Help with Operating System choice.

cichy1012

Been gaming with xp for years now, love it but with my current system running behind the times; Ive decided for and upgrade. My question is about vista. Is it good for gaming right now? Should I stay with XP? I like the new UI with vista, but if the gaming is going to be crap, then I will stay with XP. Any help would be great.

Thanks

Current system:

Asus a8n-sli premium with AMD x2 4800 . Danger Den water cooled

Audigy 2 ZS

EVGA 8800 GTS 640 mb

2gigs of OZC memory

Upgrading to:

MB ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe NF570SLI AM2 - 

CPU AMD A64 X2 6400+ 3.2G AM2 2M R - 

MEM 4 GIG  CORSAIR 240P TWIN2X2048-6400C4 -  1024 X 4 

KEEPING MY EVGA 8800 GTS 640 AND AUDIGY 2 ZS..

Gamer_17

I am also wondering about this but i have one stupid quick question to add on can you have DX 10 on both XP and Vista?

thanks

 

xxthecorexx

there's no solid yes or no answer to this. some people will tell you vista sucks for gaming, nothing runs right and it's much slower than xp, bla bla bla, some will tell you that they've had no problems what so ever and everything they've tried has played just fine. so you're leaving yourself open to varying personal opinions. getting on to mine.. stick with xp for now. there are still vista bugs, and with XPsp3 on the way, there's reported to be a 10% performance increase. unless you're absolutely dying for a dx10 game, or want to play with all the desktop hoo-hahas, i think xp is the safest most stable route to take.

 

 *edit* or take option 2 and dual boot with vista and xp, eventually fully migrating to one or the other.

 

second question.. no. dx10 is vista only.

Agent_X7

A few points:

1 - Unless you are running 64-bit XP or Vista, you won't get to use all 4GB of RAM. It's a limitation of 32-bit operating systems.

2 - Vista does tend to slow down performance in games right now. The same system running XP will run a game slower with Vista. Supposedly this is being worked on, but don't hold your breath. Mostly a problem for lower system specs, but games like Crysis can really take a hit.

3 - VIsta allows for use of DX10.

 

Personally, I like the shiny new effects, so I game in Vista now. (Home Premium 64) I haven't run in to any problems so far. (Other than calling Microshaft every time I change something that makes me reactivate.)

 

 

JennysMind

The problem with 64-bit OS is that many applications won't work on it. For example Eve Online works on Vista-32 and not Vista-64. I haven't had problems with Vista-32 after disabling the unneeded bloatware installed with Vista. Plus Vista has much better security than XP.  That being said I don't see a reason to upgrade just for the sake of having the latest OS.

Diross

Yeah, you should also be aware that there is a push from gaming companies placing a recommendation to use Vista when there isn't a defined performance enhancement reported showing it's worth the investment. I run XP and have no reason to upgrade right now either until it's warranted.

Alarius

Since the address space of 4 gigs of ram necessitates the capability of a 64bit system, and if you plan on clocking-up your corsair ram, I would unequivocally recommend 64bit vista, especially with its DX10 readiness. 

You're going to notice that the higher memory ceiling of 2^64 memory spaces significantly increases the ability of your cpu to handle larger problem sets, in fact it increases it by the factor of 9 extra zeros of space compared to a 2^32 bit system.

Ochie

? woah ?

Im about to get mroe RAM

my XP home 32bit wont run 4 gigs?

 

will it run 3 or 2?

CleffyII

Get Vista or else you cannot use "Ultra High" setting for texture maps.

daelnor

Here's one for your pocketbook: Full version XP Pro is more expensive than full version of Vista Home Premium.

D.

Wicaa

Luckily I have 64bit xp pro and can honestly say havent run into many problems was thinking of upgrading to vista ultimate but really cant be bothered unless Im buying/building a new pc.

My ram just got cheap too so I may upgrade to 4gigs.