Windows XP vs Vista

[Javelin]

Is it worth it to purchase a new computer system with XP or go with Vista? Will XP hold up for future gaming or is Vista the way to go (for the present time). Would like your thoughts

[AirborneTD]

I've basically got the same question. I'm thinking of staying with XP for now. I just haven't heard great things about Vista.

[TDK1044]

With any new Microsoft OS, it takes about a year to build a service pack to get the bugs out of it. If I were you, I would purchase a computer with the Vista OS and put up with a few short term issues in order to get long term gains. From a gaming point of view, the new generation of video cards are designed with Vista and DX10 in mind.

[stabiz]

Yes, and the mighty reward of DX10 is enhancements you have to send to a lab to see, and half fps. Yay.

[seafarer]

DirectX 10 will be a windows Vista only feature, so unless game coders specifically code for both DX 9 AND 10, newer games will inevitably NOT work on XP.

That's the only longer term downside to staying with XP I see now.

That said, I moved to Vista just beacuse it came with my new box so I figured I'd give it a try - most of the games I cannot get to run on it were typically also unplayable in XP S2. Some exceptions do exist - like Janes USAF, but that's a graphics software issue (and I experienced the same kind of thing going from Win98 to WinXP, so, it happens). Oddly enough, other old games work fine - eg. Janes WWII Fighters.

My only real complaints with Vista are the UAC and file/registry virtualization features - just because IMO, they are extremely poorly implemented - so much so that they offer almost nothing positive and a great deal of negatives. These "features" are easily worked around though, once you understand them (which in turn begs the question of why have them, if they are so easily bypassed). That, and Vista's file indexing is phenomenally slow and recurrently disk intensive - I have disabled all indexing on my machine.

Also, since I only ever use my windows box for games, I have gone into system performance settings and set everything for max. performance, min. eye candy and effects. Vista does have some very nice visual features, especially on big wide screen monitors, but the default system settings also take up a lot of RAM and CPU cycles.

In terms of SHIII and SHIV specifically, they both run absolutely fine on my machine.

--
AMD Athlon 64X2 4800+, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 400GB SATA HD
PNY GeForce 8500GT 512Mb video
Samsung 216BW LCD monitor

SHIII, GWX 1.03, SHCommander
SHIV 1.3, NSM 3.3 classic, LBO/ROW

[TDK1044]

Up until now, games have been designed for XP and have been made to be Vista compatible. Going forward, the opposite will be true.

[antikristuseke]

Buying Vista right now is a waste of money, though it will become worth it eventualy, maybe in a year or two.

[Defiance]

Hiya's,
Dual Boot ;) seriously easy to do nowadays, Either 1 hdd or 2 or more

You may find a lot of games/sims fps problems are graphics card driver related and to a degree resource/services

Take nvidia xp drivers compared to vista ones, Overall xp ones in same game/sim give a different performance for the better (some sites/test say 10%)

I can remember on forums people posting about this new up n coming xp os, Saying 98se is the best then 2k and i aint budging, Now i look back and see some of the people are now saying xp is the dogs danglies and i aint budging or moving to vista, But vista is here, Albeit in a still infant state to some degree but it's here and it's getting better, The SP will do for it just like the 1st sp did for xp, Will add to it from lessons learned after general release

I will be the 1st to admit i play sh4 (besides crysis demo) it's all i play now and i play sh4 in XP as it's best on xp at this moment in time. On vista x86 i do lose some fps in tests etc but margine is closing it seems over time with driver releases

Eye candy in vista is nice in fact very nice, Makes xp visually plain to some degree

Remember back if you had the 98 os then moved onto xp ? seemed so stunningly beautiful compared to the 98 os, Same goes when you move from xp to vista

One thing i love in vista besides the eye candy is the built in speech recognition, Train it and it really is good

Like anything look into it, Try it on a friends or net cafe etc and see for yourself

If you were to decide to upgrade i'd try and take the option of keeping your xp ownership (i mean don't upgrade to xp and lose xp key) then do as i do and countless others and dualboot and keep the best of both worlds so to speak

Ohh stability i find amazing in vista, But i rarely keep my system as-is for more than 4-6mths, Drivers and support for vista now is great (not like launch when it seemed no one wanted to support vista driver-wise)

Just like splashing out on a new pc just do your research and ask/compare

To negative ones if you've really tried vista on a decent equipped rig and still found it lacking then that's your choice, But to ones that have not really tried vista longterm or only tried on a barely minimum setup try not to make your bad experience seem as it's the os's fault ;)

Well i say Ciao and will duck for cover

Have Fun

Ciao

Def

[STEED]

Party time for XP :up: :rock: :D :cool:

Vista not invited. :down: :x :stare:



Stick with XP for another three years then way it up until then, steer clear of the Vista nightmare.

[Skybird]

Is it worth it to purchase a new computer system with XP or go with Vista? Will XP hold up for future gaming or is Vista the way to go (for the present time). Would like your thoughts
Simple questions, simple answers:
The value of DX10 is questionable. Vista sucks. Future improvement of these two issues remains to be seen - I don't hold my breath. Ask subman, he pointed to some comparisons that illustrated that.

Conclusion: stay with XP. That's what I would do if needing to buy a new system now or in the next 12 months.

MS currently advertises that it expects a huge jump in XP-people turning towards Vista this X-mas. they made many questionable statements abiut sales in the past year as well. Don't believe everything they say. They do not wish to give objective information. They do wish to push up their sales. Most of Vista sales are suspected to be OEM versions being preinstalled on ready-systems.

Found at simHQ:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/01/microsoft-predicts-mass-vista
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/01/microsoft-predicts-mass-vista

Knowing a salesman in a huge elctronics warehouse in my city, I can tell you what he keeps telling me since all this year: Vista lies like lead in their shelves. It is the second-biggest electronic warehouse chain we have over here.

[Konovalov]

Again I share Skybird's sentiments on Windows Pista Vista. I certainly have no intention of migrating from XP to Vista within the next year and longer if I can do so. I'm happy and if it ain't broke don't fix it. :up:

[SUBMAN1]

Don't even get me started...:nope:

[MorganThePirate]

I have been using vista for the last three months. I love it.:lol: Go with vista, forget xp. Remember what happened with DOS & WINDOWS? The same will happen with vista & xp.:hmm: Good Hunting.:arrgh!:

[seafarer]

Is it worth it to purchase a new computer system with XP or go with Vista?

:lol: Sorry Javelin - as expected for this topic, your answers will likely be:

Yes :up:

No :down:

Yes :up:

No :down:

Both (dual boot) :up::up:

Maybe :hmm:

...

:damn: :damn: Might have well asked if you should play SHIII or SHIV? ;) :rotfl:

[SUBMAN1]

I have been using vista for the last three months. I love it.:lol: Go with vista, forget xp. Remember what happened with DOS & WINDOWS? The same will happen with vista & xp.:hmm: Good Hunting.:arrgh!:
Is this a joke? I have 10 copies of Vista. I have installed a total of 3. I am typing on one right now. It is slow, bloated, painfully stupid in places, and I still can't figure out what is eating 700 MB of memory for no reason when no apps are loaded. It has got to be the slowest pig of an operating system I have seen in my 30 years of using computers. To add insult to injury on this OS, A friend of mine used to be program manager on a portion of Vista (which will remain un-named) and even he can't stand it to the point where he transfered off the project.

For gaming, you are greeted with a nice 20% FPS drop over a similarly equipped XP box. DX10 - I still can't find anything visual to make the upgrade worth it either. So for Vista, you get slower game play with the same graphics. Nice.

An example of its quirks - Ever save a file to a spot and figure out that Vista forgot to make it show up in explorer? The work around is to type the exact name of the file, and then it will find it.

Ugghh! I'm stopping now before you get me worked up.

-S

[Prof]

Eye candy in vista is nice in fact very nice, Makes xp visually plain to some degreeIf I wanted pointless eye candy I'd have Mac.

Remember back if you had the 98 os then moved onto xp ? seemed so stunningly beautiful compared to the 98 os, Same goes when you move from xp to vistaNope...the default Windows XP theme makes my desktop look like 'My First Operating System'. The first thing I do on any new XP install is to switch everything (desktop, start menu, control panel, file search, etc...) back into 'classic mode'.

I tried Vista on a friend's computer and I was appalled. It's slow, irritating and it rates 'flashiness' over function.

[CptCrunch]

Vista has huge overheads & requires 2x the amt of RAM to do the same job - thus have 2X the amt of ram with XP and 2X the performance. Vista is pretty - a rip off of Mac Os but its a pain in the ass - beware of any MS OS thats less than 18 months old - service pack , service pack, service pack. Drivers are a big issue - if you don't use a MS certified driver VISTA will imobilise the entire driver class eg. new vid card could disable all video drivers - useful eh? The problem is MS certification is avery expensive and very slow - so no one's waiting for it...

Beware ... better the devil we know :-?

[seafarer]

If I wanted pointless eye candy I'd have Mac.


:lol: For anything NON-gaming, I use my Apple machines - I'll take a Mac and OS X over Windows-ANYTHING any and every time. The sole and exclusive reason I even have a windows box is for games - Windows is pathetic for anything serious.

Sorry to get off topic, but everyone else was venting, and, well, it's like yawning. Ya' see someone else do, and you find yourself doing it too.

[TteFAboB]

My laptop came with Vista and the only reason it's still there is because I don't have time to wipe the drive and install XP.

Thanks for DX10 but I'll pass and wait for DX11.

[TDK1044]

I got XP two years after its relaese and I'll probably wait at least that long for Vista to get its act together.

[Chock]

I had to get Vista because I train people on computer software, so I needed experience with it, but, it was outrageously priced in the UK, and so I took the opportunity to combine buying it with a laptop purchase with it pre-installed (Vista Home Premium version). I'll be honest, there was no way I would have bought it had it not been for the fact that it was kind of a 'free' way to get it since I was going to buy a laptop anyway.

It has some nice features and some infuriating ones too, being as I also train people on Apple Macs a lot of the time (and I'm not a fan of Macs) I did not like the Vista OS attempt at looking pretty like OSX. I turned XP back to the 'classic interface' so I certainly do not care about translucent windows and crap like that in Vista, as it is just an uneccessary embelishment that hogs system resources as far as I can see. Another down side for me is the incessant security features of it, which are generally pointless on MS operating systems, as most hackers treat MS attempts at security as a red rag to a bull, so that's another minus point.

On the plus side, Vista does have some good features, the powerboost feature (whereby you can plug a USB flash drive into your Vista PC and it will configure the flash drive as RAM) is nice, as is the more visually helpful networking wizard, which I didn't really need, but I can see it would be attractive to the less computer-savvy user, and there are many 'wizards' built into it that are similarly helpful for the non-technical type of user.

It does run stuff that is written with Vista in mind much better than XP in my experience, for example, many people scoffed at the claim by Microsoft that MS Flight Simulator 10 would run better on Vista when it was accused of being too much of a resource hog and running choppy in XP. But those detractors have had to eat their words, because I can attest to the fact that FSX runs much smoother on my laptop with Vista than it does on my desktop with XP, and both have 2 gigs of RAM, but the laptop has no dedicated video card, whereas the desktop has a PCI-X card, so you'd think it would blow the laptop out of the water, but it doesn't, and that seems to be because of Vista.

I'm not about to take XP off my desktop, as frankly, I preferred Win98, nevermind XP, but I have to say that even with my dislike of Vista, it does have its plus points.

By the way, many online services do not support Vista yet, so watch out for that (an example being the BBC's 'watch again' service). Also note that it kisses Outlook Express goodbye too.



:D Chock

[U49]

XPSP2.

And I will NOT make any change at all to my running system! It is not entertaining for me to spend hour on hour to just to have another enviroment running which does the same, as my currently running environment: keep my games executable

XP works and everybody knows most of it's bugs and workarounds.

[SUBMAN1]

...It does run stuff that is written with Vista in mind much better than XP in my experience, for example, many people scoffed at the claim by Microsoft that MS Flight Simulator 10 would run better on Vista when it was accused of being too much of a resource hog and running choppy in XP. But those detractors have had to eat their words, because I can attest to the fact that FSX runs much smoother on my laptop with Vista than it does on my desktop with XP, and both have 2 gigs of RAM, but the laptop has no dedicated video card, whereas the desktop has a PCI-X card, so you'd think it would blow the laptop out of the water, but it doesn't, and that seems to be because of Vista....I'm having a hard time beliving you don't have some major issue there! I think you need to re-evaluate by comparing apples to apples since it sounds like you are comparing apples to oranges in this case. Turn off all the graphical options on your PCI-E card and then take a look since that is effectively what you are doing by running it on your laptop.

-S

[Chock]

Trust me on this one, it's not the graphics whistles and bells, it's the autogen scenery, you can have that on full tilt in Vista and there is just no way it can do it on XP, either with or without any sort of fancy processing on. Believe me, I wish it were not so, as I much prefer my desktop, but that's the way it is.

:D Chock

[SUBMAN1]

Trust me on this one, it's not the graphics whistles and bells, it's the autogen scenery, you can have that on full tilt in Vista and there is just no way it can do it on XP, either with or without any sort of fancy processing on. Believe me, I wish it were not so, as I much prefer my desktop, but that's the way it is.

:D ChockWell, MS keeps calling me to go in for another trial of something, so maybe I'll get a free copy of FSX while I'm there next. Don't feel like paying for it. I'll check it out for myself.

I have a laptop with Vista and an x700 in it. I'll compare to the desktop.

-S

[kiwi_2005]

after fiddleing around with Windows Media Centre i would say this is worse than Windows ME and ME was very bad. If i could run Vista on this machine i would but it only has 512ram (intel 2ghz, 9600xt, 40g hdd) so i would be pushing it so winxp it is thats once i overcome the startup beeps problem.:shifty:

[kiwi_2005]

Oh BTW Vista rocks, the problems ppl have is usually cause there machines aren't up to it.

Anyways look what i found :lol: 10 MB drive = $3000 :rotfl:

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a390/Kiwi_Frank/33.jpg

[JSLTIGER]

Oh BTW Vista rocks, the problems ppl have is usually cause there machines aren't up to it.
:yep::yep::yep:

[nikimcbee]

Is it worth it to purchase a new computer system with XP or go with Vista? Will XP hold up for future gaming or is Vista the way to go (for the present time). Would like your thoughts

this explains everything:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4FFyPQzI_M
:rotfl:

[Reaves]

Oh BTW Vista rocks, the problems ppl have is usually cause there machines aren't up to it.




That's been my experience. All my hardware is Vista ready and when your talking about new games it's flawless.

To say that Vista should run old software perfectly is silly. If you went from 98 to XP you will remember it had the same problems. Games that ran with the DOS background just didn't like NT. To make NT run DOS perfectly would have lessened NT....

I do however have one large problem but that's with Microsoft.

6.1 sound or the lack of it in Vista, you flaming mongrels!!! :damn:

[kiwi_2005]

I do however have one large problem but that's with Microsoft.

6.1 sound or the lack of it in Vista, you flaming mongrels!!! :damn:
Yep i had the same problem with creative sound blaster 5n1 no drivers for vista so had to go back to onboard 2 speaker sound :damn:

[Foxtrot]

Vista rocks
XP sucks

*runs away*

[silentrunner]

I have been using vista for the last three months. I love it.:lol: Go with vista, forget xp. Remember what happened with DOS & WINDOWS? The same will happen with vista & xp.:hmm: Good Hunting.:arrgh!:
Windows vista is wonderfull but I can't get SH3 installed on it

[STEED]

Vista rocks
XP sucks

*runs away*

Get your eyes tested I'm sure you typed that wrong. ;)

Vista sucks
XP rocks

:D :lol:

[SUBMAN1]

Oh BTW Vista rocks, the problems ppl have is usually cause there machines aren't up to it. :yep::yep::yep:Hardly. App compatibility is the #1 factor that turns me off to it.

Let's see - The first desktop is an XP 2500, with an ATI 9550 in it and it is sluggish.

Next system - the Acer has an AMD ML-32 in it (1.8 GHz 64 bit Turion) with a couple GB of RAM and an x700 GPU. It's still sluggish - and not much different over the XP 2500, probably because the CPU MHz isn't a whole lot different. Get this though - in the system rating screen, the Acer scores about a 2.5, but the XP 2500 scores over a 3.0!! This probably has to do somewhat with video memory - the Acer has 64 MB dedicated RAM for the vid card, and the desktop has 128 MB. Still though - performance is about the same between the two.

Last system (has since been downgraded to MCE2005) is a X2 4400+, 2 GB RAM, x1900 XTX video card, RAID, etc. etc. etc. It is not really any better than the other two!!!! Like WTH! I forgot to check what the score is, but it is over 5. I can run it again with the test app and find out.

I guess my biggest complaint - it's the sluggish lack of response time. It's similar to designing a desktop in Linux and using a clock polling of 250 Hz vs cranking it up to 1000 Hz. It has issues, it has to constantly think about what it is being told to do (probably some underlying DRM bloat), and it's a resource pig.

Did I mention that Vista comes complete with a whopping 20% drop in FPS for any game you feel like playing vs. XP?

Vista is a downgrade. I'm skipping it at home except for the Acer. I'll leave it on that because i like the new diskpart program which can partition up things like FLash drives - this makes it easier to install things like WIndows PE on a flash drive. Little things like that are updated - but they are not in the GUI - they are just updated command line apps.

Vista does have one other good thing for the Acer - Mahjong and Chess Titans! Can't think of much else.

-S