another reason not to get vista

OMG.

But if you have the hardware, get both XP and Vista. Vista for office tasks, DX10 and wasting your life on the Internet in an eye-candy environment, and XP for gaming and serious tasks, like 3D moddeling etc.

Vista is hungry for RAM and CPU. It consumes about 800 Mb of RAM, while XP only about 250. Those 550 really matter in games today!

Vista's only benefit is DX10.

Vista is hungry for RAM and CPU. It consumes about 800 Mb of RAM, while XP only about 250. Those 550 really matter in games today!

Vista's only benefit is DX10.

Baranga

Are you lying or just plain ignorant? Vista barely used 512mb (sometimes dropped to 350mb) on my 1gb of ram. If you have the money to get Vista you have the money to get a decent amount of ram and processing power - thus I doubt it's just 'vista is hungrier than xp' otherwise we'd all be on 98, yes?

Vista is hungry for RAM and CPU. It consumes about 800 Mb of RAM, while XP only about 250. Those 550 really matter in games today!

Vista's only benefit is DX10.

Baranga

[QUOTE="Baranga"]

Vista is hungry for RAM and CPU. It consumes about 800 Mb of RAM, while XP only about 250. Those 550 really matter in games today!

Vista's only benefit is DX10.

Indestructible2

It will be in the future. The graphic cards today aren't quite an improvement, seeing how an 8600 is worse than a 7900 - it never happened for nVidia that the middle-range of a new generation is outperformed by the best in the past one.

I have a gig too, and when I had Vista it ate my RAM on a random basis, from about half up until 900, while doing nothing. When I was playing (or at least trying to) it was consuming a whooping 650.

Anyway you look at it, it's better for me on XP.

[QUOTE="Baranga"]

Vista is hungry for RAM and CPU. It consumes about 800 Mb of RAM, while XP only about 250. Those 550 really matter in games today!

Vista's only benefit is DX10.

nizzleton

Are you lying or just plain ignorant? Vista barely used 512mb (sometimes dropped to 350mb) on my 1gb of ram. If you have the money to get Vista you have the money to get a decent amount of ram and processing power - thus I doubt it's just 'vista is hungrier than xp' otherwise we'd all be on 98, yes?

[QUOTE="nizzleton"][QUOTE="Baranga"]

Vista is hungry for RAM and CPU. It consumes about 800 Mb of RAM, while XP only about 250. Those 550 really matter in games today!

Vista's only benefit is DX10.

nizzleton

Are you lying or just plain ignorant? Vista barely used 512mb (sometimes dropped to 350mb) on my 1gb of ram. If you have the money to get Vista you have the money to get a decent amount of ram and processing power - thus I doubt it's just 'vista is hungrier than xp' otherwise we'd all be on 98, yes?

because they don't know what there doing.

Despite a SP3 for XP its really not going to matter by 2009. Odds are the "Games for Windows" Format will be in heavy swing and Vista will be REQUIRED to play half the games that release anyway.Zemus

[QUOTE="Zemus"]Despite a SP3 for XP its really not going to matter by 2009. Odds are the "Games for Windows" Format will be in heavy swing and Vista will be REQUIRED to play half the games that release anyway.foxhound_fox

Get ready for it because I honostly see it happening

[QUOTE="nizzleton"][QUOTE="nizzleton"][QUOTE="Baranga"]

Vista is hungry for RAM and CPU. It consumes about 800 Mb of RAM, while XP only about 250. Those 550 really matter in games today!

Vista's only benefit is DX10.

PerfectGamer17

Are you lying or just plain ignorant? Vista barely used 512mb (sometimes dropped to 350mb) on my 1gb of ram. If you have the money to get Vista you have the money to get a decent amount of ram and processing power - thus I doubt it's just 'vista is hungrier than xp' otherwise we'd all be on 98, yes?

because they don't know what there doing.

As I have said before, Vista is nothing but a case of "build it and they will come". Its packagd up bloatware offering promises of better gaming for gamers and better security for businesses yet falls short in delivering them. Windows XP is perfectly fine for what we need but Microsoft needs to keep the Windows cycle going around to keep their profits up. Once they get enough market penetration with Vista they can then scrap Windows XP support, forcing the remaining of us left to upgrade. Then in mabye 4-5 years time this whole needless cycle will repeat.

Despite a SP3 for XP its really not going to matter by 2009. Odds are the "Games for Windows" Format will be in heavy swing and Vista will be REQUIRED to play half the games that release anyway.Zemus

i dont know....its not looking promising for vista or DX10 at all at the mo imho. a barrage of bad press followed by poor DX10 showings is really putting ppl off.

looking at the steam hardware survey results, its also not good at all at the mo. only 8% of ppl who use steam are actually capable of using DX10 (ie they have a DX10 card and vista). yes the survey doesent cover the entire PC market but its gives a pretty good indication of the state of the PC gaming market imho. also only 12% of ppl are using vista....also not encouraging. it has been only out a year but if thats all its managing to do then no dev, in their right mind, will make a vista exclusive title for a very very long time (unless MS had them a big wad of cash).

the whole games for windows thing also isnt working out too well. it certainly hasnt improved the PCs standing in retail nor has it improved the reliability of the software. its just a brand and no one seems to give a snot about it. games for windows also work perfectly well under XP so thats not a reason to get vista.

my standing is, if u need a new OS for a new PC then get vista. u may as well as XP support will be dropped by MS sooner rather than later and eventually games will go vista exclusive (as its user base slowly increases) so ull end up paying more in the end. just make sure u add a dollop of extra ram to cover vistas demands. but if u have XP then dont go near vista with a barge pole, play the waiting game. it took years for devs to drop win98 support so thers no rush. with games being able to run on XP with alot of supposed DX 10 tech (crysis), ull also get the vast majority of the eye candy for the forseeable future.

Despite the Bad Press MS has the Money to buy out Publishers. Say MS gives EA 200 Million Dollars to make EVERY PC game REQUIRE Vista.

I honostly see it happening. just so MS can brag about its new OS being the Gaming Platform.

XP is going to be supported until 2012, by then their new OS will probably be out.

I'm so NOT getting vista.

[QUOTE="foxhound_fox"][QUOTE="Zemus"]Despite a SP3 for XP its really not going to matter by 2009. Odds are the "Games for Windows" Format will be in heavy swing and Vista will be REQUIRED to play half the games that release anyway.Zemus

Get ready for it because I honostly see it happening

They arleady tried this, Halo 2 flopped terribly and they couldn't even give Shadowrun away if they wanted to.

So wait... XP is getting another Service Pack!? Well its settled... I'm getting a 7950GTX and XP with my new rig.foxhound_fox

8800gt would be a much better choice. Not much more expensive and its twice as fast in most DX9 games.Better driver support as well since so many more people own the 8800gt.

[QUOTE="foxhound_fox"][QUOTE="Zemus"]Despite a SP3 for XP its really not going to matter by 2009. Odds are the "Games for Windows" Format will be in heavy swing and Vista will be REQUIRED to play half the games that release anyway.Zemus

Get ready for it because I honostly see it happening

Of course it will happen. Took 4 years from the release of xp before most games no longer supported Windows 98. Doom 3 came out about 3 years after xp was launched and its the first big game I know of that didnt support 98 and required some hacking to get it to run. This is going to happen sooner with Vista.

The first big pc release thats Vista only is Alan Wake. Halo 2 doesnt count. Unless the devs are getting some big payoff from MS they better change their mind.

8800gt would be a much better choice. Not much more expensive and its twice as fast in most DX9 games.Better driver support as well since so many more people own the 8800gt. Cranler

[QUOTE="Cranler"]8800gt would be a much better choice. Not much more expensive and its twice as fast in most DX9 games.Better driver support as well since so many more people own the 8800gt. foxhound_fox

You dont need a DX10 card for Vista either.

I've seen a lot of complaints about the 7950 series in regards to driver support.

New 7950gt's run about $190 so the gtx version would be very close in price to the 8800gt. If you can find one new that is. They have been out of production for a long time now.

Your paying too much attention to the fact that the 8800 is a dx10 card. Considering price performance ratio and the fact that new games are starting to run poorly on the 7 series, the 8800gt is the best bang for the buck with dx9 gaming.

People forget so fast. When XP SP2 was released more than 3 years ago, the forums were flooding with SP2 related problems and everyone said to keep SP1.

Not sure why one whould be excited that Office runs 10% better on SP3...

People forget so fast. When XP SP2 was released more than 3 years ago, the forums were flooding with SP2 related problems and everyone said to keep SP1.

Not sure why one whould be excited that Office runs 10% better on SP3...

Gog

Gog is right, when SP2 was released, some OEM's were telling their users to hold on while they were testing it, and there were massive problems with the just released prescott P4 in certain configs, resulting in the end-user being unable to boot the PC at all.

I've seen a lot of complaints about the 7950 series in regards to driver support.

Cranler

Zero problems here running my 7950GT in the 14 months that I've owned it thus far.

All I know is that with Vista, every game I have played has crashed periodically. This includes all of these games: COD4, Crysis, COH, WIC, MSFSX, and the Witcher. All have crashed with the same generic "graphics driver has stopped responding and has recovered." Searching the 'net, this is common among nVidia card owners. Apparently, nVidia is blaming MS and MS is blaming nVidia. On XP, naturally I may have had a crash here and there with a few games, but it was very rare.

[QUOTE="PerfectGamer17"][QUOTE="nizzleton"][QUOTE="nizzleton"][QUOTE="Baranga"]

Vista is hungry for RAM and CPU. It consumes about 800 Mb of RAM, while XP only about 250. Those 550 really matter in games today!

Vista's only benefit is DX10.

DJGOON

Are you lying or just plain ignorant? Vista barely used 512mb (sometimes dropped to 350mb) on my 1gb of ram. If you have the money to get Vista you have the money to get a decent amount of ram and processing power - thus I doubt it's just 'vista is hungrier than xp' otherwise we'd all be on 98, yes?

because they don't know what there doing.

As I have said before, Vista is nothing but a case of "build it and they will come". Its packagd up bloatware offering promises of better gaming for gamers and better security for businesses yet falls short in delivering them. Windows XP is perfectly fine for what we need but Microsoft needs to keep the Windows cycle going around to keep their profits up. Once they get enough market penetration with Vista they can then scrap Windows XP support, forcing the remaining of us left to upgrade. Then in mabye 4-5 years time this whole needless cycle will repeat.

yeah 4-5 years new OS is coming but you do know M$ don't need to keep their profits up, right? M$ are far from 'in debt', they have plenty of money, so they don't NEED to replenish it by bringing out some random OS. It's fallen short in nothing imo, and it's only fault is slowed gaming when you have idiots with half a gig of ram and a crap 3 year old gfx card expecting awesome framerates.

you should only vista if your pc can run vista and your going to use it the correct way.

you should only vista if your pc can run vista and your going to use it the correct way.

Vic_Vega1994

Please, tell us what you think is the correct and noncorrect way of using Vista. You tell us what MS does not.

i have em both, but i don't use XP anymore. haven't needed it. Vista plays every game i have smoothly, except Crysis. running it with XP MIGHT give me a frame or two. yeah... XP is SO much better ;)

if i have 2 core (or quad) CPU, min. 2GB DDR2, and a 8800-series card, why on earth should i still use XP?

can anyone show some facts about decreased gaming performance of Vista, with a similiar rig that i mentioned? and i don't wanna see some 1-3 frame decreases compared to XP. it makes no difference.

[QUOTE="Baranga"]

Vista is hungry for RAM and CPU. It consumes about 800 Mb of RAM, while XP only about 250. Those 550 really matter in games today!

Vista's only benefit is DX10.

nizzleton

Are you lying or just plain ignorant? Vista barely used 512mb (sometimes dropped to 350mb) on my 1gb of ram. If you have the money to get Vista you have the money to get a decent amount of ram and processing power - thus I doubt it's just 'vista is hungrier than xp' otherwise we'd all be on 98, yes?

Vista comes no where close to using 800mb's of ram, I have Vista and right now after booting it up its using 20% of my 2 gigs of memory.

I used Vista for about 6 months, as it came with my new laptop. About one month ago I returned to XP, and what a relief it was!!

Every program works as it should now. Games run faster and glitch free. No more annoying warnings and nagging when doing simple tasks like copying a file to my C drive, I'm not that paranoid, thanks.

At first I liked Vista though, as the initial feel is more polished, but when using it for a while and for more than your everyday surfing and simple PC needs, it just is not mature enough.

DX10, thats a piece of crap. Give me an good OpenGL game running off a DX10 card any time, and I bet it will look as good or probably better then DX10 based software. New 3D card technology is amazing, DX10 is just a hyped driver... All DX10 did for me was lovering the framerate to half, hardly without any visible improvements.

Yeah, in the future it probably will be good. But you know what, in the future things would look better without DX10 as well. Its just a way for Microsoft to brand their OS as a gaming OS. I'm not buying it at all, and I'm sorry for those who do...

All I know is that with Vista, every game I have played has crashed periodically. This includes all of these games: COD4, Crysis, COH, WIC, MSFSX, and the Witcher. All have crashed with the same generic "graphics driver has stopped responding and has recovered." Searching the 'net, this is common among nVidia card owners. Apparently, nVidia is blaming MS and MS is blaming nVidia. On XP, naturally I may have had a crash here and there with a few games, but it was very rare.

Qixote

I keep getting this too, usually in the middle of a big fight in TF2 or HL2.

[QUOTE="nizzleton"][QUOTE="Baranga"]

Vista is hungry for RAM and CPU. It consumes about 800 Mb of RAM, while XP only about 250. Those 550 really matter in games today!

Vista's only benefit is DX10.

pwilletts

Are you lying or just plain ignorant? Vista barely used 512mb (sometimes dropped to 350mb) on my 1gb of ram. If you have the money to get Vista you have the money to get a decent amount of ram and processing power - thus I doubt it's just 'vista is hungrier than xp' otherwise we'd all be on 98, yes?

Vista comes no where close to using 800mb's of ram, I have Vista and right now after booting it up its using 20% of my 2 gigs of memory.

I'm sitting at 45% with Firefox and MSN open. 2 gigs of ram

Firefox is at 128, 068K

[QUOTE="pwilletts"][QUOTE="nizzleton"][QUOTE="Baranga"]

Vista is hungry for RAM and CPU. It consumes about 800 Mb of RAM, while XP only about 250. Those 550 really matter in games today!

Vista's only benefit is DX10.

SSCyborg

Are you lying or just plain ignorant? Vista barely used 512mb (sometimes dropped to 350mb) on my 1gb of ram. If you have the money to get Vista you have the money to get a decent amount of ram and processing power - thus I doubt it's just 'vista is hungrier than xp' otherwise we'd all be on 98, yes?

Vista comes no where close to using 800mb's of ram, I have Vista and right now after booting it up its using 20% of my 2 gigs of memory.

I'm sitting at 45% with Firefox and MSN open. 2 gigs of ram

Firefox is at 128, 068K

This motion that Vista sucks for games because of its ram use is very, very, very silly. As soon as you launch a game, Vista removes all non-essential components from your RAM to your page file. Yes, it may well use 1gb+ in normal windows - this is a GREAT thing. Your RAM is actually being used for something useful. When you boot up a game, it stops using so much ram, and allocates it to the game.

i have em both, but i don't use XP anymore. haven't needed it. Vista plays every game i have smoothly, except Crysis. running it with XP MIGHT give me a frame or two. yeah... XP is SO much better ;)

if i have 2 core (or quad) CPU, min. 2GB DDR2, and a 8800-series card, why on earth should i still use XP?

can anyone show some facts about decreased gaming performance of Vista, with a similiar rig that i mentioned? and i don't wanna see some 1-3 frame decreases compared to XP. it makes no difference.

prowler666

Well, I can't provide proof of course, but let's just say on my father's system (E6400, 8800GTS 320MB, 4GB of RAM), he can run Crysis at all high, 1024x768 in XP. In Vista, he has to turn almost every setting down to medium to maintain a playable framerate. In my experience, Vista's performance is usually no less than 5 frames and as much as 15 frames slower.

Sorry for double post - but this test is misleading. Service Pack 3 for XP barely contains any new features whatsoever. SP 3 is dominantly just a collection of the 100's of mini fixes for service pack 2. If you have a fully updated XP SP2, you won't see a performance increase...

In all seriousness, if you have a new computer, such as a Q6600 and 2GB of ram, you are going to get a negligable performance difference between either OS. Pick whichever you prefer using...It's the 1GB systems where you will see a difference.

Well, I think it's about time software (especially OS's) had an "expiry date" (or "use by / sell by" date). I mean that when, for example, MS release new OS, it should say on the box & in the user agreement how long they will fully support this OS, regardless of any new releases afterwards.

Obviously it would be difficult to guarantee 3rd party support (games, etc) but at least if I bought an OS in 2000 & it's support expiry date was 2008 I could have a pretty good idea about it's lifespan. By the same token if I saw one on the shelf now, with this date as 2010 (eg.XP) then obviously I would prefer to buy the newer product (eg. Vista).

When I say support, I don't mean "help & support" or helplines, etc'. I mean actual software support like updates, sevice packs, etc. I know we already get this but I believe that a minimum date should be provided.

Maybe it could become law, similar to food "best before" dates...

[QUOTE="SSCyborg"][QUOTE="pwilletts"][QUOTE="nizzleton"][QUOTE="Baranga"]

Vista is hungry for RAM and CPU. It consumes about 800 Mb of RAM, while XP only about 250. Those 550 really matter in games today!

Vista's only benefit is DX10.

jollyriot2k1

Are you lying or just plain ignorant? Vista barely used 512mb (sometimes dropped to 350mb) on my 1gb of ram. If you have the money to get Vista you have the money to get a decent amount of ram and processing power - thus I doubt it's just 'vista is hungrier than xp' otherwise we'd all be on 98, yes?

Vista comes no where close to using 800mb's of ram, I have Vista and right now after booting it up its using 20% of my 2 gigs of memory.

I'm sitting at 45% with Firefox and MSN open. 2 gigs of ram

Firefox is at 128, 068K

This motion that Vista sucks for games because of its ram use is very, very, very silly. As soon as you launch a game, Vista removes all non-essential components from your RAM to your page file. Yes, it may well use 1gb+ in normal windows - this is a GREAT thing. Your RAM is actually being used for something useful. When you boot up a game, it stops using so much ram, and allocates it to the game.

That allocation does take time, though, it's not just an instant "yank it out of this app, slap it into that app."

The Vista SP1 isn't even publically released yet, and since that article was written the pack has been updated. Vista SP1 is much faster.SuperMooseman

Where did you hear this?

That allocation does take time, though, it's not just an instant "yank it out of this app, slap it into that app."JP_Russell

Yes but it only happens once when you fire up the game; then it's done until you close the game. Are you liable to switch OS because one system takes 5 seconds longer to boot a game?