Adrian Kingsley-Hughes from ZDNet.com executed the tests using the AMD Phenom 9700, Radeon 3850 graphics card, 2GB of RAM and ATi Catalyst drivers 8.2.
The three games which performed better on Vista than on XP SP2 were Call of Duty 4, F.E.A.R. and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
Vista gave The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion the best performance boost compared to XP SP2, working out at an average of 9 frames per second faster on Vista RTM and 13 frames per second faster on Vista SP1.
Seven out of ten of the games tested produced frame rate averages which were lower under Vista than XP SP2, however, a closer look at the numbers shows that when Vista is slower than XP SP2, the actual frame rate differences are only in the single digits.
Here are the results: average frame rates for each game on each platform
CoD4
XP SP2: 56 fps | Vista RTM: 58 fps | Vista SP1: 62 fps
Fear
XP SP2: 70 fps | Vista RTM: 71 fps | Vista SP1: 71 fps
Oblivion
XP SP2: 56 fps | Vista RTM: 67 fps | Vista SP1: 69 fps
Bioshock (DX9)
XP SP2: 50 fps | Vista RTM: 46 fps | Vista SP1: 47 fps
CoH
XP SP2: 30 fps | Vista RTM: 28 fps | Vista SP1: 28 fps
Crysis
XP SP2: 27 fps | Vista RTM: 24 fps | Vista SP1: 23 fps
Doom3
XP SP2: 157 fps | Vista RTM: 138 fps | Vista SP1: 142 fps
SC
XP SP2: 47 fps | Vista RTM: 44 fps | Vista SP1: 44 fps
UT3
XP SP2: 68 fps | Vista RTM: 64 fps | Vista SP1: 65 fps
WiC
XP SP2: 24 fps | Vista RTM: 22 fps | Vista SP1: 22 fps