To Vista or not to Vista?

[elrasho]

Ive scored a copy of Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition

Was wondering if its worth me installing it now or waiting until SP1 is out. I have an Opty 180 so this will make good use of it.... but I still don't know if the XFI soundcard problem was ever fixed (where by games wouldnt use the XFI Hardware so you had to use Software YUK!)

 

[No Limit]

If you got it might as well jump on the wagon. Personally I am holding off on getting it until I actually need it, and thanks to microsoft I will need it soon enough.

 

[Dr. G. Freeman]

I have Vista on my laptop, and let me tell you, I think it's a pain in the ass. I don't like it a bit. I called the company where my laptop came from to see if I could downgrade to XP. But no luck with that. I can't play any of my games in full screen view for Steam, and I don't know why. It's up to you if you want to upgrade to Vista.

 

[elrasho]

I have Vista on my laptop, and let me tell you, I think it's a pain in the ass. I don't like it a bit. I called the company where my laptop came from to see if I could downgrade to XP. But no luck with that. I can't play any of my games in full screen view for Steam, and I don't know why. It's up to you if you want to upgrade to Vista.

Well since orange box is round the corner I think ill wait..... what about XP Pro 64 bit? Is that worth a look into?

 

[-Psy-]

What's wrong with good ol' Win XP?

 

[No Limit]

Well since orange box is round the corner I think ill wait..... what about XP Pro 64 bit? Is that worth a look into?

What OS do you have right now? I can't comment on what difference there is between 32bit and 64bit as far as XP goes but if you are looking to upgrade from home to pro it would only be worth the heavy price tag if you need pros extra features. If you have to ask what those extra features are you don't need them.

 

[elrasho]

IM bored of it and since I have a 64bit CPU I thought I might aswell make use of it

 

[DEATHMASTER]

I don't know how well it'll run on you're system, but got for it.

 

[joule]

I haven't run into any major issues. At least give it a whirl.

 

[Asus]

If I had a copy of Vista I'd throw it on of course but as a 2nd OS. I'd leave my XP installed.

 

[giant384]

64bit isnt really useful right now. all you would notice is a faster boot time and software that can use 64bit will be faster. other that i dont think you should do anything...also how is Microsoft forcing you to upgrade?

 

[elrasho]

If I had a copy of Vista I'd throw it on of course but as a 2nd OS. I'd leave my XP installed.

Its soo tempting but I dont want to mess my PC up. Especially with orange box round the corner... its just sitting here staring at me!!

 

[leib10]

What's wrong with good ol' Win XP?

+1. I'm holding off on Vista for as long as I can.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

Do like me and duel boot then you have the best of both.

 

[Operational]

what about XP Pro 64 bit? Is that worth a look into?

Oh hell no, avoid with extreme prejudice.

IM bored of it and since I have a 64bit CPU I thought I might aswell make use of it

Unless you know of any 64 bit programs you want to run or need/want more than 3GB of RAM stick with XP 32bit or Vista 32bit.

 

[Combine Hybrid]

what differences are there between 32bit and 64bit? sorry I'm completely noob at this.

 

[iizbl4ck]

i just installed my Vista Ultimate 64-bit but i havent got a chance to test it on any games yet. but from everything im hearin i think it might be wise to downgrade to XP.

 

[TheDan]

I've had Vista Business Edition x64 (courtesy of my MSDN account) for at least a month now. I've not had any problems with it. The nVidia drivers didn't let me play BioShock for a bit until new ones were released. Other than that, I think CSS appears to run smoother to me, I can take advantage of 64-bit applications and when I choose to upgrade, I'll be able to make full use of 4Gb of memory.

Although Vista may appear to chew up resources (for example, It's using 1-13% CPU and 50% of my RAM at the moment with 6 applications open), but it does give those resources back to you when you want to use them, such as playing a game. One thing I notice most is that it turns off Aero when you run an application that's using your GPU. I've not had any apparent problems/slowness due to swapping.

I'd recommend it.

 

[No Limit]

what differences are there between 32bit and 64bit? sorry I'm completely noob at this.

The most simple difference is that 64bit will let you run 4GB of memory while 32bit is capped at 2GB.

Other than that there currently isn't much difference for home computers, the advantage comes in with servers that do a lot of encryption and other data processing. As drivers are released, as programs start taking full advantage of 64bit the speed increases will be fairly noticeable. And I'm just going off what I've read about it, none of this is from personal experiance as the only 64bit os I run is on a server at work, I don't have it on any of my personal computers.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

To be completely honest, Vista is perfectly fine as an OS. Is there a speed decrease? Minor at best. People just don't seem to recall that with every new OS release there was a performance decrease, and hardware increases and nobody cares anymore. Dual-cores and all of that are becoming more common so the performance drop is becoming even less. Does anyone remember the perf drop between like Win 98 and Win XP (ignoring WinME)? Of course not, since it's been so long and nobody seemed to care back then, but it was there none the less. On top of this, Microsoft released some updates to improve the speed and reliability of Vista (specifically talking about gaming performance improvements in fact)

Application compatibility is also vastly increased. If an application doesn't work, get the latest version. If that doesn't work, run it in compatibility mode... That's why that was invented (it's in XP too so you need to realize that all the problems Vista faced, XP also faced to a lesser degree and especially less press back then).

Make the jump. And might I suggest that if you are a power user, turn off UAC. It can get annoying sometime.

 

[Asus]

To be completely honest, Vista is perfectly fine as an OS. Is there a speed decrease? Minor at best. People just don't seem to recall that with every new OS release there was a performance decrease, and hardware increases and nobody cares anymore. Dual-cores and all of that are becoming more common so the performance drop is becoming even less. Does anyone remember the perf drop between like Win 98 and Win XP (ignoring WinME)? Of course not, since it's been so long and nobody seemed to care back then, but it was there none the less.

Yeah, I recall the performance difference. I don't recall anyone making near as big of a deal with that as with Xp vs Vista though. Not sure why...

 

[DEATHMASTER]

Cause Halo 2 was used to promote it thats why.

 

[Asus]

Cause Halo 2 was used to promote it thats why.

eh ?

 

[iizbl4ck]

Cause Halo 2 was used to promote it thats why.

so that means ????

 

[Combine Hybrid]

I would say if you want to keep playing the old generation games, stick with XP. There really isn't point of getting Vista unless you want to play Crysis in full graphic power.