New Gaming Computer. Vista or XP?

[rasmasyean]

Here's a survey...

Steam Hardware Survey: November 2008
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

It's a kind of strange survey though. It doesn't tell you how many Vistas with DX9 GPUs. And it lists XP with DX10 GPUs which doesn't even make any difference because XP can't use DX10!

 

[Jyjohn]

Vista. Now with XP SP3 and Vista SP1, VISTA sp1 is far better than XP when gaming.

 

[Ka0skrew]

Ok, so it looks like most people have slowly changed to accpeting Vista as superior as it progressed and became more stable. Is that the general consensus?
Also I've notices i nthe system builder series here at TH they use Vista 32mb - is that just for comparison reason? Any reason I should not use Vista 64?

Also, someone mentioned drivers. I know these were a problem in early vista days but is it hard to find video drivers and updates for vista 64 now?

 

[Scotteq]

Nope - Not hard at all.

 

[erphy]

Hi,
At this time XP, but think of the near future, can you afford to buy XP today & vista soon.

 

[mrmain]

On a lighter note but still (kinda) XP v Vista,

my mum bought an HP computer when i wasn't looking that came with an AMD64, 512mb RAM and Vista home basic. It's painfull to even look at.

All she does is play solitaire.

I cant decide whether to upgrade her hardware, downgrade her OS or buy her a deck of cards.

Any advice. ;D

 

[4core]

i just built a new comp with quad core and i'm running 64 bit vista home prem.

runs great, no lag, but it take sup 1.5 gb of ram just the os itself, LOL. (good thing i have 4gb)

doesnt effect my gaming experience what os it is.

good luck!

On a lighter note but still (kinda) XP v Vista,

my mum bought an HP computer when i wasn't looking that came with an AMD64, 512mb RAM and Vista home basic. It's painfull to even look at.

All she does is play solitaire.

I cant decide whether to upgrade her hardware, downgrade her OS or buy her a deck of cards.

Any advice. ;D

downgrade to xp

 

[Scotteq]

i just built a new comp with quad core and i'm running 64 bit vista home prem.

runs great, no lag, but it take sup 1.5 gb of ram just the os itself, LOL. (good thing i have 4gb)

Vista reports memory usage for the system and for superfetch (a kind of smart caching system) in the same bucket. IMHO, a lot of the "resource hog" stuff would ease, if not go away, were the two broken out.

 

[rasmasyean]

Here's some latest statistics on Gaming:


A January 2009 survey by Valve Corporation indicated that of the 33.26% of gamers running Windows Vista, 24.47% run 32-bit, 8.79% run 64-bit. 64-bit is over one third of the Vista install base.
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

 

[chooch]

Vista but it depends on:
* The hardware because of some unstable/unavailable drivers for Vista.
* You need current hardware
* Must be Vista SP1 because no SP is like a Vista at beta stage...

 

[rasmasyean]

Vista reports memory usage for the system and for superfetch (a kind of smart caching system) in the same bucket. IMHO, a lot of the "resource hog" stuff would ease, if not go away, were the two broken out.

There is a Cached category like here. It uses up practically all the "would have been free and wasted in XP" extra RAM and puts it to good use.

When the computer has more RAM, it also pages less. It doesn't put as much data in the hard drive as swap virtual RAM and allocates more space in the chips so it's faster. That's also why when you have more RAM (like 4GB), it will take up more at any given time.

Like if it needs to use 2GB...
4GB system: 1.5GB in chips, 0.5GB in HD
1 GB system: 0.6GB in chips, 1.4GB in HD <---slower

Well, that's an oversimplification but I just wanted to make a point.

 

[rasmasyean]

Ok, so it looks like most people have slowly changed to accpeting Vista as superior as it progressed and became more stable. Is that the general consensus?
Also I've notices i nthe system builder series here at TH they use Vista 32mb - is that just for comparison reason? Any reason I should not use Vista 64?

Also, someone mentioned drivers. I know these were a problem in early vista days but is it hard to find video drivers and updates for vista 64 now?

It depends on what you mean by "slowly". If you are comparing it to the notion that when Vista was released, it should have revolutionized the gaming world...then yeah it's pretty slow. But if you look at what projections were "back then", then you can interpret the following in your own fashion I guess.

The internet-usage market share for Windows Vista, taking the latest statistic, was 22.48% as of January 2009.[102] This figure combined with World Internet Users and Population Stats yields a user base of roughly 350 million[12] which exceeded Microsoft's two-year post launch expectations by 150 million.[10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista

It looks like Steam indicates that Vista adoption for games (33.26%) is arround 150% that of general so...

 

[NaomiHawkins]

it has to be xp sp3. vista with sp1 and all

other updates is still ultra slow compared to xp on my laptop

 

[rasmasyean]

it has to be xp sp3. vista with sp1 and allhttp://imageshare.info/24213481828.jpg other updates is still ultra slow compared to xp on my laptop

Most laptops aren’t meant for gaming. When you have a computer past a certain “power level”, the extra overhead of Vista would be negligible. And you will get DX10 and the higher resolutions that come with it.

 

[Zoron]

Any decent Core 2 Duo laptop with at least 1GB of RAM should run Vista sufficiently... it's the cheaper laptops (desktops too) that have issues running Vista as it should. The laptop I'm on now has an Intel T2080, integrated Intel graphics and 2GB of RAM running Vista Home Premium 32-bit. Now while I haven't tried XP on it, I haven't felt compelled to bother trying... everything runs nicely enough. Even though it isn't a gaming laptop, it still ran WoW half decently.

(Windows Experience Index of 3.0 if you were at all curious... do you know how your laptop scored?)

 

[ericeagle92]

Vista. I love vista and i think its great (i don't see why people hate it so much) but you have to make sure that you have a good enough sytem to handle it. If you do get Vista get home Premium Ultimate comes with a bunch of stupid features that are pointless and no one cares about. Also sometimes Vista can cause problems in games and cause them to crash. just be wary if you don't have your hardware setup perfectly it could be a pain.

 

[softlover]

my vote is for XP

 

[Sulu]

Windows Vista is the MOST complicated OS I have ever used. What was simple in xp like modifying "preferences" or various "options" are so much harder to do now. U have to go in numerous menus and submenus to turn something off or on. ITS CRAZY. Im currently using vista 64 because of ram and Im playing fear2 and ra3 uprising without any problem. So if u are a gamer there is no fear some games run better on xp some on vista I dont know why (its only a couple of fps better or worse u wont even feel it). BTW vista suckes. Do as I do download pirated vista, xp, 7 and try them all.

 

[Scotteq]

...because typing the name of the thing you need in the search box is *sooo* hard...

 

[Zoron]

He's encouraging people to download pirated software... which completely invalidates any opinion he may possess. Vista was "hard" for me for maybe a week. After that, I knew my way around. Navigating in Vista is no different than XP to me now.

 

[Sulu]

6 billion ppl on earth, maybe 2.5-3 billion are using pc, 90% of them are on windows, 70% use pirated windows, go figure. Its freakin expensive and they keep popping it every time they need money (what is essentially the same thing only eyecandy thats why vista failed and is being replaced with 7) BECAUSE IT SUCKS

 

[Zoron]

No, they "failed" because little pirates like yourself like to download stuff for free instead of paying for it. People like you make software more expensive for the rest of us. It's funny how people steal something and then have the unmitigated gall to complain about the price of that thing. If you didn't pay for it, don't complain about the price.

 

[Diagnostics]

I think it depends on the spec of your PC. I have a new top end Dell PC and Vista runs like a dream but my son has an old Athlon machine and recently upgraded to Vista and its as slow as a donkey.

Vista sure does need a powerful and high end spec PC to run.

 

[Kira1010]

6 billion ppl on earth, maybe 2.5-3 billion are using pc, 90% of them are on windows, 70% use pirated windows, go figure. Its freakin expensive and they keep popping it every time they need money (what is essentially the same thing only eyecandy thats why vista failed and is being replaced with 7) BECAUSE IT SUCKS

As of yet, I see Windows 7 as just a Vista Service Pack release, it has yet to show me any reason to take my 3 Vista machines and upgrade them to it. And as fast as Microsoft is rushing this, I think it will be just as buggy as Vista started out being, beyond that, I don't know. It could make it a good OS, but as of yet, its more like the new AMD Phenom II, same old same old, just in a newer box. Not to be flaming, just how I see it.

 

[Zoness]

The only reason I said Vista is because of DirectX 10 support which Microsoft (rather intelligently) made only functional on any of the new kernels (i.e. Vista or Windows 7). If DX is not really a problem for you as you are not playing the most cutting edge games, then XP any day.