikely.

Even if they tested it with compatibility modes, it doesn't invalidate my first and primary point:

Yeah, those results are pretty much irrelevant since compatibility is exactly the kind of thing that gets done in the final beta polish period.

Check out some of the boards with Microsoft employees (Arstechnica would be one), they are trying to get compatibility by any way they can. If there is a mention of something not working on Vista, the MS people almost swarm you with requests for more info so that they can track it down and fix it. This, of course, doesn't mean that they will be sucsessful, but I'm willing to bet that, at release, there will be at most a dozen mainstream titles that don't work.

Not to mention that Gamespot's techical expertise has been questionable for a while now - check out their Oblivion tweaking guide if you want a good example of it. There coverage of Vista has not made me think they understand it any better. If this kind of testing was done by Arstechnica, Tech Report, Beyond3d or a couple of other reliable tech sites I would be willing to give it more credence.

Posted: **2006-08-01 09:44pm**

Lost Soal wrote: While that may be true for DX9, DX10 does not contain all the previous versions due to it being completely rewritten. Thats why it includes DX9 as a seperate entity.
And lets not forget that MS themselves say that 98 and DOS games almost certainly won't work, as in, they don't care and won't try to make them work.

If I cant play my beloved Fallout 2 on Vista, I wont bother. Unless someone figures out a way to get it running...

Posted: **2006-08-01 11:31pm**

Lost Soal wrote: While that may be true for DX9, DX10 does not contain all the previous versions due to it being completely rewritten. Thats why it includes DX9 as a seperate entity.

You're an idiot with apparently no knowledge of how the damn thing works.

DirectX 10 is a given feature set, if you dont have that then the card isnt DirectX 10 compatible thus DirectX 10 doesnt work(It is all or nothing). DirectX 9 is a much more relaxed standard, so if something misses DirectX 10, then DX9 catches it. Nor can you say they are seperate entities, as the entire DirectX suite is written as a single unified product. You dont have a copy of DirectX 10 and DirectX9 installed as seperate versions, you just have DirectX 10 installed with the option of using lesser version numbers. The various DirectX interfaces (aka DX versions) are just different views of the overall system best.

The exact implementation details are meaningless, every version of DirectX that has been released will be avaliable.

It. is. as. simple. as. that.

Posted: **2006-08-01 11:40pm**

To my understanding, DX10 is not a superset of all previous DX versions, unlike the previous DX versions. This means that you need both DX9 and DX10 installed in Vista. This is due to how DX10 was written.

Therefore, it would be possible to have DX10 installed, and not be able to play a game that requires DX8. You need to have DX9L installed to play.

DirectX is both a required feature set, and an interface. DX10 is eliminating the previous versions from the interface it provides.

Posted: **2006-08-02 04:28am**

Xon wrote:
Lost Soal wrote: While that may be true for DX9, DX10 does not contain all the previous versions due to it being completely rewritten. Thats why it includes DX9 as a seperate entity.
You're an idiot with apparently no knowledge of how the damn thing works.

DirectX 10 is a given feature set, if you dont have that then the card isnt DirectX 10 compatible thus DirectX 10 doesnt work(It is all or nothing). DirectX 9 is a much more relaxed standard, so if something misses DirectX 10, then DX9 catches it. Nor can you say they are seperate entities, as the entire DirectX suite is written as a single unified product. You dont have a copy of DirectX 10 and DirectX9 installed as seperate versions, you just have DirectX 10 installed with the option of using lesser version numbers. The various DirectX interfaces (aka DX versions) are just different views of the overall system best.

The exact implementation details are meaningless, every version of DirectX that has been released will be avaliable.

It. is. as. simple. as. that.

Gee, really.

The Inquirer wrote:The DirectX 10 API will have completely new and faster dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and is supposed to run much faster. The company decided to cut the backward compatibility with DirectX 9, 8, 7 and lower in this API but there will be a way to use games programmed for those APIs. Microsoft will enable support for DX 9 or lower games through a software layer, meaning it might run slower

DriverHeaven wrote:DirectX 10 also places new demands on graphics card developers (primarily Nvidia and ATI) as there are quite a few new features that they have to support. DirectX 10 breaks from tradition by not being backwards compatible with DirectX 9, however there will be a separate version of DirectX 9 in Windows Vista so legacy games should work without too many issues (well that is the theory!)

Posted: **2006-08-02 04:35am**

Beowulf wrote:To my understanding, DX10 is not a superset of all previous DX versions, unlike the previous DX versions. This means that you need both DX9 and DX10 installed in Vista. This is due to how DX10 was written.

DirectX10 is a super-set of the previous versions, but to be DX10 a graphics card must fullfill all the requirements. And if those requirements are not bet; DirectX 10 just doesnt work.

Therefore, it would be possible to have DX10 installed, and not be able to play a game that requires DX8. You need to have DX9L installed to play.

When someone requests DX8 when you have DX10 installed; the runtime provides an interface for DX8 which is basicly a rebranded DX10 interface but without the strict requirements. "DX9L" is mearly the term given for the Vista-only version of DirectX which is used to provide previous version support. And as far as anyone outside of Microsoft is concerned, DX9L & DX10 are the same chunk of software.

Just like Office Clippy and the Clip art selector are a part of MS Office.

Virtually by definition; If you have DX version N installed, you can get DirectX version N-1. It is simply the nature of the technology.

DirectX is both a required feature set, and an interface. DX10 is eliminating the previous versions from the interface it provides.

Nope. Wrong.

The DirectX interfaces themselves where not guarantied to be backwards compatible with previous interface versions. What is guarantied if you can always get the previous interface version, as long as you ask for it 1st and not a later version (technical issues with that).

Anyone claiming that previous versions of the DirectX interfaces (aka DX8 for example) will not be supported on Vista is spreading FUD, pure and simple.

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