Hey deeem, if you are looking at buying a new system then Windows Vista 64-bit without a doubt. The support for Windows Vista is now excellent. The majority of the manufacturers out their have now released 64-bit drivers for their hardware and as regards to software, once again, the majority of software now work perfectly fine under Windows Vista. Their have also been a few problems within Windows Vista but the majority of these are now fixed thanks to the Performance and Reliability packs that Microsoft have been releasing along with other updates. Now there are still a few problems around for example, slow transfer rates across networks, from one folder to another but this seems to be only affecting a few people and not the whole user base that is using Windows Vista. Though I believe this is set to be fully fixed in Service Pack 1 (Fiji) which is due out in the first quarter of next year. This certainly isn't affecting me and I think the same goes for a lot of people as well.
Since there are a number of different versions of Windows Vista, you may not be completely sure on which one to purchase if you are looking to by Vista.
Here is a great graph that compares all of the editions of Windows Vista with one another. The two you are most likely looking at are Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate. I have used both Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate and in my opinion, Ultimate is not worth the extra £50 over Home Premium.
As regards to the 32-bit or the 64-bit version. If you have a processor that is capable of handling 64-bit instructions then there is no reason to go for the 32-bit edition. You won't see a massive performance increase going from a 32-bit to a 64-bit operating system as of yet since many programs have been written for 32-bit architectures. However this will be changing in the future because with 64bit being more recognized, more and more programs will be written under 64-bit architectures. When programs are released that are written specifically for 64-bit, you will then start to see a performance increase from 32-bit programs.
You will also be able to address up to 128GB of memory with a 64-bit Operating System depending on the Edition that you purchase. This is as opposed to a 32-bit Operating System which will only be able to address around 3GB of memory.
Many people think that the only advantages of a 64-bit Operating System is so you will be able to utilize more than 4GB of RAM, this is far from the truth and if you wish to read more about this,
here is a great article that is well worth reading.
As far as gamming performance goes, in my opinion it is now exactly the same as Windows XP in regards to DirectX 9 performance. Have a read through
this article. Now DirectX 10 performance is a completely different matter and it is actually slightly better to play games that are capable of DirectX 10 under DirectX 9. Now I believe that this is more due to DirectX 10 itself needing to time to mature and not down to Windows Vista and in certain games as Crysis, the hardware simply needs time to catch up.
As we are on the subject of Crysis, you may also be interested in
this thread.
