64 bit OS woes. Need some help!

[Moddersunited]

So today I had 4gig of Mushkin ram shipped over night to make sure I would have it for the initial launch, but my issue is I need to upgrade to a 64 bit architecture,
I "acquired" both vista x64 All-in-one edition as well as Xp x64 corporate edition, with two wires left to cut which one will diffuse the bomb?
I was thinking Xp since its based off of the server 2003 kernal and is very low resource
I need to run 4-5 accounts simultaneously and i need them to be stable.

so I'm asking you oh solo'ers of the 5-mans what is my best method of attack tonight



and if this is the wrong thread can someone point me to which it should be under?

[Souca]

Do to some CD-Ley issues with my MSDN installs I was forced to switch to Vista. I run the x64 Ultimate version and after a few tweaks I'm happier than I had expected to be. Things I noticed:

1. Turn UAC off. I don't download random .exe's so I'm not super concerned with security once its on my machine.
2. Turn DWM off as it will bog your graphics down in a second, esp when you run more than one WoW. I turned it off at the service level.
3. Max out your memory. Memory is cheap if you are using DDR2, so get at least 8GB and you won't have to worry about the extra weight of Vista.
4. Check to see if all your drivers are available for x64 and in a Vista flavor. I had an old RAID 5 card I had to leave out because they don't have any x64 or Vista drivers.

even though I'm still installing things here and there, I'm pretty happy with Vista. I can't comment on if it's directly faster as I did a few major hardware changes with the install.

Your mileage may vary.

Edit: Almost forgot to mention I 5 box. I had 9 running on my XP setup, but haven't tried it yet under Vista. 5 runs fine, but it might just be the extra memory and motherboard changes.

- Souca -

[moosejaw]

I guess the answer is which OS has the driver support you need for the critical peripherals. I think they are both pretty good. You can trim Vista down quite a bit. Either OS is going to love the 8gb and they will cache the snot out of stuff. Don't forget to dump the swap file.

[Moddersunited]

wow thank you both for being so quick to respond I'm finishing g-parted right now and then will beinstalling X64 vista

[Prepared]

Do to some CD-Ley issues with my MSDN installs I was forced to switch to Vista. I run the x64 Ultimate version and after a few tweaks I'm happier than I had expected to be. Things I noticed:

1. Turn UAC off. I don't download random .exe's so I'm not super concerned with security once its on my machine.
2. Turn DWM off as it will bog your graphics down in a second, esp when you run more than one WoW. I turned it off at the service level.
3. Max out your memory. Memory is cheap if you are using DDR2, so get at least 8GB and you won't have to worry about the extra weight of Vista.
4. Check to see if all your drivers are available for x64 and in a Vista flavor. I had an old RAID 5 card I had to leave out because they don't have any x64 or Vista drivers.

even though I'm still installing things here and there, I'm pretty happy with Vista. I can't comment on if it's directly faster as I did a few major hardware changes with the install.

Your mileage may vary.

Edit: Almost forgot to mention I 5 box. I had 9 running on my XP setup, but haven't tried it yet under Vista. 5 runs fine, but it might just be the extra memory and motherboard changes.

- Souca -

What is UAC and DWM?

[Moddersunited]

dwm is vistas window manager that eats at your resources, its mainly used for aero


great news g-parted killed my partitions ^.^ yay guess who not only has to gain 3 levels between now and wrath launch but reinstall and repatch everything.

this is going to be an endless 28 hours good thing im on vacation >.>

[Souca]

What is UAC and DWM?

UAC is the User Access Controls. It pops up random dialogs asking if you wanted it to do the thing you just click the "Do this thing" button for. It makes some things annoying like not letting Vent use Keybinds when other apps are in the foreground and requiring WoW to run as admin to write to the WTF files.

DWM is the windo manager that does transparency in windows and copies the contents of your windows into the little tabs so when you mouse over it can show what the window is showing. Really brings machines to their knees when they are running more than one WoW.

- Souca -