Windows XP vs Vista
 

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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/inquir...cts-mass-vista
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...cts-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.

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:

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

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:

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