Age of Conan

I recently bought a Nvidia 8800 GTS 512 card to go with my 6600 Dual 2 Core CPU and 2 Gb ram. I am currently using XP and as i understand it, upgrading to Vista will give me extra lighting, shadow, particle and volumetric effects. Even though this probably will look nice, i am somewhat reluctant to get Vista because of the hassle of installing it. The plan would be to keep a copy of my current XP installation but i'm not sure if i simply can copy it back if Vista doesn't install correctly?

So what do you guys say... is DX10 worth the trouble?

Vista and the Dx10 chage are well worth it, but you'll need another GB of RAM in order to run it smoothly.

Vista is a good OS.

Get 2 more gb of ram and you're golden. a year ago I got vista and all these new parts for a machine but unfortunately it was slow on game performance. Got 2gb more of ram and a proper pcie 512 card and wowies, DX10 is beautiful.

I was just installing xp on a laptop last night and realized how much I'm actually starting to like vista vs. xp. at least for gaming.

Hmm... yeah, good thing that extra ram isn't too expensive nowadays.

You will hardly notice the difference in going from DX9 to DX10, I was pretty disappointed. 

I have a new pc with Vista, and to me Vista = Windows Millennium Edition.

Microsoft has also moved up the release of their next OS, code named Windows 7, for potential release in mid-late 2009, up from a 2010 release. So, MS is aware that Vista did not live up to expectations.

I got Vista for DX10 gaming, does DX10 make a huge, noticeable difference in games? Meh, a little, very little. And whatever you gain in the eye candy department is negated by the fact that the game will run 20%-30% slower on Vista versus XP.

I kept telling myself to hang on till the first SP was released, and Vista SP01 shows a slight improvement, in some cases an 8%-10% improvement over Vista without SP01 when running applications and/or games.

If you do decide to go with Vista here is a link I used to help trim the number of unnecessary processes running in the background. Proceed with caution, and I wouldn't recommend making too many changes at once. I've killed a lot of Vista processes running in the background and this has helped remove some of the Vista bloat.

Windows Vista SP01 Service Configs -

Windows Vista SP1 Service Configurations by Black Viper

If I was given the chance again to have either Vista or XP on a new machine I would still go with Vista. I'm a tweaker and a hardware junkie, I like being on the bleeding edge, as painful as it may be at times. Vista does look nice, and I do use my pc for things other then games and when I do go back to XP on my work machine it just looks bland in comparison.

Also, AoC does not have DX10 currently enabled, so no one can tell you if it will be worth it.

if you want vista to recognize more than about 3gb of ram though you are going to have to get the 64 bit version which is almost double the price. (not to mention that i have heard a lot of games arent compatible with it) so, i wouldnt waste the money on 2gb unless you will get 64 bit, 1gb will do you fine.

It depends if you like the eye candy or not. Some people like it, some don't care.

To me it is worth it. I even upgraded from an ati x1900xt-512 that was running lotro at max perfectly, to an nvida 8800gt only to get the added dx10 effects and I love it. To me the beauty adds a lot to immersion into the world.

With 2Gb ram you are good to go with vista x86. For vista x64 you will need 4Gb.

Trim: Are you serious? I noticed a MASSIVE difference between direct x's. Basically made my PC gaming experience seem like it was on a PS3 instead of a PS2.

Vista gets a pretty bad rap, but really if you take the time to set things up it runs well.  If you don't have the knowledge or desire to tweak your system, maybe you should stick with XP. 

Having the benefit of DX10 is nice, but it's not going to blow your mind (at least with the stuff I've seen/played).