[HELP] Vista or not to Vista that is the question.

[Fafnir]

Well i got a x64 dual core computer and now playing Age of Conan i've noticed the computer goes from 2 cores to 1, and i have to reboot the computer to get the other core running, after looking around i've seen indications that XP dont use the 2 cores.

so my question is if i buy Vista what version should i get and would it
help improve gaming since it should use both cores. And i got 4GB ram installed but since i use XP i only use 3.2gb.

[liloe]

Windows 2003 x64 or Windows XP x64 is the way to go, if you want my opinion. I'm using the first and it works fine, although you might be better off with XP x64.

[Ominous]

Funny thing I was using a dodgy version of xp and felt very guilty about it so I decided to come clean and purchase vista at the cost of about £70. To be honest sod all worked with it. I should have checked before hand but even so it was like going back about 10 yrs or so when I first used Windows xp (or whatever operating was suppose to be the bees knees at the time). In other words £70 down the drain. I then downloaded a *cough* trial (dodgy) version of the latest xp and viola everything worked. The latest version of xp is amazing and I will buy it as soon as I can afford it. Really is an amazing operating system. Not sure how much is XP Pro is - prob a few hundred pounds. Probably worth it though but if Vista works on your comp then stick with that. I would have if my modem worked - my graphics card worked - my usb link cable worked etc.

[Gahn]

Originally Posted by Ominous

Funny thing I was using a dodgy version of xp and felt very guilty about it so I decided to come clean and purchase vista at the cost of about £70. To be honest sod all worked with it. I should have checked before hand but even so it was like going back about 10 yrs or so when I first used Windows xp (or whatever operating was suppose to be the bees knees at the time). In other words £70 down the drain. I then downloaded a *cough* trial (dodgy) version of the latest xp and viola everything worked. The latest version of xp is amazing and I will buy it as soon as I can afford it. Really is an amazing operating system. Not sure how much is XP Pro is - prob a few hundred pounds. Probably worth it though but if Vista works on your comp then stick with that. I would have if my modem worked - my graphics card worked - my usb link cable worked etc.

You have a free Xp code along with the Vista one afaik, double check for it.

[Litmus]

easy answer... not to vista, biggest piece of shit ever made.

wish i never wasted £80 it on release

Vista. Technology is moving forward.

Better sooner rather than later.

[Ctuchik]

Originally Posted by Ominous

Funny thing I was using a dodgy version of xp and felt very guilty about it so I decided to come clean and purchase vista at the cost of about £70. To be honest sod all worked with it. I should have checked before hand but even so it was like going back about 10 yrs or so when I first used Windows xp (or whatever operating was suppose to be the bees knees at the time). In other words £70 down the drain. I then downloaded a *cough* trial (dodgy) version of the latest xp and viola everything worked. The latest version of xp is amazing and I will buy it as soon as I can afford it. Really is an amazing operating system. Not sure how much is XP Pro is - prob a few hundred pounds. Probably worth it though but if Vista works on your comp then stick with that. I would have if my modem worked - my graphics card worked - my usb link cable worked etc.

problem is that M$ wont be supporting XP for that much longer i've heard. so were practically gonna be FORCED to using vista before long.

i mean, they stopped to make fixes to win 98 only a year or so after ME came out, and ME got shafted from the support departement a year or so after XP came out.

I DONT WANNA USE VISTA

[Chronictank]

If you are already on xp 64 you wont see many more problems regarding drivers and programs than you are seeing now

Vista is no less stable than XP atm for most things, and alot of the blind hate is because of teething issues at the start.

HOWEVER, if you have a Nvidia gfx card you might want to stay off a bit as the drivers support is awful so problems take a very long time to get fixed, also Nvidia cards dont use the dx10 programmable shader architecture and don't support dx10.1 (even their newest cards being released in July wont support it) so you wont see any significant gains over xp.
If you have an Ati the driver support is better and most the new gen are dx 10.1 compatible, and this does show a significant increase in performance over XP (see assassins creed benchmarks before they patched it out, supposidly because of nvidia)

I have been using it for 4 months now and have had barely any problems which arent related to 64-bit rather than vista itself.

Another thing to note is that if you don't have 4 gb or ram (which i assume you do because you are using x64), then there is no point upgrading, 32-bit vista is a waste of money

[soze]

Originally Posted by Ctuchik

problem is that M$ wont be supporting XP for that much longer i've heard. so were practically gonna be FORCED to using vista before long.

i mean, they stopped to make fixes to win 98 only a year or so after ME came out, and ME got shafted from the support departement a year or so after XP came out.

I DONT WANNA USE VISTA

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, General Support - 14/04/2009, Extended Support - 08/04/2014

You can still buy OEM XP Pro so i would not say you have to use Vista for a while yet.

[kiliarien]

Originally Posted by soze

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, General Support - 14/04/2009, Extended Support - 08/04/2014

You can still buy OEM XP Pro so i would not say you have to use Vista for a while yet.

I agree with this. It's never a good idea to get an OS when it's resonably new due to support/compatibility issues etc. etc. Anyone remember when they shipped 98 SE and it had just over 5,000 separate issues (albeit minor ones) that they hadn't fixed?

Go XP pro, Vista is a bag o' wank and uses far too much memory. Also, is it the case that the updater can't be turned off? I know someone who has it updating in the middle of doing other things which is funny to watch but does get irritating.

[Chronictank]

Originally Posted by kiliarien

Go XP pro, Vista is a bag o' wank and uses far too much memory. Also, is it the case that the updater can't be turned off? I know someone who has it updating in the middle of doing other things which is funny to watch but does get irritating.

1) it uses memory better, you can set up prefetching which actually utilises the memory you have rather than it being wasted
2) Updater can be turned off/set to download and wait just like automatic update on windows XP
To be frank if his machine is stuggling while updates are streamed, his pc is too crap to run vista

I find it funny that everyone here who says vista is rubbish more than likely hasn't even tried it past 5 mins when it was in beta/RC1
After you customise it to your preferences it is no worse than XP, and is alot better in other respects

[kiliarien]

Originally Posted by Chronictank

1) it uses memory better, you can set up prefetching which actually utilises the memory you have rather than it being wasted
2) Updater can be turned off/set to download and wait just like automatic update on windows XP
To be frank if his machine is stuggling while updates are streamed, his pc is too crap to run vista

I find it funny that everyone here who says vista is rubbish more than likely hasn't even tried it past 5 mins when it was in beta/RC1
After you customise it to your preferences it is no worse than XP, and is alot better in other respects

Cheers for the info

He spent close on £1.5K on the PC (and he got the £700 processor free) so unless he bought a solid gold case, I don't think his PC is poor. Note I didn't say it struggled, I just said it uses far too much memory - he has 4GB and when idle only 3.1GB is available. I just personally consider that too much being used on what are at least for some of them unecessary functions.

Too many frills not enough substance. If anything XP was just too successful and they panicked, the OS life cycle for XP could have lasted so much longer and that wouldn't help them get the cash incoming. I have spoken to quite a IT techies, and I'm still trying to find one that is even close to calling it a favourable product. Then again ofc, just an opinion of others, but the consensus is against it.

[Chronictank]

Just a little tidbit, if the game needs more memory vista free's some of the memory its using when in desktop mod to the app that has priority

you are absolutely right, xp is a good platform for gaming and if anyone asks i would recommend it for 32 bit
But if you are upgrading to 64-bit and are spending money on a OS i would say vista 64 so you are future proofing yourself

[confused]

I don't know what peoples problems are with vista... its been rock solid for over a year now, Having used both 64/32bit vista and xp I'm sticking with vista 64 for a long time It seems.

[Bahumat]

Originally Posted by confused

I don't know what peoples problems are with vista... its been rock solid for over a year now, Having used both 64/32bit vista and xp I'm sticking with vista 64 for a long time It seems.

Yep me too. Not had one problem with it yet