Gaming- XP VS. VISTA

[crowheart27us]

Ok its October 2008 and I'm trying to get a feel if more people are switching to Vista from xp. Whats your opinion? Do you perfer Vista over xp or vice vera? Or are you waiting to the next release(Windows 7).

 

[petevsdrm]

I have used Vista Home Premium 64bit since I got back from overseas in July. I have not had a single crash, bsod, or error since I've been back. I can confidently say that the OS has been drastically improved since release. I think XP will still run DX9 applications faster in most cases though.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

I'm sure this will probably turn into a flame war pretty fast.

I have been using Vista for a year and a half with no problems at all. Vista SP1 is a very stable OS now. I would highly recommend 64-bit Vista and 4GB of RAM.

Here's an interesting article on 2GB vs 4GB if you're interested:

http://www.corsairmemory.com/_appnotes/AN804_Gaming_Performance_Analysis.pdf

 

[dirtmountain]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2304031,00.asp

 

[mactronix]

Personally if i was to build a PC today i would most probably put Vista on it. Some of the benchmarks that are coming out now are showing the DX10 path to be faster than the DX9 path for the same card so there has been a lot of improvement there. Yes it wants more Ram and there are a few things it does differantly, but thanks to those early addopters most of the glitches have been ironed out and any help support should it be needed is only a click away. You know i think these guys should get a discount on the OS considering all the help they provide. not only to others but in feedback to MS as well.
Cant really see why people would wait for a new OS release, im not sure but dont think its out anytime soon is it ?
The next DX will be available for Vista so thats no reason to wait and i havent heard of any must have feature.

Mactronix

 

[pbrigido]

I am with the previous two posters. I have Vista Ultimate 64bit with 8GB of ram. Not one blue screen in about 6 months...and the FPS of games I play does not differ from XP to Vista at all. 3d Mark scores were almost identical.

I can confidently suggest Vista for a solid gaming environment.

 

[modtech]

Of course Corsair's benchmarks show 4GB giving a boost. Duh, they sell RAM! Feel free to thumb this down.

 

[jaguarskx]

No intentions to upgrade to Vista. Waiting for Windows 7 instead.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

Of course Corsair's benchmarks show 4GB giving a boost. Duh, they sell RAM! Feel free to thumb this down.

Here's a couple more reviews on 2GB vs 4GB that were not done my RAM manufacturers:

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=667

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/07/08/is-more-memory-better/1

This isn't even the topic of the post, but I thought it was interesting. I recently upgraded from 32-bit Vista and 2GB RAM to 64-bit Vista and 4GB of RAM and am very happy with the performance improvement.


What I'm getting at is that for a new build, there is no reason not to go with 64-bit Vista and 4GB+ RAM, especially considering the current price of RAM.

 

[petevsdrm]

Windows 7 is based on Vista's kernel - I am not expecting a lot of differences. I wouldn't change to any new operating system immediately after release though, unless you like running a dual boot configuration. Drivers and such seem to take an eternity to come out for new OS'es, then another eternity to get a good stable release.

 

[frozenlead]

I've been running Vista for months, no errors or crashes. Vista Home Premium 64, with 4GB of ram.

If you're going to get Vista, don't bother with the 32 bit version. Get the 64 even if you don't have 4GB of ram.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

If you're going to get Vista, don't bother with the 32 bit version. Get the 64 even if you don't have 4GB of ram.

+1

I ran 64-bit Vista with 2GB of RAM for a couple months. It does use a little more RAM than 32-bit though. However, I would recommend just starting with 4GB and being done with it so you can get a 2x2GB setup.

 

[teh_boxzor]

vista ultimate for about a month with no problems, yes its a resource hog but hey if your system can handle it then go fo it.

i dual booted with xp just to be safe =]

 

[No1sFanboy]

I was on the early side of adoption. Early on the biggest problems were display driver crashes. Even they were hard to blame on Nvidia or MS as they were application specific. For example at one point I identified punk buster as a cause, which they offered no solution for.

My main gaming computer ran dual boot until some recent recent upgrades. After not having booted into Vista for months I dropped the XP partition.

I now have in my house two laptops on Vista premium and three desktops on Vista 64bit. My HTPC with 8 gig of ram and pagefile disabled has never BSOD'd or locked up. I still have one computer on xp and it is the least stable of all (crash every couple of weeks), but in all fairness it is an old install and an always on machine to handle downloads etc.

My feeling is that with 1gig of memory on video cards and real benefits with 4 gig of ram that Vista 64 sp1 is the best gaming OS. If you have an older system with 2 gig of ram and a dx9 card then don't bother.

 

[rodney_ws]

I have used Vista Home Premium 64bit since I got back from overseas in July. I have not had a single crash, bsod, or error since I've been back. I can confidently say that the OS has been drastically improved since release. I think XP will still run DX9 applications faster in most cases though.

It's like you posted word-for-word my experience with Vista Home Premium 64 bit (SP1).

 

[jthorn]

Apologies to readers if this is already stated in a post above. I have used Vista 64 - 2 months - 4GB memory - no problems. That said, you have to be careful when you buy an older game. Some games are not compatible with Vista/32 or Vista/64. I am enjoying Age of Empire II at the moment no problems. Most of the newer games should run fine on Vista 64.

 

[mactronix]

This is turning into a bit of a Vista love in While all the above is perfectly fine i feel the need to point out that while its all well and good getting a new system with plenty of ram or updating a fairly new system, people reading these posts might get the idea that its all roses. The flip side of this comes when someone with a fairly old system with associated peripherals, Printer,Scanner etc tries slapping in a C2D and some extra Ram, installs Vista and finds that none of the peripherals work. I'm not saying it will happen in all cases but its been a well reported problem.

Mactronix

 

[shortstuff_mt]

If someone with "a fairly old system" tries to install Vista without researching driver support, they deserve what they get. It's the same with any OS.

You'll notice most of the people still bashing Vista have either never actually used it, not used it long enough for it to sort out its HD indexing and SuperFetch, or are installing it on unsupported/old hardware.

 

[3Ball]

I personally prefer vista over XP. Though I have been running the 32bit version (my school sells it for $10) once it is available for the 64bit version I will be jumping on that immediately.

Best,

3Ball

 

[dirtmountain]

Good point by Mactronix. I have an older gaming system that i have running XP and it's not going to get changed to Vista. Older peripherals may not be Vista ready and it isn't for every machine.

 

[piratepast40]

shortstuff - I think you're being a little harsh. I read two separate questions here. One was about switching and the other was about experiences. The consensus seems to be that with the proper equipment, Vista doesn't offer any detriment and there really isn't much of a reason to revert back to XP if the system is up to it and if it came with XP. The other side is if it's worth while to buy Vista to replace XP. That's where people are saying that there doesn't seem to be a significant advantage with Vista and you may have some legacy software that won't work correctly. It's not that Vista is bad, it's just that it takes more resources and it may not be worthwile to upgrade just to run Vista.

If a new system comes with Vista, then it'll be just fine as long as you have enough memory.

As far as crashes - I haven't had any of my systems with XP or Vista crash in the last 6 months.

 

[petevsdrm]

shortstuff - I think you're being a little harsh. I read two separate questions here. One was about switching and the other was about experiences. The consensus seems to be that with the proper equipment, Vista doesn't offer any detriment and there really isn't much of a reason to revert back to XP if the system is up to it and if it came with XP. The other side is if it's worth while to buy Vista to replace XP. That's where people are saying that there doesn't seem to be a significant advantage with Vista and you may have some legacy software that won't work correctly. It's not that Vista is bad, it's just that it takes more resources and it may not be worthwile to upgrade just to run Vista.

If a new system comes with Vista, then it'll be just fine as long as you have enough memory.

As far as crashes - I haven't had any of my systems with XP or Vista crash in the last 6 months.

I'll give you a +1 for that, if you already have xp installed, there is not much reason to upgrade other than for a 64 bit operating system if you are adding RAM. Vista is good, but doesn't have a must-have feature in the absence of DX10 games.

 

[aznguy0028]

i'm using 32bit XP SP3 rite now, i would upgrade to vista64 but there are no 64bit ventrilo yet and that's very detrimental to a gamer.

there is an alpha release if anyone is curious, but i'm waiting on a real release.

 

[Maddawg514]

I used vista on y brother in-law's computer to play world of warcraft on a dual monitor setup. This was probably ~6 months ago. The major problem I ran into was complete computer lockup. No blue screen, no ability to ctrl-alt-delete, everything locked up. This happened probably 10+ times in the two weeks I was at my brother in-laws house.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

Just to put this in perspective, I'm also currently running 32-bit Vista on an old P4 2.8GHz machine with 1GB of RAM and I don't notice that it's any slower than XP was on the same machine. Of course I made sure all my hardware would work with Vista BEFORE I installed it. That's all I'm saying. Older hardware may be able to run Vista, but it's up to you to verify it before installing it. If someone installs Vista on older hardware without checking hardware compatiblity and it doesn't work, that's not Vista's fault.