General Discussion

I haven't noticed any big difference with SP1, then again I never really had a problem before SP1 either. Except for annoying Nvidia drivers and my video card overheating.

Originally posted by Deathstrike2

 

Originally posted by zantax

You know I have being running windows xp 32bit up untill xp 64bit came out, and the day it came out I started useing it.  I ran into ALOT of issues to start off with xp 64, mostly driver compatability and finding programs that would run on it like anitvirus software, so as a result I went back to xp 32 for a few months then back to xp 64 and I haven't looked back.  Now when vista came out all I could say was, ohhhh pretty...well actually I realized at the time no computers being released had the power to run vista 32 or 64 properly.  I put it on my machine anyways at the time to see how well it would kill my computer, and boy was I right.  I had at the time a AMD x64 2200+ with 2GB of memory and a fairly good Nvidia card at the time...and WOW did ultimate 32 and 64 kill that machine.  I laughed so hard that within 10 minutes I reformated and reinstalled XP x64, and stayed that way for about 3 months when it was time to upgrade.  I upgraded to an E6600 just like the OP with 2GB of memory with an Nvida 7950GT and that is when I realized the hardware should be able to run Vista.  So I installed Vista Ultimate 32 and used it for about 2 months, I did a few tests comparing this machine to an XP 64 load on another HDD and found about a 15% decrease in performance on alot of games.  I attributed this to hard drive speed and just congestion from the OS itself since I went from a SATA to an IDE drive at the time.  Then I loaded Vista ulitimate x64, and found that the decrease in performance from XP 64 to Vista x64 was only about 10%, so I made Vista ultimate x64 my primary OS, and I found everything worked on it with a little work.  I will admit there might have being a few small issues, C&C 3 would not run unless you performed the patch, even then it would not put my shortcuts for the game anywhere so you would have to hunt for them on the HDD, but it would run fine after that.  So at this point I had decided Vista was the way to go and specifically Vista x64, it just seemed to have less issues to me.

So here we are almost a year later and I have just upgraded my computer to a intel Q6600 with 4 GB of memory and an 8800GT card and I will tell you it improved Vista quite a bit.  I think it was more the memory that improved it but at this point I find it a chore to go back to XP.  I use XP at work and find it clunky now, not user friendly.  As for performance I refuse to load XP onto this machine because it is a thing of the past and I want to learn Vista the way I know XP.  If it won't work in Vista now I haven't seen it, I have gotten all my games to work fine in Vista X64, hardly any issues there.  I had to update my burning software going to vista, but other then that it works perfectly for me.  I don't have SP1 installed yet either so I can't see it killing my computer at all, only improvements from here on out.

Also for those people complaining about Vista compared to XP, this argument has happened so many times before, "Dos is more efficient then windows 3.1", "windows 95 are you kidding me 3.11 is the way to go", "what the heck 98??  Why would I get rid of my perfectly good windows 95", "Yea right XP sucks compared to 98se it is so slow I need a Pentium 2 to run it with 256MB of RAM JESUS!!"...the arguments will keep comming up as long as people hate change.  I quote a GM at a computer store I used to work at for this, "The number one returned item in the store are MAC's.  Why, because people know Windows they are not patient enough to learn the MAC OS, so they return it with the 14 days for a full refund."  Change scares people and the XP to Vista change is huge, but DX10 is nice so it is worth it right there.  Also no matter what you think of Vista it is here to stay, they may come out with another version of Windows but do you really think they will move away from the Vista architecture?  I think not.

SO OP to give you an answer to upgrading to Vista, do it.  Your machine can now handle it and once you get used to it you won't WANT to go back to XP.

 

SOLD!  Thank you, I'll be upgrading my system this weekend.  One last question.  I've read that the Vista upgrade is problematic, and that people should just buy the full version.  Is this true or will the upgrade version work for me?  I plan on going from XP Pro to the 64 bit version (either home premium or ultimate).

Thanks again!

 

Hey and good luck with your new machine bud, I hope you enjoy it.  A few things to look into once you get Vista up and running that might save you some headaches.  The secure desktop is the only thing that really ticked me off in vista here is a link to disable it...

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2141/vista_disable_secure_desktop_promp_elevation

The biggest problem I think anyone will really have with vista is the new security settings, once you get them to a point that resemble or act like XP it all works fine.  Good luck

I recently upgraded from XP 32bit with 3gigs of ram to vista 64bit with now 6gigs of ram, and my computer is several times faster and smoother than XP ever was.

To all the Vista 64bit naysayers, you simply don't know how to configure vista correctly to make it a beautiful dream to use. Also, don't believe people who say 64bit isn't compatible with anything, they are liars or noobs to computers. Vista 64bit runs almost 95% of all programs in a backwards compatibility mode for 32bit oriented programs. HOWEVER, there are "some" 32bit oriented dated software programs that are not compatible, this is the developer of that particular software's fault and NOT 64bit or Vista.

I still play games that are well on their 10th year of being around on my Vista 64bit without ANY issues. However, you will find one or two of the 40 games/programs you have that are just so dated that vista 64bit cannot backwards comply with. This is NATURAL in technological advancement. DEAL with it and stop complaining and whining because you don't know how to configure vista correctly, or have the basic IQ to figure out 64bit + google.

I followed the upgrade from xp 32bit to vista 64bit after 3 friends of mine did the same a couple days earlier. I taught each one of them how to modify and configure vista itself to a much cleaner fashion. Once they each got 64bit, it was only a matter of time before they figured out how to do the same things in 64bit as easily as they did with 32bit vista.

In closing, Vista 64bit > XP 32 AND 64bit simply because vista has the newer codecs for the newer transmission technologies etc etc.

PS: To those of you die-hard XP fans, a newer and improved XP hybrid of Vista 64bit + XP 64bit is coming out sometime in late 2010 (so we were told at the last microsoft conference). It will have all the clean and smooth operation that you enjoy from xp, along with XP's backwards compatibility as well as Vista's "non-intrusive" improved security measures and dx10 and soon dx11 support (dx11 was also mentioned as coming late 2010 or mid 2011).

Happy gaming all :), If you need help configuring Vista 64bit gimmie a holla via PM's.

-DraGa

Originally posted by BlackWatch

Unless your games require Vista, there is no reason to switch.  XP SP3 shows 10% performance gains over even XP SP2. 

Compare Vista performance to XP performance isn't even a real contest, even with Vista SP1.

...

After testing Vista vs XP on standard laptops, pc's, and even workstations... I won't roll to Vista for some time on my main systems. 

The recommendation to the company that I work for (at this time) is to skip Vista entirely. 

Vista = WinME, imho. 

You know my company had a similar thought process as yours, however once they saw that new hardware is being released with NO xp drivers they decided to look into Vista implimentation only if the new hardware had no XP drivers.  That hasn't happened to us completely yet but once manufactures quit offering xp drivers then my company and yours will be FORCED into the Vista world, I just want my company to be ready for it if it happens.  Also like I said before even with a new version of Windows it won't be dramaticly different then Vista, so the change might as well start now.

I just upgraded my Vista machine to SP1 a couple of days ago, and I have to agree, I see no perfmance increase either.  I mean, it still runs fine, but nothing worth noting at all in speed improvement.

As a side note, one thing I read in the "things fixed" documentation that was supposed to be fixed was the faster handling of compressed (zipped) files.  It still takes literally about 3 minutes to decompress a 10MB zipped file.  I'm happy using 7-Zip to handle my compressed files, but damn, that's annoying how Vista seems to choke on compressed files.

Other than that, I'm still semi-happy with Vista.  It's nothing to go wild about, and if you're happy with XP, by all means stick with it.  I see nothing that would make me tell someone to go out and buy Vista if you don't have to.

I haven't seen any roadmaps where XP support won't be available for business class systems.  I know that XP won't be available for purchase on new systems at some point, but the driver support will still be there.  Unless I've been given incorrect information by M$, nVidia, Intel, or Dell/HP, that is.

I know that there are certain tiers or product lines that certain vendors will only support a single OS on.  But that's typically small business/home office/consumer level product families. 

Due to the very slow adoption rate of Vista, the vendor's have had to offer extended support for XP (and only finally stopped rolling out Win2K support for some systems).  

...

Out of the 20+ other fortune 100 companies that I have a chance to speak to about issues like this, I know of only 2 that have partial Vista deployments.  The largest computer contract in the world currently has a 'no Vista' policy in place (as of 6 months ago, this was true). 

Vista sp1 did nothing imo....

I am running Vista 64 on a Q6600 with 4gb of RAM just because I had to buy a second windows and didn't want to buy another XP. My wife has to run XP on her (originally loaded with Vista) notebook so it got our XP copy. It's not bad OS and does a few things better than XP (mostly GUI related).

Now, I hear a lot of clueless people saying that Vista is going through what XP went through when it first came out. That is not the case!

Vista wastes resources (as in CPU/MEM) by doing a LOT of DRM-related  things which are, of course, not in the users' best interest. In other words, Vista wastes CPU cycles to watch what you are doing!

If you want details, or proof, go ahead and google vista DRM. You will find lots of links. Microsoft response to this is, if you you ignore the PR gibberish, "apple does it too."

How one feels about DRM and piracy is irrelevant IMO. What this is about is Vista wasting your hardware resources 9that you paid for) by constantly checking on DRM-related things. This is why Vista just cannot ever be faster than XP.