Vista vs XP

[Trowabarton756]

Well my Intel vs AMD yielded some awesome results, even though i personally buy AMD. Anyhoo, now its time for this XP vs Vista for performance all game wise. I got into an argument with a guy on the WoW tech forums because he claimed vista ultimate edition was better for gaming and WoW then Xp pro was, yet I look at all the benchmarking tests and XP pro wins, not by a lot, but it still wins...so, what do you guys think?

[geoffdavison]

I have Vista premium on my home computer and it works fine.. if you dial down the protection settings so it doesn't ask you everytime to do something.. it works fine.. i like some of the funtionality of it ie the window gadgets .. i don't ever use the aero interface since i'm always in windowed mode..



all together it seems to work well the key that i've heard is 2gig memory.. anything less than that and you are screwed.

[Trowabarton756]

What about gaming wise Geo what do you think?

[Eteocles]

I have to echo the "Vista is a steaming pile of shit" comment, poo isn't strong enough a word to describe it ;p While in the Intel vs AMD discussion I preferred AMD and think Intel would work just as well, in this case, I say FUCK VISTA. FUCK IT HARD. ;p XP is relatively stable for gaming, has been out long enough that any issue you might encounter will likely have a fix already. Though I hear XP's 64bit drivers aren't that hot, and Vista's 64bit works a little better, right now I run a 64bit dual-core processor but windows is a 32bit install I had prior to upgrading my machine, haven't had a single issue.

[geoffdavison]

No issues with it as far as games either... seems to run just fine.. i think that if its your initial install it should be fine..

the issues that seem to come up that i've seem is people who have upgraded from XP to vista and people who use it on laptops... both of those seem to be continuing issues (my son convinced his grandmother to upgrade her laptop to vista and it can barely run the thing)

[Boylston]

Fresh install of Vista 64-bit, and I have had absolutely no issues. I have heard laptop horror stories, however.

[Trowabarton756]

Hmmm thanks for the replies so far. I still think XP > Vista and you guys seem to echo that XD

[Sarduci]

Running Vista 32 bit Business at work since it came out, fresh install.
Running Vista 32 bit Home at home on my laptop, fresh install.
Running Vista 64 bit Business at home on my game machine, fresh install.

No issues doing technical work (network captures, programming, AD management, scripting and running virtual machines) or with any games (running Firefox for web games, non-administrative account for local games) on any of the systems. SP1 has awesome performance improvements for file system access; I'm waiting for the official release since both of my laptops are on the list for bad driver installers on the RTM version that will be fixed in the final version.

If UAC bugs you all of the time, you can choose to launch programs by default as an administrator by simply right clicking on the icon --> properties--> Compatibility tab --> Check the box under Privilege Level that says Run this program as an administrator. Issue solved. AUC is definitely worth the extra click or two for all the additional protection it gives you.

Good luck with whatever you pick.

[zanthor]

Single box single monitor gaming - XP will own Vista any day of the week. Lower overhead, better driver support.
Multiboxing matched monitors (identical resolution) with a video card that has drivers that support span mode - XP will own Vista any day of the week. Lower overhead, better driver support.

Introduce a 22" to a 19" monitor @ different resolutions. Vista will own XP any day of the week. Better driver MODEL and OS level support of multi-monitor hardware accelerated graphics. Limited driver support but if you build the system with a hardware compatibility list in mind, you won't have any problems.

My current system is an AMD Athlon X2 6000+ with 4GB of DDR2, and an 8800GT. I run a 19" 4:3 monitor at 1280x1024 and a 22" 16:9 monitor @ 1680x1050. Running under XP things run noticeably smoother as long as I keep it on the single monitor, if a single pixel drops over the 2nd monitor I lose performance. Running under Vista everything runs fine, after some tuning I have it running 5 clients, ventrilo with normalization enabled, and a web browser with no problems at all. I haven't tried raiding since I got the performance tuned up the way it is now, but I'd wager much more than a 10 man will tank it.

I did world pvp for a few hours yesterday though with much enjoyment and no latency issues.

Note: I run a hybrid single wow install with a 2nd framed install using virtual links (mklink in vista). This allows me to maintain ONE set of UI mods, ONE set of saved variables, and have every setting from every character available across all my accounts. There are some downsides to this (like UI mods that show me I have 27 hearthstones, one on each character in the tooltip) but the upside highly outweighs it. This is not possible under XP as far as I know.

[zanthor]

If UAC bugs you all of the time, you can choose to launch programs by default as an administrator by simply right clicking on the icon --> properties--> Compatibility tab --> Check the box under Privilege Level that says Run this program as an administrator. Issue solved. AUC is definitely worth the extra click or two for all the additional protection it gives you.

If you aren't an idiot UAC really doesn't provide any protection you can't otherwise have by not surfing with an unsecure browser, etc... if you are an idiot, you'll say "Sure" anyhow and then your fucked.

The good news is, UAC can be disabled. A few clicks and a reboot, all done.