I purchased Windows XP Pro SP2 (32 bit) last year but I didn't use it. Lately, I've been reading Intel Quad Core 2 Q6600 reviews and about its recent price drop. Compared to Vista, what would the performance be if I used XP Pro instead? I've read a number of Q6600 reviews and the testers all seem to use XP Pro. Vista has a new feature for quad cores called "load balancing." How much of a difference would it make if I used XP which doesn't have this feature?
I will be running 2 CPU intensive business apps and a special permanent memory resident disk program. If I bought the Q6600, using XP Pro, is it possible to manually assign the last 3 cores to these tasks? I would leave the first core for regular system usage and other apps. Would this setup work in XP and would there be any performance difference compared to Vista? I do not want to buy a whole new set of software again.
Thanks.
I will be running 2 CPU intensive business apps and a special permanent memory resident disk program. If I bought the Q6600, using XP Pro, is it possible to manually assign the last 3 cores to these tasks? I would leave the first core for regular system usage and other apps. Would this setup work in XP and would there be any performance difference compared to Vista? I do not want to buy a whole new set of software again.
Thanks.