Vista 64 vs. XP 64

[SirMoby]

I'm really interested in the advantages of Vista.

I'm building a new PC next weekend and I'm torn between operating systems. I'm going to go duel boot with a 64 bit OS
and regular XP. I won't be gaming doing mostly video editing and PhotoShop type stuff. I checked all my hardware, MOBO and my virus protection and it all supports XP 64 as well as Vista 64.

I know that in 2 years I'll probably be on Vista 64 but I'm concerned with what happens between now and then. Other then support from Microsoft, what does Vista buy me today?

I stayed on Windows 2000 until XP SP2 had been released and I didn't have any problems. I know a number of people in my industry that have tried Vista and many moved back to XP. I don't want to install Vista 64 and spend most of my time in XP 32 because of issues. I don't need a new user interface, a different side bar and my network is pretty tight right now.

I know that DirectX 10 would be nice but is there more?

Does Vista 64 really buy me anything now?

 

[Slobogob]

I would not speculate that you are on Vista in 2 years. MS plans to have their new OS out by then.
XP 64 is a nice and smooth OS - i personally prefer it over Vista. It runs everything i needed it to run (with a few hiccups here and there).

Why do you need a 64 bit OS? If you need more than 4GB RAM and are a avid gamer i would suggest Vista since it comes with DX10 which might become an asset in the future. Otherwise XP 64 is quite sufficent.

 

[Zenthar]

Vista is power hungry, I wouldn't suggest it for everybody, but if it's ok for you, why not; I got no software or hardware issues (but my system is a month old). I think that most compatibility issues might come from the 64 bits rather than Vista itself so if you are going to buy any of the 2 OS, I think you might as well try Vista. On the other hand, if you already have a XP 64, just use that, as Slobogob said, MS already announced they planned on releasing Windows 7 in 2009.

 

[zenmaster]

If you are going to Dual Boot Between XP-32 and a 64-bit OS, ,then I would choose Vista w/o a doubt for the 2nd OS. Learn the New OS as well as take advantage of anything it may offer such as DX10 if you need it.

Note: Windows 7 is not being released in 2009. There will be Beta's of Windows 7 in 2009.

 

[ImajorI]

I have Vista 64 Ultimate and love it, as do many others here.

 

[TSIMonster]

I have Vista 64 Ultimate and will never look back. I can't wait to upgrade my work PC to vista.

 

[eckre]

I *JUST* upgraded from XP x64 to Business XP -64-bit.

Bottomline I am going back.

X-fi is all screwed up.
Quicken 2005 will not install
Dragon Naturally Speaking will not install, no fixes,
Can't hide idiotic icons like "Contacts" "Favorites" "Links" "Saved Games" or "searches" from the default list
I can't burn anything with Nero or Windows burner. It just starts up and errors the second it starts writing creating many a coaster.
Sound problems a plenty
I swear it's not faster. A Clean install of XP seemed a lot snapper than a clean install of Vista and I went from E64002GB 500GB7200.10 to E8400/8GB(no swap file) 750GB 7200.11

But if you are just going to do photoshop, go for it, I guess.

I hear others have problems with Nvidia Sound card problems (even on board) and Vista-64bit. So I hope you get something onboard video (intel) or ATI.

Good luck & cheers.

 

[Scotteq]

Why in the world would you upgrade from XP to XP??



X-fi is all screwed up.

- - Bitch to Creative for their continued inability to write drivers that are worth a crap.


Quicken 2005 will not install

- - (a) Right click and run as administrator

- - (b) Don't run old programs on a new operating system


Dragon Naturally Speaking will not install, no fixes,

- - You *are* aware that Vista has speech recognition built in... No??? I mean, if you really want to pay the thousand dollars for Dragon, knock yourself out, but...



Can't hide idiotic icons like "Contacts" "Favorites" "Links" "Saved Games" or "searches" from the default list

- - Right click the desktop, choose 'personalize'... etc etc etc... Personally, I have no icons at all on the main screen - Rather it's all on the quick launch bar.


I can't burn anything with Nero or Windows burner. It just starts up and errors the second it starts writing creating many a coaster.

- - Sounds like a hardware problem: Check device manager that your drive/drivers/firmware are installed correctly.


Sound problems a plenty

- - And again - b*tch to Creative for writing garbage.

 

[notherdude]

I use Vista 64 with 8 gig RAM. No problems, love it.

Vista 64 kicks a$$. It's gold on powerful systems with new hardware. You will find that on enthusiast sites Vista (mostly Vista 64) has a very big following. This was initially probably because gamers wanted DX 10 and were willing to put up with a few early adopter issues to get it. And also because enthusiasts are always building new machines and new machines like Vista. Old machines, maybe, maybe not.

Well DX 10 has so far been mostly vapor but it turns out Vista is simply not the POS the Mac loving, MS hating, agenda driven, Silicon Valley tech press keeps screaming about.

It might be problematic on old PCs, unsupported hardware etc and it might not be worth the trauma for business/enterprise to switch to, since XP is already entrenched - but for new enthusiast PC's I will tell you right now Vista 64 is the way to go.

 

[radguy]

between xp64bit and vista64bit. You already have xp 32bit definitly go with vista 64bit.

Both vista and xp have their pitfalls. I upgraded my xp64bit to vista 32bit on my dual boot setup I waited for sp1 to come out and half to say I am much happier. Wish I had gone 64bit but I only have 2gigs of ram (for the moment).
I had too many problems with drivers on the xp 64bit nothing really major but still aggravating. On vista 32 I had to change some settings but it isn't anywhere near as bad as people made it out to be. DX10 is nice. Go with vista

 

[SirMoby]

Outside of DX10, what is it about Vista that makes it better?

I guess that what I really don't understand. Architecture, speed, foot print ....

 

[Shadow703793]

I would not speculate that you are on Vista in 2 years. MS plans to have their new OS out by then.
XP 64 is a nice and smooth OS - i personally prefer it over Vista. It runs everything i needed it to run (with a few hiccups here and there).

Why do you need a 64 bit OS? If you need more than 4GB RAM and are a avid gamer i would suggest Vista since it comes with DX10 which might become an asset in the future. Otherwise XP 64 is quite sufficent.

Well said. Exactly my thoughts. +1.2

 

[sailer]

I have one computer using XP64 and another using Vista 64 Ultimate. The XP64 computer is a year old now, and the Vista 64 computer about two weeks old. I prefer using the XP64 for everything. It has all the good things of XP, only in 64 bit, so lets me use 4 gig of ram without any problem. Vista 64 is obviously a bit better when considering DX10, but how many games are around that use DX10?

I have yet to find anything other than DX10 that is better than XP64, and plenty of things that are not as good, including programs that will work fine in XP64, but refuse to load or run in Vista 64. I plan on building a new office machine during the next month and I intend to use XP64, so I guess that should show my preference of the two OSs.

 

[tleavit]

I ran XP x64 the day it came out and I run Vista X64 now. The transition to Vista X64 was many times smoother then the original transition to XP X64. I was very pleased with them both. Only issues with Vista X64 for me in my production work environment has been some printer drivers. As to the Xfi drivers, this box Im on right now is Vista X64 and the X-Fi in it is working perfectly fine for me.

 

[Flakes]

i run vista ultimate 64bit with SP1, im planning on going back to XP....

1. COD4 pauses constantly.
2. its a resource hog.
3. problems with my creative card and Surround in games(ok not vista, but it should work under there 32bit emu)
4. the aero interface really is a waste of space, so is the sidebar.
5. ive had more crashes under vista (programs failinga nd explorer reloading)
6. cant seem to get rid of folders on the left of explorer window
7. cant uninstall windows defender.
8. It really Does nothing better than XP..... except for the larger array of MS games.... which you can get for XP here...http://jonnyw1989.wordpress.com/2007/01/31/windows-vista-games-for-xp-update/

 

[stoner133]

Well COD4 runs as smooth as glass for me, Nero 8 works like a charm, Studio 10 as well. In fact the only program I had problems with was WinDVD7, it doesn't work at all. Since WinDVD was bought out around the same time as Vista came out they didn't bother to make a driver for Vista64. Heck you go to there web site and its like version 7 was never made. They had updates for every other version to work with Vista64. But then the only reason I bought that program was so I could get Dolby Surround sound for watching DVD's in XP64 but in Vista Ultimate64 Windows Media Center already can do that.

 

[michaelahess]

I still run QB 2004, gives me an ominous message about not working, ignore it, and it magically works. Intuit is good at forcing people to upgrade to a crappier version every year.

I run both Vista Ent 64 and XP 64 on numerous machines. I prefer XP for anything office related as it is much faster on the same hardware. Vista is nice since it's a change, and it runs some games better IMO. I would never put Vista on my work laptop though, course I run linux on it since I can't trust MS for anything that important.

 

[Cuddles]

I would say if you have anything "in" your computer over 2 years old you should stay with XP. Better yet take Microsoft's "Are You Ready for Vista?' Test before even considering it.
This computer I built about 4 months ago runs better on Vista 64 than it did on XP 32. The games run better, programs run better, I don't crash, and I did have it duel booted for a while because of all the stuff I had read.
After 3 months of never going to XP I did a recent reformat to Vista.
Not all users are going to have the same outcome because unlike Apple Users Microsoft Users have a wide selection of Hardware that they can choose from. In this we all have our different preferences on what is important and upgrade depending on it. I tried Linux and I hated it. Others swear on it but I can't.
For what I do Vista 64 fits the bill best for me. I play PC Games, watch movies, listen to my music, and more and have done this for a little over 10 years. Just decide what is most important to you and go from there.

 

[bildo123]

X-fi is all screwed up.

- - Bitch to Creative for their continued inability to write drivers that are worth a crap.

I will never forget the time I got the creative gamer edition sound cards years ago. I think it was on my Athlon XP system. And the damned thing would not work and made my system unstable. I think it was around $100 and I was pretty mad. I've glanced at their stuff since then but never really considered buying their sounds cards. Pretty useless anyways now unless your a audiophile.

 

[Scotteq]

Yah - Onboard sound is pretty good nowadays...

Though I have the Audio bug as well as the comuter bug (have mercy on my soul), so I'm running an Auzentech Prelude 7.1. Sounds great!

 

[speedbird]

Outside of DX10, what is it about Vista that makes it better?

Very little in my opinion and DX10 is really not essential, well not yet anyway. On XP my PC plays all my games except Crysis really well, Under Vista my computer turns into a low end machine and games are much more sluggish. I could improve performance in Vista by installing a faster Processor and adding another 2GB of Ram to 4GB, but the need to spend a heap of Money on new hardware just to keep up with what XP can already provide me is a waste of Money. Apart from some fancy features, Vista does little what XP can do already. I've still got Vista on my laptop, but as my needs are basic here I can tolerate it.

 

[Zoron]

RAM is dirt cheap... it's almost blasphemous to install less than 2GB of RAM in a computer nowadays. Of course, DDR3 prices are still on the insane side... but there aren't many boards out there supporting it yet.

How fast is your processor now? Almost any Core 2 processor should be fast enough.

 

[Cuddles]

Would like to know what your computer setup is Speedbird.
Mine
9600 Phenom OC'ed to 2.59
2 Gig Ram
3870 Radeon OC'ed 825/ 1341
OS Vista Home Premium 64 bit
I Benchmarked XP vs Vista 64 when I had it duel booted and the closest XP ever got to Vista was 10% under. On most games and Applications I saw about 25% increase in performance vs XP.
XP also couldn't handle as many open applications as Vista could.
There was a lot more including the ingrained Speech Recognition that moved me to just Vista.

 

[bildo123]

RAM is dirt cheap... it's almost blasphemous to install less than 2GB of RAM in a computer nowadays. Of course, DDR3 prices are still on the insane side... but there aren't many boards out there supporting it yet.

How fast is your processor now? Almost any Core 2 processor should be fast enough.

/Agree

If you have a system that supports DDR2 there is NO reason it should have less than 2GB of RAM. Example, I went over my buddies house this past weekend and we eventually stumbled upon the question of how his computer was doing (I built it for him.) He said it was good but that he wanted more RAM maybe. It then popped in my head of the awesome deal the egg has going on. He already had a Gig but wanted another one. He ended up getting a single 2GB stick for roughly $40. As soon as he saw that he made his first egg account and got it. Done deal.

 

[howlmtn]

I bought a new HP system with Vista 64 loaded. What a ram hog! I upgraded from 4 gig to 8 gig and still mucho overhead by Vista. Tried to dual boot with XP Pro and 64 bit hardware said no way. I'm saving my pop bottles up for XP 64 in hopes I can actually use some of that 8 gigs for Photoshop, etc.