Vista vs XP Pro ?

[Draco Nightspawn]

Hey all
I am currently running Vista and am wondering which is the better gaming platform, Vista or XP Pro?
My system is as follows:
Intel dual core cpu 2140 @ 1.6 GHz
2140 @ 1.6 GHz
4 gig ram
Gforce 8500 GT
and a 671T-M mobo
Any sugestions or constructive input would be appreciated.
Draco of HNs

[AllAmerican]

I think you will get both sides of the story here.

All in all it is what you like better, Id bet they run nearly the same. Maybe slight differences but that in which most people would never see. Go with what you like.

[Sparky]

Benchmarks have shown that Vista generally runs games slower than XP.

For my part, I'm running 64x Vista becuase I love all the ram I lets me use, but I'd certaintly run games like Crysis on higher setting than medium were I using XP.

[$chase$]

<---------------xp

[Amoenotep]

<=== x64 Vista Business...its a resource hog, but you can tame down alot of that. also once you tell the pc to run in the fastest possible way...it looks exactly like XP.

[Nyeleni]

Emm, whats the point of Vista if you bring it down to XP? It's as usual a premature launch crap?
And in 2-3 years when almost all big bugs are solved, they launch "Alegre" or something like that... Go figure.

[Amoenotep]

it looks like xp..it doesn't bring it down to xp. i can run more outright with better control on vista than i could on xp. it also makes better use of some of my hardcore hardware than xp does.

[VagaStorm]

Hey all
I am currently running Vista and am wondering which is the better gaming platform, Vista or XP Pro?
My system is as follows:
Intel dual core cpu 2140 @ 1.6 GHz
2140 @ 1.6 GHz
4 gig ram
Gforce 8500 GT
and a 671T-M mobo
Any sugestions or constructive input would be appreciated.
Draco of HNs

XP is defiantly faster for running games, but if I remember correctly you will never get xp to take advantage of more than 3GB ram.

The securety in Vista is also a bit better than XP tho you will generaly get good enough securety with an addon firefall, antimalware and antispam software.

Alover I think you will get abit better preformance with XP, but I woud not do anything til the results from sp1 for vista and sp3 for xp is inn. I think both are out in beta now :p

[Bargeld]

USe the OS that came with your PC, be it a laptop or a desktop. If you (like me) are on a 4 year old laptop, then the answer to the initial question is that XP will give me better performance, because I am limited on my resources (1G ram and 64M video). If I were to try to put Vista on here, it would slow to a crawl due to the resource usage. On the other hand, if you have a spicy new QuadCore 2.66 with 2G+ ram and a 512 vid card, then I doubt you would even notice the difference between XP and vista.

For the record, I used Window98 until XP was stable... more than 2 years after it's release, becasue it ran much faster than XP until the hardware caught up. You are in the same situation now. Us the OS that dates your computer for best performance.

[JesterOI]

If you decide to go with XP get XP Media Center Edition rather than Pro.
Pro gives you some domain crap, MCE gives you everything and more, but none of that domain crap.
MCE is slightly cheaper than Pro as well, depending on where you buy from.

XP is based on Win NT, so the compatibility of XP is better with current software since all the developers out there have been programming for NT type OS's for years. As for the software being written in the next 2 to 3 years, it will still be written so that XP can run it as well.

Vista is still "new". I built myself a new system in Sept and went with XP MCE. Gave my parents my old system and they installed Vista on it. It took some tweaking but the Vista is running well.

Most of the bugs have been addressed in XP and there is a ton more reference material out there for tweaking, optimizing, and fixing it.
For the sake of convenience I'd suggest XP, but Vista isn't as horrible as all the n00bz make it out to be.

It's up to you though.

[ShinsFortress]

XP. No question. I still have lots of games that are flaky or just plain down work under Vista. Vista is not a *bleep* system, but for compatability, I adviser gamers to stick with XP for the near future.

[cely]

I also recommend XP over Vista, but wanted to point something out. DirectX 10 is supported only on Vista. So if you have a DirectX 10 capable video card and want to play DirectX 10 enabled games, you should stay with Vista.

[P. Fricebottle]

XP. A friend of mine I introduced to the game runs Vista, and he had quite the time trying to get NWN even *working* on his computer.

[disastro]

my advice regarding windows upgrades has always been: don't upgrade or move to the new system until you know EXACTLY WHY you need to.

i.e.
-all your games work in xp?
-everything you want works in xp?
-->stick to xp.

vs.

-you want game x, that requires directx 10 or performs WAY better in dx10 (note that there arent any games in this category that i know of, and that will likely remain the case for at least the next 18 months)
-you have some other program that requires vista for some other reason
-your wifes pc has vista, and you're having problems because you're not on the same platform
-the pc you want to buy only comes with with vista, and the drivers arent available for xp, or you are not real handy with installing the os on your own.
-->these are specific reasons for vista. go for it!

the fact that you are asking this question here and arent aware of any personal compelling reason to upgrade tells me you really should NOT. at least, not yet.

[LinuxPup]

I use Vista... NWN runs fine.