Heavy artifacting on Vista x64...

I recently installed Windows Vista x64 RC1. I installed Guild Wars and it installed correctly; downloaded all patches as well. Upon launch, I can sign into the game just fine. However, when I get to my character select screen, my main character is sometimes not there (but selectable) or is in wacky shapes.

When entering the game, I receive images like this:

http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/5388/gw002ia0.jpg

Now I went into my XP Pro installation, and ran Guild Wars from my Vista x64 install, and it ran just fine with no errors (thus eliminating hardware failure).

Other games in Vista x64 that use Direct X9 run just fine (Prey, Heroes of M & M 5, and Lego Star Wars 2). It only seems like Guild Wars is currently affected.

I'm using the Vista x64 drivers from nVidia, and while Vista doesn't currently support SLI fully (which my system uses), it tells I have 2 GPUs and 520 Mb of memory for them. I also attempted to disable the 2nd card and force it to be a single GPU unit; same result.

Has anyone gotten Guild Wars to run in Vista x64 RC1?

This is to be expected since the new OS is still in Beta and manufacturers refuse to provide full driver support until it is released. Try RC2, which supposedly is the last build before production. GW runs fine for me in RC1-RC2 x86 but others get severe artifacting starting with RC1.5722. Most likely it is a DirectX issue, since the video drivers are all the same.

This may or may not be relevant, but have you tried turning Aero off while loading GW? I don't have a Vista install handy, but you can go into the shortcut properties and have it turn off desktop compositioning when you load the app.

I don't know if it'll help you or not, but it's a lifesaver when I'm playing games on Vista.

What video card do you have?

I'll give it another whirl on my x64 machine on Monday-ish and see what happens.

Update: I can run the game in Window mode and have no artifacts at all. It runs perfectly fine. So until the full driver set and full Vista release comes out, I cna use that (even resizing it to near full screen affects it in no way).

Thanks for the ideas. I did try the composition and Windows XP Service Pack 2 compatibility tips; neither worked sadly.

BTW, I'm running dual eVGA 7800 Gt's. Not in true SLI though since Vista doesn't support it yet.

I'm running a build considerably more recent than RC1, and this is working fine for me on x64. It's more than likely driver related at this point. Hopefully, all that stuff will get updated soon. I also didn't play all that much (I'm at work), just logged in and ran in circles for a minute to see if anything jumped out at me.

RC2 is no longer available to the public. I'm not that concerned about it now because in all actuality, playing in windowed mode allows me to continue to work on other things while the game is going on (cinematics, BS'ing in a city, etc.). Full screen I'd need to Alt-Tab out of it.

I'm just hoping this doesn't effect any other games.

Are you running SLI'd Nvidia cards or ATI cards?

I am running RC1 with an older Radeon 9550, and have seen no problems at all. Odds are, this is a drive issue. It is just one of the things you have to deal with when you use Beta software.

RC2 is not publically available yet. There was a leaked build on bitTorrent that no longer activates. It was actually a hacked pre-RC2 build. Information is available about it on Microsoft TechNet.

The artifacting is indeed a driver issue in full-screen mode in all official builds of Vista running SLI enabled. If you have an SLI config, simply switch to single card mode on the motherboard and the game will play properly full-screen, else use windowed mode.

Don't touched hacked builds with a ten foot pole.

I'm running an ATI Radeon 9600 here (nothing exciting).

I the OP said he tried single card mode and it didn't work; SLI as cause makes sense though. Is it the way in which it's disabled perhaps?

I prefer window mode myself unless I'm taking screenshots.