New Gaming Computer. Vista or XP?

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For Gaming, which OS is better?

  • XP

    Votes: 1 100.0%
  • Vista

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    1
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When it comes to XP they still release software updates all the time.

I myself don't need Direct X 10, so for me Vista is useless. I'm waiting to see some figures regarding the new Open GL 3.0 which even works with Linux. That's cool in my opinion.
 
Basically theres feck all difference but Vista does seem more "responsive" and a bit faster than XP.

Unless you want to go with 64bit for 4gigs+ of ram and 64bit CPU then Vista 64 is what you should go with. But theres not much difference as things stand at the moment.
 
Direct X 10 wasn't even a consideration for me when putting Vista on my new computer. The laptop came with Vista Home Premium and my old computer is going to become my Linux tinker box. If you're so focused on DX 10, then Vista probably isn't for you.
 
I'd say it depends whether you're looking to get top performance out of today's games, or top performance out of future releases. If you're looking at the current games out there, go with XP. It's more stable, better supported and has a huge range of drivers to fulfill your needs.

If this is more of a build for the future, I'd personally go with Vista - just because that's got a brighter future than XP for supporting next gen games, even if it is a bit troublesome and flawed at the moment. It should come in to its own in future years, as long as it isn't outdone by the next version of Windows too soon.
 
Vista is very stable... your recollection is what's flawed. You're thinking of Vista a year ago or more; not of Vista now. I have yet to see a single blue screen in the 9+ months I've had this laptop nor in the 6 + months that I've had on my new desktop build.
 
As far as I'm concerned, it's personal preference. But honestly, I don't understand why one wouldn't take a newer OS over a decade old OS. Just that notion...it boggles my mind. But what do I know.
 
I think its the fact that XP has had almost a decade to mature as a fast, stable, and secure operating system. The problem with Vista is that it really isn't much of an upgrade over XP. Couple that with the much better competition offerings today, generally faster gaming and driver compatibility in XP, Vista seems like more of an afterthought. Both Apple's OSX and Linux have matured to be very capable, and in some cases superior operating systems to Microsoft's latest offering.
 
You're still mired in last year. While it's true that a few old games won't work on Vista, the driver compatibility issue is no longer an issue... even Creative got off their lazy asses and finally wrote some decent Vista drivers. OSX is almost an apple to oranges (no pun intended) comparison. I've never liked Apple's locked-in, locked-down approach to PCs and I never will. While it's great for people that just want something that works... it's absolute crap to enthusiasts that want to do something more with their computer other than admire it's looks. Linux has made some significant strides forward in the ease-of-use department... but until the day you can do whatever you want to do simply by double-clicking... it will never become mainstream.

There's nothing wrong with XP... other than it's age. To me, it simply makes no sense to buy brand new hardware and stick aging software on it. Yes, XP is "mature"... but then so is Win 95, 98 or ME. If you're going to use that argument, you might as well still be running 3.1. Mature it may be, but it's also approaching the end of it's life cycle. Once Windows 7 is released, driver and software support for XP will start to slow... much like it did with Win9x.

Vista's "problems" continue to be blown out of proportion. People insist on making the past the present.
 
I am building my first DIY build. I choose to purchase Vista64 for $99. Even though I have copies of XP available to me. After reading/getting advice from different forums and websites it didn't make sense for me to use new hardware technology and capability without matching it to new OS capability.

I had read a number of complaints about Vista64. I'm not worried. If M$ is investing mucho dollars into shifting towards a newer OS, it makes sense that they will make it work.

But in the end, if Vista blows once Windows 7 comes out and Windows 7 outperforms Vista I'll upgrade. Who knows when that will be. 1-2, maybe three years. I'm banking on XP not being able to survive that long. If it does and someone stuck with XP, good for you. You gambled and won. If it's the other way around, Vista people gambled and won. Someone has to win and someone has to lose.

It's not a reflection of someones intellect. It's there own calculated risk about what they should use. Cost, Performance, Future Integration...etc.

I chose Vista and I hope I chose correctly. It doesn't mean I am rooting for XP users to make a mistake and lose the gamble so I can point, laugh and say "I told you so". I just want to win and hopefully my risk will pay off. I don't think I am better if the cards show that I "guessed" right. I just want the same thing as an XP person. To have my risk pay-off

Let's try not to take things too personally while continuing to provide each other spirited debate.

But, I am new to building PC's and what not. I could be off my rocker. And I am open to that.

 
Now that I'm building my first PC post-Vista I'm glad to see it's ready. I think it would be foolish to let it's wretched launch influence me.

Great discussion and arguments, I'm in the new hardware = Vista crowd.
 
The best answer might be :
IT'S ALL DEPENDING ON YOUR HARDWARE AND WHAT YOU WANT TO DO WITH YOUR COMUTER
1) If you own piece of hardware which is well known for poor Vista support / drivers / performance thn why would you want to go near Vista?...just to frustrate yourself? :) Eg: Creative X-FI
2) If you want to use MPEG4 ( mp4, freeview digital TV etc ) why would you want to go near Vista? again, just to improve your swearing vocabulary ? :)
3) If you have high end sound system and sound card and you keen to use Dolby Live 5.1, 7.1 etc over optical than why would you want to go Vista? just to punish yourself? :)
See...XP might be old but at least you wont have ANY of the above problems :)
 
I own X-Fi chipset card and I have tried latest drivers, quality of sound is not that good, EAX problems, Dolby Live problems, etc.....easily confirmed by tons of forums feedback. I am using my sound card with XP 64 and it's GOLD !
 
Actually Vista Takes More Room For Gaming Then Xp Tho Xp dosent run Games as well as Vista well cuz its a new software
 
My older XP machine had way more problems than my Vista one. Its been almost a year since i last reinstalled vista and Ive had ONE BSOD from OC'ing and thats it
 
Much of the debate seems to revolve around Vista x64 vs XP x32.

What about Vista x64 vs XP x64? Anybody care to comment on this benchmark i found (it was run several months ago, but still it put XP x64 well ahead of vista in many graphical benchmarks, whereas XP x32 lags behind vista)

Link: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=242891
Benchmark Link: http://www.imagebam.com/image/9786675364575

I'm putting together a new gaming rig and it sounds like I can probably count on a 5-10% decrease in FPS going from XP x64 to Vista x64.
 
"Several months ago..."

Right there is the single largest problem with the benchmark you found. You need to find benchmarks that take into consideration both SP 1 on Vista and the latest drivers available. Bad drivers was the biggest problem that kept XP ahead of Vista in benchmarks. That has since been corrected and the difference is now negligible.

One important thing to consider is that XP-64 had very poor driver support upon release. Things have improved thanks to Vista 64... but you'll probably have better luck finding drivers for Vista than XP on the 64-bit side.
 
Well I just built my I7 920 sys w/ asus p6t deluxe mobo, 6 gigs ocz platinum ddr3 mem and evga gtx 260 core 216 55nm gpu Vista ultimate 64 bit,, I dont seem to see any problems, lag, less performance during cod4 or bf2142 online

My old sys, evga 680I mobo, x6800 xtreme cpu, 2 gigs ddr2 corsair dominator mem, 2x 8800gts 512mem in sli xp 32 bit

my old sys ran great in xp, my new sys runs great in vista, no driver issues as of yet, no crashes, no nothing but good stuff.

Lots of talk about xp or vista, new sys vs. old sys

What about the REAL NEW systems like Intels I7 platform? I7 destroys everything, one would believe a system like could run vista without running out of gas

I would think anyone buiding a I7 setup would go with vista 64, should be a no brainer

Opinions?

Ken
 


Did you even look at it? The benchmarks include SP1 (which made many tasks slightly slower, actually). The fact that many benchmarks were so far behind XP x64 even 5 months ago makes me wonder at your statement that everything has "since been corrected and the difference is now negligible". Why, after 1.5 years of vista was the problem still not even close to fixed, and yet now just 2 years later everything is COMPLETELY fixed. Please provide some sort of evidence here...
 
For those who think the plunge into 64-bit will leave you missing drivers and having compatibility issues, don't worry. Most computer vendors do not provide 64-bit drivers or are very slow to update them, but with a little googling you will find around 95% of Vista 64's drivers, if not all. The drivers for XP 64 tend to be more difficult to find.

Right there and in most of his conclusions, he sounds like he would recommend Vista over XP if you want a 64-bit OS. (Actually he recommended Server 2008 over Vista... but not having a ton of cash to dedicate to an OS kind of excludes it).

I'm sorry... but any benchmark comparison that begins with "Several months ago..." means little to me. People are still bashing Vista based on 2 year-old information and it gets a little annoying after a while. They like to hop on the XP bandwagon and tell us how great it is... meanwhile 6 years ago they were all saying the same things about XP and were still trying to cling to 98. So you'll have to forgive me if I seem dismissive when such things are said.

I also have an issue with synthetic benchmarks... they don't give you a complete picture. My system as it is now had 32-bit XP on it for a while... so I've had time to compare XP-32 to Vista-64 on the same hardware. I notice no difference at all. My games run just as good as they always did... even better when you consider I upgraded from a 17" LCD to a 22" widescreen LCD. Not noticing any drop in performance at higher resolutions certainly convinced me.

If you want XP... go with XP. I'm simply recommending Vista... especially if you want 64-bit. Ultimately, the decision is yours... I can't make it for you.
 
"I'm sorry... but any benchmark comparison that begins with "Several months ago..." means little to me. People are still bashing Vista based on 2 year-old information and it gets a little annoying after a while. They like to hop on the XP bandwagon and tell us how great it is... meanwhile 6 years ago they were all saying the same things about XP and were still trying to cling to 98. So you'll have to forgive me if I seem dismissive when such things are said."

Several months != 2 years, and if a problem isn't fixed the first year and a half why is it so reasonable to assume it has been completely fixed in the next few months?


"I also have an issue with synthetic benchmarks... they don't give you a complete picture. My system as it is now had 32-bit XP on it for a while... so I've had time to compare XP-32 to Vista-64 on the same hardware. I notice no difference at all. My games run just as good as they always did... even better when you consider I upgraded from a 17" LCD to a 22" widescreen LCD. Not noticing any drop in performance at higher resolutions certainly convinced me."

I'm not sure how this applies (unless you aren't talking to me here) because I was talking about the XP-64 vs Vista-64 comparison . Even the benchmark i pointed to shows that XP-32 performs much worse than XP-64.
 
Thanks for the links Scotteq. The only reason I bothered to consider the post I did was because it was much more recent than anything else I'd found and the enormous graph of info he put together (and his supposed methodology) looked pretty meticulously done.

It seems to me that Vista will work fine with games (which is what I'm mostly interested in) but I have this worry in the back of my mind that maybe XP-64 would perform a bit better. I'm considering buying an OEM copy but it's hard to justify another $120 on just a hunch like this. It'd be nice to find some sort of recent benchmark.
 
Well... I'm inclined to believe that XP64 would/does suffer from lack of support - relatively speaking, of course. Both from MSFT now that XP has entered maintenance/patch mode and isn't being developed any further. And also from 3rd party vendors who will look at that fact, plus the fact it wasn't widely used to begin with, and use that to justify even less support than is currently the case. Going forward, the Vista kernel and driver model are the new standard, as evidenced by Win 7 using these. So if you were to spend money today, I'd advise to use the newer OS for sure.

If you happen to have a copy of XP64 handy, though, no reason to leave it unused. And for damned sure it's not like we don't support ourSELVES anyhow.



(By way of disclaimer - I have been using Vista 64 for most of the last two years, and it has served me perfectly well during that time. In creating my system, though, I *did* apply the old "Don't Run Your New Sh*t on Your Old Sh*t" rule, and also treated like it's own OS rather than expect it to be XP SP4.

When 7 goes public Beta, I do plan on using it and as a matter of fact have purchased an additional HDD for the Dual Boot. But that's because I like playing with the new stuff, and not because I'm unhappy with V64.)

(Also, I feel it was time to retire this thread after SP1 went GA. But... <shrug> )
 
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