Gaming Slow Vista Performance In Games

[Trolly]

I always thought Vista was poor for game performance, but since SP1 it has been justified to me that there is negligible difference (on DX9) between XP and Vista. However, GTA IV is utterly unplayable on any setting, and I have to switch to XP whenever I want to play it, and Fallout 3 is quite sluggish and suffers from temporary freezes (speed-wise, it doesn't crash). Other games are fine, but these highly demanding games are giving me a lot of trouble. Is this just how bad Vista is or am I doing something wrong? Vista and my video card drivers are all up to date BTW.

 

[Pimpmynintendo]

I always thought Vista was poor for game performance, but since SP1 it has been justified to me that there is negligible difference (on DX9) between XP and Vista. However, GTA IV is utterly unplayable on any setting, and I have to switch to XP whenever I want to play it, and Fallout 3 is quite sluggish and suffers from temporary freezes (speed-wise, it doesn't crash). Other games are fine, but these highly demanding games are giving me a lot of trouble. Is this just how bad Vista is or am I doing something wrong? Vista and my video card drivers are all up to date BTW.

1: How much RAM do you have?
2. What graphics card are you using?

 

[Trolly]

2GB RAM and a 512MB ATI Radeon HD 3870, which should be ample I believe (Y).