Found this on Nvidia's forums:

No, there is no way around it. XP used XPDM, while Vista and Windows 7 use WDDM. WDDM is radically different, and basically 'forces' the graphics drivers to do things a certain way to ensure the stability of the operating system. However, some of the extra code also causes some kernel call overhead, which you really can't do much about, other than to try to figure out a way to call your kernels less frequently. WDDM shouldn't slow the kernel itself down though.

Yup, yup. I prefer Vista also; I wasn't suggesting that XP (or Vista for that matter) was the better version of the operating system.

There had been reports that for some reason, GPUGRID appeared to be running slower on Vista than on XP (on the same hardware), and I was posting a link to an explanation of why that would be. Unless a given application is able to take into account the higher overhead, GPU tasks are going to be slower on Vista.

Mike

There had been reports that for some reason, GPUGRID appeared to be running slower on Vista than on XP (on the same hardware), and I was posting a link to an explanation of why that would be. Unless a given application is able to take into account the higher overhead, GPU tasks are going to be slower on Vista.

• 29460 > GTX 260/192 SP: 42-43 ms time/step, CPU-Time > 4000 s, Windows7/64, X4 810 @2,6GHz
  
• 23101 > GTX 260/216 SP: 33-34 ms time/step, CPU-Time > max. 1500 s, WinXP/32, Q6600 @3,0GHz (9800GX2 before, don´t be confused)
  

BOINC mostly serves same projects on both hosts: QMC@home, Spinhenge etc. The differences can not be explained in the number of shader processors at all, in my opinion.

Could you upgrade the driver on the Win7 box to the 185 series?

Yes I installed now 185.68 (Beta) for Vista/64, ...

Another error (582098), switched back to 181.71.

ETA, he's going faster in XP because that machine has the faster card. 216 core vs 192.

ETA - What temperature is your 9800GTX+ running at ?

Regards
Zy

I wonder if the driver differences could explain the rest of the difference (beyond the 12.5% more due to 216 vs. 192 shaders)? The Win7 box is using 181.71. The XP box is using 182.06. Anyone know any particular driver enhancements in the latter that might increase performance slightly?

Not yet for win7 but for vista and xp there are some beta's released which should give a speed increase on these newer cards.

The versions i found are version 185.68 for them but i am warning people when use them make sure no units are running on projects because a change on loss of everything is a BIG YES.

Again these versions seems not to run on win7 but to be honest i have not tried them on my box yet

And YES Vista is slower then XP absolute confirmed,
But you can get close to XP performance on vista if you have good drivers and tune the os to run as little as possible of these graphical toys, less is better.
Also turn off crap like indexer and other slow your system down services which are not needed for boinc ;)

But ofcourse i do that for the xp machines as well and.
Still xp is faster untill now, although i got a the idea that win7 has potential to beat XP.
My test have confirmed a faster boot then XP but the lack of speedy drivers for it make it hard to confirm that it can beat XP on projects
I guess time will tell when the RC gets released for the big public to test and hopefully M$ is not screwing it up ;)
Don't get me wrong i think we really can start testing if win7 will be faster when the big hardware builders start to release drivers for win7, untill that has happened we are stuck on what M$ has made for it ( or what was allowed by them singing)

The Win7 box is using 181.71.

Mhh, sorry or wasting your time with that driver.

The 185.66+ BETA drivers have been reporting to have some good effects on performance but as usual we talk about speed in games on these fora :D
But i saw that some improvements where made on CUDA as well, since this where commands only being used by g200 cards i can't confirm it.

• 29460 > GTX 260/192 SP: 42-43 ms time/step, CPU-Time > 4000 s, Windows7/64, X4 810 @2,6GHz
  
• 23101 > GTX 260/216 SP: 33-34 ms time/step, CPU-Time > max. 1500 s, WinXP/32, Q6600 @3,0GHz (9800GX2 before, don´t be confused)
  

* 29460 > GTX 260/192 SP: 30 ms time/step, CPU-Time > 4700 s, Windows7/64, X4 810 @2,6GHz

• 29460 > GTX 260/192 SP: 42-43 ms time/step, CPU-Time > 4000 s, Windows7/64, X4 810 @2,6GHz
  
• 23101 > GTX 260/216 SP: 33-34 ms time/step, CPU-Time > max. 1500 s, WinXP/32, Q6600 @3,0GHz (9800GX2 before, don´t be confused)

* 29460 > GTX 260/192 SP: 30 ms time/step, CPU-Time > 4700 s, Windows7/64, X4 810 @2,6GHz

* 23101 > GTX 260/216 SP: 22.6 ms time/step, CPU-Time > 725 s, WinXP/32, Q6600 @3,0GHz

The KASHIF tasks seem to take about twice as long as the "older" more standard tasks. On my i7 machine they take 12 to 13 hours which is about double the 6.5 hours of the others. The only downer is that it seems to mess up the DCF some so then ALL tasks from GPU Grid are now rated at 10-15 hours. As I run off the shorter ones the numbers start to fall again.

Can't you guy submit these tasks with a different plan or something to stop doing that to me ... it screws up the work queue estimates. Life is hard enough already trying to convince the developers that there are problems.

Apparently that would mean resubmitting the batch and lossing the current results (link).

MrS

@Zydor: about 55°C with 2 120mm fans at ~500 rpm on an Acceleron S1 Rev 2. Why?
MrS