When to switch to Windows Vista?

[TW]Fox

[TW]Fox

[TW]Fox

Man of Honour
Joined
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Hi guys,

I have here, and have had for a few months now, a Vista Business license (All legit, pirate OS is not worth the hassle or faff).

The question of course is when to bite the bullet and go for it. What do you guys think?

I use my machine for watching media, playing games and browsing the web. I play things like Crysis and Cod4, with the occasional retro-tastic game of things like Battlefield Vietnam.

Is Vista stable yet? Is it still rubbish for games? Does it still sap performance? What am I going to lose by going for Business over Ultimate?

Or should I just not fix what isn't broken and stick with XP?
 
Apparently, the new service pack is expected to boost your FPS on games, so it's entirely up to you as to whether you want to wait for the official release, or install and hang in there until it's part of the updates.

Obviously, it's a newer OS, so it has higher requirements, if you have the right hardware, go for it.

As for the features of Business over Ultimate, compare them.
 
you need to make up your own mind on this. do you actually want to go vista? if you have no compelling reason and are expecting the answers here to help make up your mind, i wouldn't bother.

i can post about how great vista has ran since day one. not a single driver/stability issue for me. no crashes and games run great. but's that no help to you because in just a few minutes there will be just as many contradictory posts saying how crap it is.... :p
 
i'd only use vista with 4gb of ram and at least dual core

same way i'd only use xp with 2gb of ram and at least a 1.5ghz processor
 
bledd. said:
i'd only use vista with 4gb of ram and at least dual core

same way i'd only use xp with 2gb of ram and at least a 1.5ghz processor
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oh come on. that's just being silly. vista runs fine with my single core cpu and 2gb ram. admittedly 2gb is the absolute minimum required for vista but most people round these parts have at least that.

and your requirements for xp? daft..... :p
 
I have 4Gb of Ram and a 3Ghz Core2Duo so hardware is not an issue.

I like funy cool new gadgets. But not if they affect my gaming performance.
 
Using Vista x64 here. Great o/s. The SP1 has indeed sorted a few issues out (file transfer speeds being one of them). I play games including Crysis and COD4 with no problems at all . I am running a Quad core with 4 gig of ram. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Vista it is a great o/s. If you are not sure you could always dual boot first.
 
[TW]Fox;10835890 said:
Posts: 57,619
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:eek:

anyway :) i have vista and i have to say it has a really cool look to it. i would say go for it, and to be honest it hasn't been very buggy as people say, for me anyway.
 
marc2003 said:
oh come on. that's just being silly. vista runs fine with my single core cpu and 2gb ram. admittedly 2gb is the absolute minimum required for vista but most people round these parts have at least that.

and your requirements for xp? daft..... :p
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well you can notice the speed difference when using less than what i quoted in both os's

makes a noticable impact when you start halving the ram 'requirements' that i have

-edit, it's also what i said i'd only use them with, (i would put a smiley in, to show i'm not being pedantic, but my colon button is broken on this keyboard)
 
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I went with Vista on my new build (in sig), after being very "anti-Vista" after playing with a release candidate last year, on my laptop (P-M 2.13, 1GB, X600 mobile), and absolutely hating it.

I've now been using it for about 5 weeks (haven't even touched my laptop since then!), and I am really liking it. Obviously I can't compare gaming performance between XP & Vista, having not had XP on this new rig, but it's been totally stable, no issues with any drivers or applications, and once I'd spent a couple of days installing programs/games and configuring things, UAC (the "are you sure you want to do this?", "are you really sure?" stuff) has been seen only a couple of times.

If you've got a spare, recent, hard drive (ie not an old, slow one), then you've got nothing to lose by installing Vista, having a play, and seeing if you like it. If you do - Ghost it over your current XP installation, if you don't, then there's not really anything lost, other than a little bit of your time, which you've dedicated to one of your hobbies anyway.
 
One thing you will notice is, with the right hardware and configured correctly, the stability. It's unbelieveable to say that in the 6 months or so I've been using Vista is that I have never had a system crash.

The gadegts I use are all useful (i.e. a radio station gadget saves me going to the webpages and using the media player leaving the page constantly open spamming me with adverts) and there's so many out there being developed all the time.

If you want a stable operating system then Vista is the best out there in my opinion.



M.
 
[TW]Fox;10835890 said:
I have 4Gb of Ram and a 3Ghz Core2Duo so hardware is not an issue.

I like funy cool new gadgets. But not if they affect my gaming performance.
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We have the same spec PC, you even asked the other day how games run for me and I said they run no different to XP and I'm now on Vista.

The key thing is you have Vista BUSINESS so you're not going to get Media Centre or anything media-like. If you don't intend to watch TV on it or no need for photo gallery etc then that's all good of course.

Like everyone above I too have had no crashes or anything, just a smooth experience even seen a mobo upgrade from AMD to Intel on this single installation and everything runs super.
 
I find the requirements for Vista that Microsoft suggests are a complete joke.
The minimum should be Dual Core at 3.0Ghz, 4GB Ram, 7800GTX/1900XTX and Raptor drive. Otherwise you would wish you stayed with XP the minute after the upgrade:D At least that's what I think, with all the animation and fancy interface anything less will make it run like an old dog.
If you hardware is not up for it then stay with XP.
 
I'm running Vista Ultimate 64 on my A64 3700+ (@ 2.6 GHz) with 2GB 3500 RAM and an 8800GTS 640.

It runs flawlessly for me, and I believe it is no slower than using 32 bit XP pro, maybe even faster to be honest.

I use my PC for the same uses as you Fox. I used an old laptop drive to test it first. If you can borrow or uses a spare partition or drive, I'd highly advise going that way.
 
I find the performance in games to be lousy in comparison to XP on my laptop (C2D 2ghz, 2gb DDR2, 7950GTX Go), but thats the only reason I'm still running XP (decent mobile nVidia drivers would help).

When I can finally afford to build a decent desktop again, Vista x64 will be the only o/s on there.
 
No, there's Vienna (about 3 years away), would it take you that long?:D

lokkers said:
I find the performance in games to be lousy in comparison to XP on my laptop (C2D 2ghz, 2gb DDR2, 7950GTX Go), but thats the only reason I'm still running XP (decent mobile nVidia drivers would help).

When I can finally afford to build a decent desktop again, Vista x64 will be the only o/s on there.
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One slight side note, means nothing at all really. Sometimes after or even during a game with Vista 64 Ult, you think to yourself I want a trainer for this game just for the hell of it, no Trainers as yet that I know off are 64 bit written. Such an underwhelming reason I know but just thought I would point it out, lol.... :D

Dont buy it, its anti cheating 64bit non-trainers that kills this OS :D
 
You may want to look at compatibility with old games as well as straight performance. You mention some of the older games you want to run. I'd google each game ans see if it will run OK under vista.

Realistically, unless there is something that XP simply won't do, I'd stick with it.
 
I'm running Vista X64 and mostly play FPS games such as Crysis, CoD4, BF2 etc, and I see no reason to backtrack to XP again. I don't feel my performance is being hampered by running Vista. I've had no crashes on Vista which haven't been recoverable. All drivers for my hardware (including X-Fi card) seem to be stable enough to run high performance software.

I initially dual booted with XP, but decided to take the plunge and stick to Vista after about a week or two. No regrets.
 
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