I have Vista Premium and Windows XP SP 2 ofc. Which should I go for based on my system? .. What would be better for me, I like to play games, lots of multi tasking, I do alot of graphics work ect... Is there things that vista can offer me than XP cant in this perspective? Please answer quick I need to make my mind up in like 10 mins -cheers
Vista will load your programs faster because of superfetch. All of your most frequently used programs will be loaded up into memory on startup, so that when you run them there will be little to no hard disk access. In terms of gaming performance Vista is not quite up there with XP but it is close enough that if you have modern hardware the difference is negligible. Note that it will improve in the future, just like XP did. Also note that with Vista you get DX10 (assuming you have a DX10 capable video card), which many modern games are or will be making use of. It's really up to you, but personally, I prefer Vista. I love the interface of it, it's future proof for the next generation of DX10 games, and performance will only increase as time goes on.
Ok jag, thanx for that. Sounds like Ill go for vista. When ever SP1 comes out which shouldn't be to far away vista will be the ultimate OS =D
My personal opinion is XP. I have several reasons for you. Vista hogs resources as if it's a game, effectively (in tests, look them up) halving performance as it is now. DX10 is so overhyped it's near to a lie. (read tests on eg crysis. crysis performs a lot worse on vista in either dx9 or dx10, then again it performs worse in dx10, the dx10 doesn't add anything to image quality, as you can hack the settings to very high on dx9 and get the same quality in dx9 on vista or xp as the hyped dx10 quality. (they just check if you have dx10, if not, don't show the very high options in the settings in game... yes there are shader differences, but they are not noticable and currently perform less.) You can compare screenshots.. there's no real noticable quality difference, but there is a noticable performance drop in dx10. vista might look nice and to some degree you can decide yourself how much performance you want to waste on goodies in the os. But a good os is scalable and does not demand a whole pc just to run itself (I mean to run vista and crysis you practically need 2 pc's rolled into 1. It's great if you have money growing on your backside, but you still should not need a beast of a machine just for an os.) xp is more stable at the moment and has better driver support. for all the people with a beast and e.g. crysis and only used to vista.. install xp just for fun, look up how to manually set crysis to very high.. and then be pissed off at all the fps vista was stealing and then revel in the eye opener you just received as to how good your hardware can actually be) just my 2 cents.. I'm not dissing vista completely though. But with the performance increase in xp's upcoming sp3, the fact that you can just as well get dx10 quality in dx9 with better performance and yet another fact that sp1 for vista already showed not to improve much regarding performance I would wait for sp2 or maybe even sp3 if they follow up fast enough before I would concider touching vista. the simple fact is, I don't want vista and twice as good a cpu as I have for the same performance of this cpu under xp. example: I hear many people with the most insanely expensive 8800's and quadcores complaining about crysis.. well I play it on my 7600gt in xp, no problems. not even my current mystery bsod issue creeps up when playing crysis. Also I do a lot of graphics work too and prefer xp for it aswell. Anyway, this is my personal opinion based on my own experience and professional testing of vista. on the color management, color management in vista just adds to the pains of designers (me and my colleagues think so anyway) you don't need color management in the os, only in the respective software you use. At least now you had a semi universal color profile for anything that's viewed on pc's, now with vista that's gotten a bit more difficult.
I dont know where everyone is getting this "performance increase" from sP3 XP. SPs are not meant to increase gaming performance unless there are directX tweaks or OS tweaks that really change the way the system is utilized. I havnt seen anywhere that claims anything major is being tweaked in SP3......its not much more than a update rollup and IE7 + WMP11.
I don't think we need to be spreading more rumours about how poorly Vista performs. :knock: . Let me know where you get your "facts" - I'll avoid it like the plague! The "fact" is that SP1 won't even be available for a while and it will be improved upon and it will make the user's experience more enjoyable.:banana:
tweakers.net (dutch) is where I get a lot of information as they collect information from the web. sp3 has been tested, vista sp1 has been tested. both by multiple respectable sites. I suggest google. I have seen several tests of xp sp3 including benchmarks for a number of games. I don't have a direct ur for you. But if I read it I found it through tweakers.net, 99% sure as it's just one of the few sites I keep track off. (I let them do the tracking.) I've also seen a test or two of sp1 too. It's in beta atm. Tests didn't perform any better then the stock version. And as I'm not in a scientific debate here I don't mind you doing the googling. I know what I read and what I've seen. There should even be a press release from MS somewhere on their site stating that they were not yet addressing (game) performance in SP1 specifically if I remember correctly. You should be able to find it, I think their archive goes back quite a bit. And like I said I'm not bashing vista completely, that will depend on what future sp's will change/add/remove. I just think that it's currently too immature for my taste and doesn't offer much incentive yet to cough up any cash and yes I think it's too bloated. SP3 for xp addresses performance with better memory management and a more up to date multi core patch amongst other things. It's been reviewed and benchmarked already (10% general performance improvement versus sp2). Edit: search results might differ since google throws in dutch sources for me. but the first hit I get typing in vista sp1 reads: "Webwereld | Vista SP1 no faster than stock OS, say testing experts" and here are some graphs too look at, a bit further down the page. http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/ there have been more tests including game performance, The 2 examples are just what I got from typing vista sp1 in google. It's not improvement when you need more resources to do the same thing, it's improvement if you need less resources to do the same thing. ps. im waiting for jordus to eat his or anyone's hat. os improvement = game improvement performance improvement will affect everything. The os using ram more efficiently or simply less of it alone would improve performance in almost any app or game. service packs are specifically meant to address feature updates, performance and stability updates and security updates. It's what they are meant to do.
