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So I'm getting a whole new computer, mostly based off suggestions I've seen people on this forum give. But I'm wondering about the operating system. I've seen mentioned that XP 32bit and XP 64bit and Vista recognize different amounts of RAM. Is this the only significant difference, and are there other differences that should be specifically noted from a multiboxer's point of view?
whatever you choose.. don't choose vista.
Vista = Eye candy and lag.
XP 64bit IMO
I have to respectfully disagree in one scenario, If you have two monitors with widely divergent sizes then Vista should be considered. The xp directx slowdown sucks, and if you have, say a 24" and a 17" monitor then you might have big issues with horizontal span in xp.
Depends on your ram tbh imo. With 3+ vista works fine
If you're buying a new machine, choose Vista Home Ultimate (32 bit).
There's absolutely nothing wrong with it and it's more than capable of running multiple instances of WoW.
Somewhere in the forums, there's a post about my own experiences with Vista when I first adopted it on two of my 6 machines.
Having been told with great authority by somebody on these forums that it was impossible, I ran 5 instances of WoW on a new 2Gb Vista notebook. The memory usage was marginally lower than the same scenario on an XP desktop and there was no perceptable difference in performance.
I have limited experience with the 64 bit Microsoft offerings, but there's anecdotal evidence that they will cause you more pain than gain due to driver availability and support, so I avoid them myself.
Buying a new machine with an old OS makes no sense to me, although as you may have noted from Keyclone's comment, he does not support his application under Vista so that may be a consideration for you.
Running 5 Instances of WoW on 2GB seems nothing short of suicidal.
I'd be interested to hear about your performance stats, as it seems like you'd get unplayable FPS. Totally useless for PvP.
I'm not in any way suggesting that as a recommended configuration.
As I recall, somebody made some throw-away post about WoW using twice as much memory under Vista than under XP and I set out to prove or disprove that theory, nothing more.
My original thread is here.
The bottom line, though, is that Vista can support the same number of WoW instances as XP can, all other things being equal.
The only problem is the memory overhead which comes with Vista.
Certain apps certainly perform better using Vista, I was doubtful as to wether WoW would be included in this.
there is nothing wrong with Vista x64 drivers. You can find them everywhere, so no worries there. There used to be a problem about 6-10 months back when they were scarse, but microsoft has done a good job of getting everything done in x64 bit along with x86 bit.
Overall though, you are going to see a knoticable decrease in FPS on a machine with vista, everything works...but not like it used to on XP.
If your making a gaming machine go with XP, other than that, it honestly doesnt matter.