Vista 32bit or 64bit for gaming?

HangTime

HangTime

HangTime

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Just wondering what the best version of Vista is to get for gaming, 32bit or 64bit.

With WinXP I know that 32bit is a lot better in terms of driver support and compatibility, but obviously with Vista being completely new I'm wondering if there's much difference between 32bit and 64bit? Does 64bit have more problems running games than 32bit?

All else being equal I'd obviously rather get the 64bit edition. But obviously if there's a big difference in compatibility then I may have to go with 32bit.

If it matters, I have an Nvidia gfx card. Also I do tend to play quite a lot of 'old' games i.e. things from the last 5 years ago or more. So I'm thinking in terms of being able to run older titles designed with WinXP in mind.
 
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How about doing the dual boot thing? Vista doesn't seem all that great for gaming yet. (TBH it doesn't seem that great fullstop to me. :p )
 
There are still too many issues with Vista to be considering it. I would wait until sp1 is released then make your choice.

There is no need to upgrade as there are no games that support dx10 ye...no games that are propably utilising dx10 that is.

XP *** at the moment!!
 
Win XP all the way at the moment. As others have said DX10 isn't around yet and Vista is going to throw problems your way. Also Vista does not run dx9 games as well as XP and Vista also uses a lot more memory than XP.
 
ttreaders said:
Win XP all the way at the moment. As others have said DX10 isn't around yet and Vista is going to throw problems your way. Also Vista does not run dx9 games as well as XP and Vista also uses a lot more memory than XP.
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vista doesn't use a lot more memory,
with the new drivers out its about 4fps slower than xp.
as for problems it depends on the games, give us a list of what games you intend to play and people should be able to confirm playability.
 
ttreaders said:
Erm it uses huge amounts of memory. With 2gigs of ram it uses way over half a gig to just run. That's before installing anything.
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I don't think it uses huge amounts of memory as standard, rather uses what is available to it, to speed up opening applications. There's a difference.
 
im sat with several windows running, a few taskbar progs, side bar and the little mem bar is sat on 25% i have 2gig, it runs new games like stalker, c n c 3, fine and old stuff like ut2004 , fear, i wouldnt go back to xp if you paid me :D
 
vista uses system ram properly, any free ram it just uses as a system cache. when windows boots up for me and is left idle on desktop i end up with around 16mb free ram out of my 4 gig. rest is used as the system cache. far better than xp could ever do. more stable than xp for me too, although games are the main problem right now but as newer drivers come out the operating system gets better and better.

microsoft have said that there will be no need for a service pack since vista is quite robust, so if a service pack does come out, expect it at a very late date.

problems for vista right now are not the operating system itself but the drivers for it from 3rd parties.
 
ttreaders said:
Erm it uses huge amounts of memory. With 2gigs of ram it uses way over half a gig to just run. That's before installing anything.
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I suggest you read up on the vista memory management before you start telling people they are wrong. I also suggest reading the FAQ on sig sizes.
 
ttreaders said:
Erm it uses huge amounts of memory. With 2gigs of ram it uses way over half a gig to just run. That's before installing anything.
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that's because it uses ram efficiently, it will give all of that up if an application needs it. It uses ram in a completely different way to xp. Perhaps you should go read up on vista and how it uses ram, before you start slagging it off.
 
I've been running Vista 64 for a few months now, haven't had a single problem and it plays all my games fine.
 
Vista is awesome.

There has been the "odd" game that won't run on Vista but does run on XP, however there are workarounds.

Drivers are an issue but availability is the same for 64 and 32 bit, plus with 64 bit you have the support for x64 code, and the extra memory addressing, which will come in handy if you upgrade to 4GB.

It's a fair bit snappier usage wise, probably due to Superfetch.
 
Jimi said:
I've been running Vista 64 for a few months now, haven't had a single problem and it plays all my games fine.
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Same, since launch everything is fine here. And the biggest prob at the start was the Nvidia drivers. The latest ones are very good, and the speed is the same as XP in most games. Also I did have XP dual boot just in case, but dont anymore since its fine compared to XP for gaming. :)
 
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I wouldn't go back to XP for gaming now, Vista has become just as fast (if not faster for me), and is certainly more stable than XP could ever be.

The advantages of Vista certainly outweigh the disadvantages IMO.
 
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