What's the general consensus about Vista vs XP?

Machine is primarily used for a gaming rig. . .

Going to have to reinstall over the weekend due to new mobo, and I'll have 4gb of RAM.

Prob going for Vista Basic / Premium - main difference being the Media Centre front end?

So, what do you think?

 

My only reservation for Vista is that my creative soundcard does not give me the same functionality it used to under XP, but other than that has been fine. I'm out of touch with the games side of things as of recent but I hear Vista is getting better for games and newer ones will be optimised for it, not 100% on that though.

Im still running XP-64bit in a dual boot every now and then but Vista is now what I use mainly

 

Hello

I've been using Vista since it was released and I've been happy with it. Having said that, I had lots of issues with the 64 bit version (half of the programs I use didn't like it) but since I reverted to 32 bit it has been great.

Steve

 

I'm running Vista 64, and am very happy with it. Runs all my software very well, and is much nicer to use.

It is not currently a good OS for gaming however. Frame rates are generally 20% lower than the same thing running in XP on the same rig. This should be improved in SP1, but that's likely to be next year now...

 

Agree with Iain on this one, Vista is pisspoor for a gamer. FPS mean everything

 

If your a gamer then you should only buy it to dual boot and tinker around with and run your games via XP. I installed Premium 32bit about 6 months ago and have hardly used it tbh as I spend most of my time playing Battlefield 2142 at the mo. For the price there is no point scrimping. And if you want to make use of your 4gb RAM make sure you get the 64bit version.

Simon

 

XP pro & vista (all vers) support 4gb ram?

 

Yes, afaik, 32Bit supports up to 4Gb. Its when you go over that you have gains from 64bit (I think).

XP is quicker, Dual boot is the best of both worlds. OSL2000 is great as a boot manager if you don't want to have a fight with Windows' own boot managers.

 

No, 32 bit only supports up to 3Gb. Everything above that is reserved for hardware DMA.

 

A 64 bit OS/System will give 16TB of addressable Memory, whereas 32 bit gives you 4GB of addressable memory.

That's the single biggest advantage of a 64 bit PC.

 

XP beats Vista in performance tests - The INQUIRER