Unsure as to dual boot

ethan · 25 Oct 2007 at 22:53

Is a dual boot situation still necessary to asure all of my apps work correctly? I am mainly a cs3 user but do not know how it performs in vista 64. I also intend to play a few direct x 10 games in vista. I am using 4 gig of ram and know that xp only registers 3.5 gig. CPU is a q6600. Thanks

liam8582007 · 25 Oct 2007 at 22:59

It isn't an XP RAM issue, it's the fact that you are running 32-bit XP.

Anyhoo, i think you should be fine with just Vista, i dual booted for a little while after picking up Vista, and never booted into XP, so i wiped out the partition.

Liam

Fire Wizard · 25 Oct 2007 at 23:13

Hey ethan, the support for Windows Vista is now excellent and the majority of the hardware and software out their now work absolutely fine under Windows Vista. However it will be worthwhile to download the Windows Vista: Upgrade Advisor just to check you are able to get working drivers for your hardware and to see if all of the programs that you use will work fine under Vista and you wont have any compatibility issues.

You can however still install Windows Vista on your system and dual boot along with Windows XP.

Just incase you are actually debating weather to go for the 32-bit or 64-bit edition of Windows Vista.

If you have a processor that is capable of handling 64-bit instructions then their 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 applications.

You will also be able to address more than 4GB of Memory with a 64bit operating system unlike 32-bit Windows XP and the earlier verions of Microsoft Windows.

ethan · 26 Oct 2007 at 23:05

Thanks for the info. I already have a licensed oem copy of vista 64 which I intend to use once I have finished backing up all of my useful data from xp. Its just that it takes a long time to sort out what is useful and what is not on half a terrabyte worth of file space.