My last rig is an E4300 C2D @ 2.4 running both XP & Vista...

It runs fast in XP but it is really noticeably slow in Vista even with all the updates...when running 2-4 apps and firewall & anti-virus in the background, there is a noticeable delay in response...even when starting up & shutting down Vista is slow...

I upgraded my processor to Q6600 last week as a bday present from my father...using the same component, just remove the E4300 & put the Q6600 in...and format my HDD & re-install both XP & Vista....

Now, I'm currently running the Q6600 @ stock and I can really feel the difference in responsiveness when running multiple apps in Vista...even the start up & shutting down in Vista is noticeably faster now..I'm always multi-tasking especially because I don't close a game when launching another game so that I can go back to that game in a flash when I want to play it..I just press the window tab so that the apps/game will be minimized then run another game/apps...

Maybe Vista can really take advantage in multitasking with quadcore than dualcores....

COMMENTS...........SUGGESTIONS.........

Wut?

It's hard to understand what you're saying there...

Vista uses multiple cores just as well as XP. It ran slower because it requires more resources to run Vista than it does XP. Also, a quadcore will always handle multiple apps better than a dual core processor. This is due to the fact that each app can be assigned to a different core to avoid pushing one core too hard.

One of the best things you can do when upgrading to Vista is getting more RAM and a faster HD. The indexing service alone is going to slow everything down for the first day or two, especially if you have a ton of apps installed right away. Also, if you open your task manager and check your Page File usage, I bet it's anywhere from 500-700MB. XP will idle about 100-300MB (assuming you aren't one of those people that have 10 billion pieces of adware / shopping toolbars installed). So yeah, upgrading any hardware is going to increase performance in Vista... it's not really friendly to older parts.

Vista takes more resources, but uses multiple cores more efficiently than XP does. It has to do with the way it assigns tasks to the cores. I'm not sure what kind of performance increase it brings, but clearly the resource demands eat up any performance gains in that area. Also I think Vista just does more stuff when you run apps than XP does. You may be able to find ways to optimize Vista on Google.

you need to boost the speed up to get vista to move fast - below 2.7ghz its slow with any dual core

Really, you're keeping two or more games up at the same time, just so you can save a minute or so of waiting for a game to start? Do you realize that the games you minimize will keep consuming RAM and eventually the game you are actually playing will slow down because of it? Some of them may also keep the CPU or hard disk busy even when minimized.

24x7 stability test! RAWR! That or he'll just wear is parts out much faster.

The format of your harddrive can also be a huge factor on why your seeing such a performance increase... A harddrive with that is bombarded and has a low % of space left epically if not defragmented can hurt performance quite a bit. I have my e4300 at 3.2 ghz and I'm 100% sure its not bottlenecked by anything... but of course I don't run multiable games like yourself which I simply find to be odd behavior on your part... I take it you have hard time focusing on one thing for decent periods of time and are also very impatient..

I blame TV for it. With commercials every 5 minutes, we all get attention-deficit disorder eventually, it's normal.

Yeah, good point, defragmenting can help a lot.

I disagree with that statement. My Vista performance is just as good as XP. And my specs arent above 2.7ghz.

Even when stock clocked at 2.2ghz everything was fine.

Don't do that. Close a game when you're not playing it.

How much RAM do you have?

Vista has larger RAM requirements.




MEGATASKING PLATFORMANCE

Yea it's no surprise that you're losing performance running a few games at once. You probably couldn't even do it with 64bit Vista, 4GB+ RAM and a quad-core to be anywhere near that kind of capability without much slowdown. And even then, your video card will take a hit for storing information for so many games. Best to just close them out when you're done with them. The 20s it takes to load a game is bearable compared to the crappy performance you get by keeping them all open, don't you think?

this is based on feel - i build systems, when you get around 2.8ghz to 3.4ghz system feel significaly faster. i supposed it goes on endlessly so 4ghz or 5ghz will be faster too.

i do know that below that they seem slow - if the oc-ing goes out, the fsb resets to stock, you can tell - when you kick in the oc you can tell right away.

Of course having two more cores will be better. Vista just divides up the load among the cores. If you motherboard can overclock, I recommend you clock it to at least 3Ghz (easily done) or more if your temps are good.

I have dual boot Vista64 ultimate and XP32 PRo.

I find Vista to be awesome.. Never understood why people don’t like it. I find myself more and more steering away from XP and I only use it now when I have too.. (some things don’t run on vista64)

With that stated.. I defiantly notice that vista is a RAM whore, however this is well documented, everyone knows…

Compatibility - older apps that don't work, older devices that have no Vista drivers. It's usually the fault of the software company who didn't follow Microsoft guidelines way back when it wrote the app. Drivers too, they should be provided by the device manufacturers, but they'd rather have you buy a new device than download a free driver.

Learning curve - Microsoft sc***ed up some trivial things pointlessly by moving them around. For example I used XP 12 hours a day for lots of years and still I had major trouble picking a screensaver on Vista the first time I saw it. This one is 100% Microsoft's fault IMO.

Graphics - Aero is considered beautiful by lots of people, but any GUI change will always annoy some people. It's a matter of taste. For example I hate the red and blue buttons for minimize/close in XP so I use the Windows Classic style, but some of my colleagues love those buttons.

DRM. Microsoft should have stayed very far away from this. Consumers hate it. It mostly hurts the clueless innocents, not the savvy pirates who find workarounds anyway. As a Microsoft shareholder, I desperately hope they know what they're doing. Now that the music companies themselves are dropping DRM, it would be great if Vista SP1 or SP2 cleaned it up too.

Lower fps in games. This one has multiple causes. A very big cause was a bug of Microsoft's, and they did fix it in a patch for SLI (it ws in their knowledge base some months ago). ATI and nVidia are also partly at fault.

Anyway, like it or not, we'll have to move to Vista when XP stops getting security patches. I can't afford to do online banking and e-mail and Amazon shopping if the computer has 100 known vulnerabilities, can I?

LoL guys quit breaking his balls about running dual games... MANY MANY people who play MMORPGs run and ALT+TAB between 2 instances of the game so they can run 2 accounts at once on it. Its becoming more and more popular to do.
I remember how it sucked back on single core proc's then Intel came out with P4 HT and wow did ALT+TABing ever rock, and now true dual cores, and quads its just perfect for doing that.

That's my first time hearing that.

That's not what he says he's doing. He just don't want the load times at expense of the performance of ANY game he is running!

It's new to me too. Sounds weird but I'm interested.

Can you do this, for example? You run two instances of a game. Each has its own character. Both join the same game. #1 starts a duel and distracts the victim. #2 sneaks in and does a little surprise backstabbing. Then #1 and #2 go through the victim's pockets.