New Gaming Computer. Vista or XP?

Hey folks. I could really use some advice. I am making a new gaming computer. (And really, I am mostly using it for gaming and music). I have to purchase a new OS anyway, should I upgrade to Vista or Stick with XP. Is DX 10 the must have for future games?

If I go with Vista, What version should I get. Do I need Ultimate or will Home premium do?

If I do get Vista what prices are reasonable? Are there any downsides to OEM versions?

Thanks for the help.

so why are so many people using it?

Marketing.


is it better for home theater stuff?

Nope.

Most people find the actual OS gui prettier, so there's that I suppose.

Depending on your hardware setup, your mileage may vary.

Thanks. That's good to know.

If your building a new system then I would recommend Vista Home Premium. Windows XP will play today's games better that stands to reason, but tomorrows games will be a different story specially when DX10 games go mainstream.

As Winrot is building a new PC I would recommend installing Vista. I have Vista installed on my laptop and current games are running fine. If I was to benchmark XP it would most likely come out on top for games, but the performance drop is not noticeable.

As Winrot is building a new PC I would recommend installing Vista. I have Vista installed on my laptop and current games are running fine. If I was to benchmark XP it would most likely come out on top for games, but the performance drop is not noticeable.

maybe not to you. "noticeable" is a relative term. Myself, I can notice a 10fps difference and 10ms difference in anything i play. Most people probably don't, but to say any performance drop is not "noticeable" assumes too much.

No matter what you decide, definately go oem.
XP:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6832116056

Vista:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6832116213

I am spending about 1k. I actually am getting an 8800. And I plan it will last for another five years at the least.

basically i want it to be able to play all the current games very well and future games well.

Thank you all for the help. I have decided I will go with xp for now. A few years down the road when DX10 is more normal and useful and the kinks are hammered out with vista i will likely upgrade. Thank you for the opinions. very useful.

I don't have any idea what kind of system you can put together for $1000 that will possibly have enough cpu and memory to hang in there for 5 YEARS (e6300 + 2Gig may be good until shortly after crysis enters the fray?).

BUT for $112 the Vista Premium OEM (vs $140 for XP OEM) at least gives you DX10 and an OS that may still be around for 5 yrs. Also, I am assuming the OS price comes out of your $1k target so you really need to forget about a 'retail' purchases of anything.

A complete $1000 Vista-based game rig running an e6300, 8800GTS, and 2G memory is completely doable, and from newegg of all places (this is just for the box, I am assuming you have a monitor, keyboard, and mouse). You just shouldn't plan on much of anything being very competitive for more than a couple of years, three will be a stretch.

Hi there Winrot,

You may have read a number of articles about Vista VS. XP. Your post stirred some thought in my mind about the 32 bit vs. 64 bit issue which would likely play a hand in OS selection even if it's a minor influence, the knowledge is good to have for future lookout. After following a small trail of articles, this one, an article by Paul Thurrott, was very helpful for me.

I am attempting, against my instinct and impatience, to bide my time and soak some info in that will aid me in putting together an efficient gaming puter. I've heard a number of not so grand things about Vista and this article gave much clarity to why there is such a buzz. I hope it helps =)

-Josiah

Thank you for the effort link-ey no work-ey

It it's mostly a game rig and you don't care much about doing too many other Vista things, then Home Premium.

If you want the full-on WOW thing, including the Ultimate 'extras' and may some day log into your office possibly including remote logon, then your only choice is Ultimate. Home Premium doesn't have all of the extras and toys, management, and other business features (i.e. domain related stuff).

You do know Q3 is _supposed_ to have quads for about the same price that you probably paid for your e6600 (sorry, you either new that and don't care or didn't need to hear it)... Anyway, enjoy your system, it sounds nice.

I got the e6600 for 234. Is that what the Quads will cost? I did hear about the quad cores but I guessed they would be more expensive than 234. Inexperience and impatience caused me to pull the trigger. Also, I am buying the box with my tax refund money and I have to get to it before the wife makes it go bye bye.

Also, ty Joker for the info on vista. I do like to play around with some business stuff . . . FTP server, etc. I might not be experienced enough to get the full utility out of vista ultimate but it sounds like that is the one for me. . . TY 4 the help.

Wow, those are fairly strong comments but you are completely entitled to them, especially if you have had personal experience and problems. I am not really a game player (only Civ [whatever], sorry- I know, it is not exactly an FPS game but I like it and it burns the boring hours) but I do read a lot (probably, much like you) and I found a somewhat credible article on ExtremeTech by Jason Cross, which doesn't exactly agree with what you just said.

The guy busted his butt and exhaustively tested over 25 different, somewhat high-end games, including stuff on Steam, and only found 1 or 2 that had any significant issues. The thing was that it was written early Februrary and he was absolutely sure the problems he found were basically drivers - he said that there wasn't really any problems with Vista, he was mostly only seeing a few fps lost and was sure the issues would be totally resolved in a couple of months (certainlly not years, and even back then it was an nvidia issue, go figure).

It is always kind of hard to know who to believe and I am always very interested in good, sound information, so which games don't play on your Vista system?

--joke

Joke,

The article you quoted from also states:

"If you use your PC for gaming primarily, I see no reason to upgrade to Vista just yet. Sure, it's pretty to look at, and it has that "new" shine to it, but ultimately it's less stable than XP overall for gaming. The Vista games folder and the Windows Experience Index offer some promise for the future, but in order for us to really reap the benefits, all the publishers are going to have to be on board. Windows Vista will replace XP as the default PC OS in the world, there is no question about that, but there's no reason to adopt it early in this case" --- end quote.

I do agree with you that drivers (particularly nvidia) are creating a lot of problems and also would say that vista can run a lot games without problems -- but if you are building a computer specifically for gaming and you are gaming fanatic looking for the ultimate experience ---- xp would be best choice for now --- in future this might change. With that being said and to be fair, one could elect to go vista early in anticipation for upcoming games and bug fixes --- particularly for upcoming games that are vista optimized and use dx10 --- if i were going this route ---- i would really look at graphic card with dx10 capabilities--- but it may be a while before dx10 games hit the market and dx10 cards are more expensive right now and present dx10 card remain untested--- i guess it may depend on what you want right now for gaming and how much money you want to spend as vista machine will cost a lot more than xp machine to get same (or less) performance as xp machine --- and even then vista machine will have more bugs with gaming.

The following article talks about future benefits and possibilities of dx-10

http://www.warcry.com/news/view/71 [...] rs-Excited

once again it all depends on what you want to do now -- it is sometimes risky and can be expensive to build a computer based on future technology --- xp gaming computer is cheaper build and original poster did mention cost with vista---- better and less expensive dx - 10 cards may exist in future --- current dx - 10 cards remain untested as there are no tested dx - 10 games out yet ---does ati have dx - 10 card out yet??? I hope nividia has there act together with the dx - 10 cards they are currently offering --- might be better to spend less on good dx - 9 card and wait for actual dx - 10 games so you have true field test of dx 10 cards--- in other words, upgrade to a dx - 10 card when dx - 10 games become available --- and possibly wait to upgrade to vista- -what do you think about this approach joke?

I do have to disagree that xp is a dead os given problems with vista. One question i have, is do you need 64 bit version of vista for future gaming or 32 bit version--- what would you recommend to poster of this topic?

yeah, so, how long are MS going to support any OEM that continues to deliver XP? When MS finally shuts that OEM door with XP that _will_ be the final death knoll for XP as far as Dell is concerned<period> (using any practical measure, Dell don't have _any_ in-house support compared with HP so their cost for supporting end-users on XP will go through the roof). How much more FREE XP support do you think you will be able to get from MS?

Are MS going to do _any_ new development on XP? Do you believe '95 is a dead OS? How about OS/2 or linux ( )? If you need any long-term support, you need to be using a commercial product like w2k or 2003 (but the corresponding overall COO will be higher). Windows 3.1, 95, and XP are consumer products and are all dead and gone.

You are just whining about a walking corpse. You can spout-off all you can and make as much stink as you want but you, anyone in this forum, or any talking head (editorialist) are not going to turn MS around and convince them to resurrect XP.

however, good luck.

As of the end of April, McAfee officially stops supporting their old engine that was running on <98/ME.

We still use 95 here because of some software a company we do business with uses it.

XP has good 3-4 years of service out of it before MS really stops supporting it. I believe in another thread they're working on porting DX10 back to XP now.

XP's end of life will most likely take place in 2010 or 2011.

I don't know if this is the one you are referring to but here is a small blurb and thread on techreport about a 19-yr old doing the 'alky port' for dx-10... about 90 posts so far.

Hacker claims to be bringing DirectX 10 to WinXP

I wont buy a new PC without Vista but that is just OEM ones. I recommed Vista for your new PC but turn off Aero to gain performance (Vista basic GUI still looks nice but without tranparency.

Seems strange that an O/S needs more memory than most Apps! Also you get factory DX10 support (even if it finds it way to XP)

it all boils down to cost and performance for gaming --- right now i think that vista is closing in on performance to xp --- but it comes at a price --- you need different and more expensive hardware to get near the same or lesser performance out of vista vs. xp.

I believe this will change in future --- but most promising of vista is not with current games ---- but games which have dx - 10. None exist yet --- so vista does not yet come into play --- but for those who want the fanciest and most up to date software right now buy vista if you have the big bucks to spend --- but for those that do not have the money to spend the big bucks --- you may want to consider the cost of speculating with the latest software and dx - 10 untested hardware --- and the fact that when dx -10 games do exist --- a better piece of hardware might exist by that time for the same price you already paid - or possibly buying the same hardware later for cheaper. And then there is still the 64 bit version of vista --- which is real future in my opinion -- but nividia dx - 10 card is not certified by microsoft to work with 64 bit vista --- at least last i read --- feel free to correct if i am wrong on this.

Still think xp offers best choice for present as vista system is more expensive to get same or less performance --- but when dx - 10 games exist vista will be best choice ------ and 64 bit hardware will be more widely available.

I'm currently a government contractor - you'll find some of the oldest equipment still being maintained by the government and we have had no major issues with Vista. Executables are the issue for old hardware - stay away from them. If you get your hands on the XP .inf files and point to them in Device Manager, I haven't seen hardware yet that doesn't run in Vista. As far as XP apps, literally only 1 in 10 are so crappy that they won't run in compatibility mode. I find it difficult to believe how people can still run a business without good hardware or tech support and still manage to blame an outside manufacturer.

That's not quite entirely true. I heard many complaints about hardware not being compatible with XP. It didn't invalidate all hardware (neither does Vista, for that matter), but I heard plenty of complaints about scanners, digital cameras or printers not working with XP when it was first released. This situation is nothing new. I'm not making excuses for MS or for vendors... but this is the way it's been for a long time.

pkellmey,

I'm not blaming anybody --- and my computer and software is running just fine --- i'm just using xp rather than vista to run my business --- im having no problems with xp. Maybe vista might work for me in future --- but for now ---my motto is --- if its not broke --- why upgrade it