Arrandale, the end of compatibility?

Interesting title perhaps, but since I've recieved my T410, I've been testing it heavily with different games, operating systems, benchmarks, and I have some interesting results.
I've installed XP, Vista 32 and 64 bit, and running the factory 7 Home Premium 64-bit install. I've tested many of my 70+ games, ran hard drive benchmarks, 3dmark06. I've tried many different drivers, settings, tweaks, what-have-you.

I'll start with saying that the reason I've chosen Intel platforms in the past is because it's been my experience that Intel has been the best with regards to maintaining backward compatibility, not only in the graphics department, but with their platforms in general. With all operating systems I've used both Lenovo and Intel drivers. Gaming performance in XP was spotty. Many of my games performed rather poorly, one wont even run unless I enabled software vertex rendering in the Intel control panel, the same goes with 3dmark06. It just crashes out with hardware vertex rendering, and I get a score of around 399 in software (but 1,904 in Windows 7!). Also my Intel SSD scored rather low. I also got a lot of stuttering in a few games, such as Battlefield 2 and 1942.
Then I've tried Windows Vista. 3dmark06 got 1890, SSD performs poorly as well in benchmarks. Game compatibility is terrible, no better than 7 with old games, but games that work do run pretty well.
Which leaves me with 7. It's extremely fast, SSD benches very well across the board, games that work run extremely well. No stuttering in games at all.
Basically I'm just really surprised that my T410 runs so well in 7, but so poorly in Vista and XP. It really surprised me considering this is a major pull away from Intel's usual compatibility with older games and operating systems. It really makes me wonder if in Intel's latest effort to step up performance, especially in the graphics department, they sacrifice compatibility. I'm not really sure what to think. I'm disappointed that I can't play many of my games, either because XP/Vista run so poorly, or they are just not compatible at all.
I absolutely love my T410 over all. I've certainly put it through it's paces the last several days and it's held up very well. All I can say is, arrandale was definitely made for 7.
Thanks for reading, and sorry it was so long. My testing is now officially over, and I'll reinstall 7 tomorrow. I guess I will just have to get a netbook to play those games that I can't on my T410.
That's all. It's been a very interesting, at times exhausting, experience.

Edit: I am really tired, so my writing sucks tonight. Have been up nearly 24 hours, with a big testing session all evening. Basically, in XP, most games "ran", but my system (and many games) just ran so poorly. I think that the reason most of the games ran in XP is simply because XP is so old.
In Vista, even less games ran. What games did run were markedly better, but the system in general was very slow.
In 7, few of my games run, but my system is extremely fast. Games that do run also run very fast.

 

Nobody replied? Not surprising. I wrote that after I took some sleep medicine and I went to bed afterward.

My whole point to this was, I'm just really surprised that backward compatibility has seemed to go out the door with the latest Intel platform. In the past whenever I had an intel system (notebook or desktop), I could always be assured my old games would run. This time it's dramatically different and it surprised me.
I did a TON of testing, XP and Vista and games in either ran like crap or didn't run at all. Only in 7 is my system fast, and games are fast. I guess that's the price to pay for a fast Intel platform and I guess it's inevitable that backwards compatibility had to be lost at some point.

If anybody has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them as best I can.

 

I don't think you've got the evidence to lay the blame on Arrandale.

 

I'm not laying the blame per say, but it's definitely a driver issue in the least. I noticed for example that the XP graphics drivers are version 6 whereas the vista/7 drivers are version 8. That makes a big difference, but I can only say in my testing the last several days there was a huge difference over all between XP, Vista and 7.

 

Hate to break it to you, but nobody cares for writing drivers for the previous iteration of hardware and/or windows. Also, one would have to recompile to take advantage of newer CPU features....

If it comes without specs and/or source code then you are, in effect, only renting it until the next generation comes out.

Nothing in your post is specific to this year's updates.

 

That could be the case now. I know XP is nearly 9 years old, it wont be supported forever. Still, based on the past I expected high compatibility this time around, and it wasn't there. Anyhow, my testing was an interesting experience, I learned a lot.

 

I'm ok with it. I think if it were up to Microsoft this would of happened at Vista's release. But it was so ill-received that they (and manufacturers) had to keep XP around. Manufacturer's seeing the success of Windows 7 is probably leading them to finally dropping support for a decade old operating system.

 

That's quite true aznguyphan.

 

Could you tell us which games you tried, their settings, and what frame rates they had?

Also, are you using the NVS3100 or the integrated graphics?

Thanks

 

Is there any reason that you didn't try to run these games under XP compatibility mode within Windows 7?

 

I did... >_< I tried everything to test my games, under 7, Vista and XP. I built computers for 9 years and have used them for 15, I know my way around computers.

 

Yeah I hate to say it but sometimes to move forward you have to cut ties with the past (i.e. break compatibility). You can't expected hardware manufacturers to produce and maintain drivers for several generations of the OS for new hardware that's really intended to be run on the latest generation of the OS. The complexity of maintaining, testing, and supporting even a single hardware driver for Win 7 (RTM), Vista (RTM/SP1/SP2) , and XP (RTM/SP1/SP2/SP3), all in 32 and 64-bit versions, plus generally the "server" OSes (Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2008 R2), is huge.

 

That's very true mutnat, I hadn't quite thought of it that way. But yes, that is a lot of OS's to maintain.

 

The future is Virtualization. While there are still some issues with supporting games using VT, applications like VirtualBox and VMware are starting to support it better. I've been able to get very old software and games to run well setting up a VT installation of Windows 2000, XP and Vista.

It's easy to create a new instances of virtual installs and bringing them up and down when i need them. It's also a huge plus being able to alt-tab to other applications without having to reboot to another OS install.

Finally, VT is one of the best ways to truly utilize current hardware with multi-core cpus and large allocations of memory. Older operating systems won't be able to take advantage of newer hardware but the VT manager takes care of that in the back ground since you can allocate resources as needed. I sugest looking into VT if you're planning to utilize multiple installations of different OSs.

 

What? I'm fairly sure 3d gaming in a virtual machine is nothing but issues.

 

Hi talin!

I dont think there is that much of a compatibilty problem. Microsoft supports VB 2010 back through XP. That'll be much more than a decade by the time it's oer with.

Specifically, what problems are you having Talin?
Renee

 

Okay I'm not sure I understand this line of thinking. Are you implying that because VB 2010 can be used on XP, all software written between 2001 and now should run fine on XP?

 

"I'll start with saying that the reason I've chosen Intel platforms in the past is because it's been my experience that Intel has been the best with regards to maintaining backward compatibility, not only in the graphics department, but with their platforms in general. With all operating systems I've used both Lenovo and Intel drivers. Gaming performance in XP was spotty. Many of my games performed rather poorly, one wont even run unless I enabled software vertex rendering in the Intel control panel, the same goes with 3dmark06. It just crashes out with hardware vertex rendering, and I get a score of around 399 in software (but 1,904 in Windows 7!). Also my Intel SSD scored rather low. I also got a lot of stuttering in a few games, such as Battlefield 2 and 1942.
Then I've tried Windows Vista. 3dmark06 got 1890, SSD performs poorly as well in benchmarks. Game compatibility is terrible, no better than 7 with old games, but games that work do run pretty well.
Which leaves me with 7. It's extremely fast, SSD benches very well across the board, games that work run extremely well. No stuttering in games at all.
Basically I'm just really surprised that my T410 runs so well in 7, but so poorly in Vista and XP. It really surprised me considering this is a major pull away from Intel's usual compatibility with older games and operating systems. It really makes me wonder if in Intel's latest effort to step up performance, especially in the graphics department, they sacrifice compatibility. I'm not really sure what to think. I'm disappointed that I can't play many of my games, either because XP/Vista run so poorly, or they are just not compatible at all.
I absolutely love my T410 over all. I've certainly put it through it's paces the last several days and it's held up very well. All I can say is, arrandale was definitely made for 7.
Thanks for reading, and sorry it was so long. My testing is now officially over, and I'll reinstall 7 tomorrow. I guess I will just have to get a netbook to play those games that I can't on my T410.
That's all. It's been a very interesting, at times exhausting, experience."

OK, OK. I see several questions in there and it does seem as if you are confusing Intel and Microsoft. Microsoft has done a lot of work to make Windows more secure (and harder to use).
Renee

 

"Okay I'm not sure I understand this line of thinking. Are you implying that because VB 2010 can be used on XP, all software written between 2001 and now should run fine on XP?"

Actually, I didn't mean to imply that. It depends on how well written the software is.

Renee

 

Ah yes. That I will agree with!

 

It has gotten better from nonexistent...
Virtualization is a very hot market that will continue to see advancements.

 

I tried virtualization as well (vmware and virtual box). I have a windows 98 VM set up already for those games that only need software rendering but *require* windows 98 to run. They run fine. Problems arise (and many they are) when you need 3d acceleration. I tried wined3d as well. Mostly it wouldn't run at all, a couple games that did run had major texture problems and were slow as hell.
I don't know if it's a microsoft or intel thing. I was only saying that in the past I could always rely on intel for compatibility (with old games). Their drivers have always had excellent backward compatibility. Even running an old operating system such as XP, many of my old games just wont run. So something has definitely changed, and it wasn't Microsoft. It's Intel. I don't fault them for it, it's part of progress and some times old things are left by the way side.

 

The x86 architecture is a CISC, Complex Instruction Set Computing, and it does not perform as well as RISC, Reduced Instruction Set Computing, architectures. More instructions to optimize for Windows 7 probably yields slower performance.

I suspect Intel is a lot less concerned about backwards compatibility because they saw great results running XP-based programs in XP Windows mode. Since the vast majority of PC's with the i-series processors will run under Win 7, they chose to optimize performance for Win 7. It seems like a good engineering solution to me. I'd rather see current hardware optimized for expected OS use!

So far, I have not seen any negative reports from Win 7 Pro users who ran older programs in XP mode, certainly none in this thread.

 

Ok, but again, XP mode does not support 3D. It only supports 2D applications.

 

If you are using Intel graphics that is likely part of your problem. My understanding is that Intel graphics have always had problems with games. Have you tried a T410 with ATI or Nvidia graphics? I haven't kept up on what Lenovo is shipping. My T500 with ATI graphics is quite compatible with older games (or at least the games I have tried). Like an earlier poster, I would be curious to learn what games you were trying and what the issues were per game. Thanks.

 

Actually Intel graphics have always been great with games (compatibility wise). That's why I was so surprised that Intel has departed from that. It's a moot point though. I'm loving my T410 and it's the best computer (not just notebook) I've ever owned. I can deal with not being able to play a handful of games (I may just get a netbook to remedy that problem).