Vista or 7 for a gaming machine?

[Senor Snarf]

Monday I'm putting together a high end gaming system that will be used almost exclusively for playing games and Internet browsing. That's just about it. I have a simple question. Would Vista 64bit or Windows 7 RC 64bit be better for a user like me? Thanks!

 

[Rogue77777]

Windows 7 RC 64
It's everything Vista should have been.

 

[Senor Snarf]

That's what I've heard. Sometimes though the few people with issues scream louder for help than the many people without issues scream for joy. Thanks for the advice.

 

[JDogg]

CoD4, and it seems all games that use PB are having problems, I LOVE CoD4, so I'm going to keep my XP install specifically for it.

 

[Senor Snarf]

Oh, really? Punk Buster is in several games I play. That could be a big problem for me. I'll have to do some research on that.

 

[Senor Snarf]

That seems like a pretty serious problem and I haven't been able to find any methods to fix it that don't just give you a 50/50 chance. Looks like I'll be going with Vista for a while.

 

[JDogg]

That seems like a pretty serious problem and I haven't been able to find any methods to fix it that don't just give you a 50/50 chance. Looks like I'll be going with Vista for a while.

Yeah, I'm really pissed at Even Balance for not supporting the OS, it will make it 10x easier for them when 7 is released. Anyway, I'm just going to dual boot XP-7.

 

[brendano257]

Yeah, I'm really pissed at Even Balance for not supporting the OS, it will make it 10x easier for them when 7 is released. Anyway, I'm just going to dual boot XP-7.

Yeah....Punkbuster tends to overstep it's boundary's for the sake of "anti-hacking." They can kick you for missing dll's in Windows, having any sort of bots on your computer (whether or not you know it.) I had to re-install Vista because I apparently had a bot on my computer that none of the 3 virus programs I'm running picked up, and PB would kick me off of COD5 because of it, and it wasn't even doing anything.

 

[4Ryan6]

@Senor Snarf

Win7 is a release candidate, its not a finished product, theres no way I'd even consider using it for my main operating system unless you just love trouble, and trying to resolve non resolvable issues.

Gaming wise I'm strictly a FPS [First Person Shooter] fan period, I ran into non resolvable issues with Crysis and Crysis Warhead, and FEAR2 with Steam, so after hours of frustration, for me Win7 is past history.

A friend of mine is a FSX [Flight Sim 10] fan and he has had the best FSX gaming experience so far than any other OP/SYS hes run it on yet, but FSX is a Microsoft Game, so you would expect MSFT to have covered their own product.

I'm sure Win7 will end up being great after MSFT gets all the bugs out of it, some of the AV programs available could be causing some of the issues, it seemed to run best on the Nortons but Nortons is only a 15day trial, so you end up installing others and their baggage, but you have to have some kind of AV protection.

You may even want to consider installing WinXP until Win7 is fully joy, WinXP has zero problems with any game, however your original question was between Vista and Win7, and I'd definitely go with Vista.

 

[Senor Snarf]

Yea, I thought about XP but I don't want to be restricted to 4 gigs of RAM. Supposedly 64 bit XP is really problematic.

 

[geofelt]

Windows-7 rc is free, so it will cost you nothing to try it now. I would do so, unless buying and reinstalling the official release later will be a problem.

 

[maddogoo9]

i would like to add that i have had no problems with pb related games. aswell as any rts games other then supreme commander having a memory leak in it (fan patch fixed my issuse) the problems do not out way the OS at hand here windows 7 seems to run flawlessly for me. but i would think thier is alot i have yet to run into.

dont know if any of u ever played rtcw but in windows 7 memory signatures seem to be diffrent stopping me from making wallhacks for the game. i dont know if this is a file viewing issuse or unrelated to windows 7.

just duel boot

 

[4745454b]

I pretty much agree with all thats been said. The RC will cost nothing, so you might as well try it. Perhaps enough games will work on it you can wait for the retail editions to come. (although I understand "favorite game". If TF2 didn't work on the RC, I wouldn't use it.) If you just can't use it, just get a cheap os. The cheaper the better.

 

[croc]

@Senor Snarf

Win7 is a release candidate, its not a finished product, theres no way I'd even consider using it for my main operating system unless you just love trouble, and trying to resolve non resolvable issues.

Gaming wise I'm strictly a FPS [First Person Shooter] fan period, I ran into non resolvable issues with Crysis and Crysis Warhead, and FEAR2 with Steam, so after hours of frustration, for me Win7 is past history.

A friend of mine is a FSX [Flight Sim 10] fan and he has had the best FSX gaming experience so far than any other OP/SYS hes run it on yet, but FSX is a Microsoft Game, so you would expect MSFT to have covered their own product.

I'm sure Win7 will end up being great after MSFT gets all the bugs out of it, some of the AV programs available could be causing some of the issues, it seemed to run best on the Nortons but Nortons is only a 15day trial, so you end up installing others and their baggage, but you have to have some kind of AV protection.

You may even want to consider installing WinXP until Win7 is fully joy, WinXP has zero problems with any game, however your original question was between Vista and Win7, and I'd definitely go with Vista.

Why is it always MS fault when a new release of OS comes out and MFG's are slow / don't support it? Why is it MS fault when an AV misbehaves?

It WAS MS fault, though, when they dropped support for their own hardware using game ports in XP... Anyone want a MS force feedback wheel and pedals? Or a force sidewinder joystick?

 

[afrobacon]

+1 for trying Se7en. I've been using it since B7000 and haven't ran into any problems at all since I installed RC; even the bugs I did run into wern't enough of an issue to look into.

If not Se7en, I'd trust XP64 over Vista any day.

 

[4Ryan6]

Why is it always MS fault when a new release of OS comes out and MFG's are slow / don't support it? Why is it MS fault when an AV misbehaves?

It WAS MS fault, though, when they dropped support for their own hardware using game ports in XP... Anyone want a MS force feedback wheel and pedals? Or a force sidewinder joystick?

Its a Release Candidate not an officially released OP/SYS, its released to test it and get the bugs out of it, all the available AV software I used is BETA software, and all that I looked into was labeled BETA, in the very beginning all the available drivers were BETA.

I'm not trying to bash MSFT with my statement, Win7 is great for a lot of things just not what I was using it for, but its not done yet, it needs more time in the oven, I just don't have the time to give it right now.

 

[cimtaurus]

Been gaming on win7 for a couple of weeks now. L4D, Fallout3, Everquest2, SplinterCell-DA...all play flawlessly. On top of that the 64bit IE8 actually is a nice browser, and I never thought I would go back to IE.

Guess the OS compatability is very game specific

 

[JessieJ]

Wht's all the hubub about PUnkbuster,

i got a COD World of War game with my Video card - and installed Punkbuster with it. Haven't had any problems runnning it on Windows 7 RC?

What are the concerns?

 

[Zoron]

+1 for trying Se7en. I've been using it since B7000 and haven't ran into any problems at all since I installed RC; even the bugs I did run into wern't enough of an issue to look into.

If not Se7en, I'd trust XP64 over Vista any day.

You do realize that Win 7 is very close to Vista, right? Hating Vista was soooo 2 years ago. Win XP 64 never has enjoyed a great deal of support and it took the release of 64-bit Vista for hardware vendors to wake up and finally start making 64-bit drivers. Compared to Vista 64, however, XP 64 still doesn't enjoy a great deal of support. My vote is for Vista 64 if you want something right now. People hating on Vista and loving Windows 7 (despite 7 being merely an incremental release) are still living in the past and going on all the bad press Vista received upon it's release. Vista is fully capable of running any software that will run on 7... and doesn't suffer from as many compatibility issues. After all, a RC is bound to have it's issues... but a finished product won't have nearly as many.

 

[4745454b]

There are differences between between Vista and 7. Only Windows 7 will run two different video card drivers and DX11/10 at the same time, vista can't say the same. Yes 7 is "just an upgrade" over Vista, but an upgraded OS IS still better.

 

[randomizer]

In that case XP is also an upgrade over Vista, because it can run both ATI and NVIDIA drivers simultaneously.

 

[chronicbucks]

i am about to build myself a computer, i havnt been doing a fair amount of gaming lately due to the lack of equipment, so once i have my i7 built im going to pick up a few games. I think i am going to go with win 7 64 bit, see how it goes, worst comes to worst i can just go buy a copy of vista

anyone have any idea what MSFT will price the retail version of win 7 once it comes out? it would suck to drop 100 bucks on vista 64 now, and then in november drop another 100+

 

[jdw_swb]

Wht's all the hubub about PUnkbuster,

i got a COD World of War game with my Video card - and installed Punkbuster with it. Haven't had any problems runnning it on Windows 7 RC?

What are the concerns?

The concerns are with cod4, not waw.

 

[juncwil]

Have you tried these steps?

-Install the latest patch for CoD4
-Download and install pbsetup.exe. Then use that to manually update PB for the proper game.
-Downloaded and run pbsvc.exe, which enables the PB services.
-Control Panel -> Admin Tool -> Services
-Scroll down to PnkBstrA and B, right-click and click on properties
-Check the box that says "Allow service to interact with desktop"

Your Win7 build may matter as well, these steps work on Build 7100. I can confirm that.

 

[Guest]

I have just built a new i7 rig with a tpower x58 and a 920 @ 3.5ghz water cooled with a swiftech ultima setup in an antec skeleton open case and I have tested windows xp sp3 x86, vista ultimate x86 and both had major issues with games locking up and not responding, so I decided to go with window 7 x64 and not only is it amazing but all games tested have had zero issues and actually look and run better now! microsoft has finally got it right!