Vista-XP Personal Expierance (informal) [Archive]

View Full Version : Vista-XP Personal Expierance (informal)

Dethman

02-15-2008, 02:12 AM

Hey I know this has been beaten to death with a dead horse, but i've seen mixed reviews on the topic, so i tried it myself

When i sold my old rig for the current one, i installed with Vista. Used it for about 7 months, and was ready for a reinstall. (I like a fresh restart every 7-8 months)

I had a weekend off so I installed XP. It was a little pain because i had to install a Floppydrive for my Raid setup

But since i installed it. I decided that im not going back to Vista, unless there is a ServicePack 2, that just really makes it wonderful and worth it.

I notice an overall snappiness to windows XP, that wasn't there in Vista..

I really like the style of Vista, so I installed StyleXP, and installed the Vista theme..

My girlfriend sat down at my computer and had no idea it was XP..(shes an above average user i would say), and didn't know it was XP till she right clicked My Computer

Games: Reso: 1680x1050

I could not play COD4 with my setup in Vista. I was getting 100+ in hallways, but then 15-25 outside...and it diddnt seem to change with whatever settings i would use...most of them were off to get 20-27 outside (for me...not playable) i play on hard, and 20 fps is just too frustrating..

With vista, i bottom out at about 34...mostly in the high 40s (playable)

TF2 would drop to the 40s, everything maxed no AA, 2xAF, When playing multi player, i really dont like to drop believe 50fps...ever.....And with XP..i found i can do 4xAA, and 8xAF and i never drop below 60, mostly at around 120fps

For me, My computer went from great in older games, playable with mostly low-medium settings in new games with vista....to just above playable/enjoyable with newer games, and also great in older games

To me, there is not one feature in Vista that is worth upgrading for....The Pluses, (FOR ME) that i found are

Vista +++
Yes it is a little more stable, didnt really need to reformat after 7 months..with XP i usually feel its about time
Desktop images seem to be a tad clearer (games are the same)
Looks cooler, impresses the girlfriend...Folder options and organization is a little easier

XP+++
Games seem to be about 10fps faster, with even better grafix options enabled (and everything i mentioned before
Computer isnt constantly using 1.2gigs of ram..ya ya i know its prefetch holding the memory, but i NEVER noticed my programs loading up faster...even if they are by a few miliseconds, i dont notice it

Lastly here is a screenshot of my XP sytem that looks like Vista, (and yes that is my argentine puppy)

http://members.easy-clan.com/Deth/desktop33.JPG

L33t Masta

02-15-2008, 02:32 AM

It must be the GTS.

chinspecial

02-15-2008, 02:38 AM

Lol. Vista fake theme.:p

Canadian in Berlin

02-15-2008, 06:06 AM

I've finally noticed a change in the speed programs load. Firefox loads in 1 second instead of 5....

...

...

But I need 4GB of RAm to be able to alt tab out of a game. I must admit that doesn't make me a happy bunny. ( yes RAM is cheap, but I'm scottish in origin and even more cheap).

Dethman

02-15-2008, 09:56 AM

yea its the GTS

Mithent

02-15-2008, 12:36 PM

Vista +++
Yes it is a little more stable, didnt really need to reformat after 7 months..with XP i usually feel its about time
Desktop images seem to be a tad clearer (games are the same)

Hrm, the only reason I can think of for the desktop looking clearer in Vista is that it uses ClearType by default (which is a good thing, ClearType is great in my opinion).

griffinhart

02-15-2008, 01:49 PM

I recently upgraded PC's and re-installed XP on the old one to sell it since I didn't have any licenses of Vista to keep on it. My personal experience was that I was surprised that how XP wasn't any snappier than the Previous Vista install. Of course, that was just my experience.

Btw, on your Vista theme, The fake UI does give it the more attractive look but don't you miss the search feature? It's the UI change in Vista that I use daily and would miss if I didn't have it anymore. I always hated drilling down the programs tree to launch apps and haven't done it since I started using the search feature.

slickmitch

02-15-2008, 02:24 PM

vista64 is smooth as butter with 4gig or more memory. I make mine look like XP instead of Vista. One of the biggest memory hogs is dwm.exe. Plus slap a couple of thumb drives and it tweaks it more. Is Ready Boost a memory hog?:p

Version_3

02-15-2008, 03:05 PM

You know know how I can tell it's XP? The start menu says "Tour Windows XP". :D

I've read people here comparing scores of 3dmark and other benchmarks, and for the performance hit that a person takes with an uber-system running Vista to what a system like mine runs with XP, I'll ride XP until the end.

Dethman

02-15-2008, 03:07 PM

ech3lon9

02-15-2008, 05:00 PM

You could always dual boot, use XP to play all the games.

As for me, my Vista Ultimate DVD is sitting there collecting dust for almost a year now :eek: for some reason I simply cant be bothered to install it.

griffinhart

02-15-2008, 05:08 PM

i didnt use the interface much....I use it mostly for gaming and homework...

Like i said the UI is easier to organize things...but either way...

and i don't have 4 gigs of memory or a GTX..but i dont think you should have to, to use vista and game

You definately don't need a GTX and 4GB to game under Vista. A system with 2GB and a 7900 GT will have the same performance running games under both OS's. That wasn't the case at Vista's release, but since drivers have matured it's defiantely the case.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/amd_nvidia_windows_vista_driver_performance_update/default.asp

BigwaveDave

02-15-2008, 06:15 PM

You definately don't need a GTX and 4GB to game under Vista. A system with 2GB and a 7900 GT will have the same performance running games under both OS's. That wasn't the case at Vista's release, but since drivers have matured it's defiantely the case.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/amd_nvidia_windows_vista_driver_performance_update/default.asp

I disagree. With my 8800gt....Crysis and few other games I play (I dual boot) are noticably slower in Vista to this day. I'm running SP1 and I'm still seeing at least 10-15% less fps in Vista over XP.

griffinhart

02-15-2008, 11:47 PM

Dethman

02-16-2008, 12:02 AM

bigwavedave and i are getting the same results

cannondale06

02-16-2008, 12:38 AM

That's definately odd. Either you don't use vista much and it hasn't fully optimized itself or you have some driver issue somewhere.

Most Benchmarks for Crysis I have seen show that Vista 64 has the highest performance of all OSs for Crysis. XP and Vista 32 have very similar performance in DX9 mode. If you compare DX9 to DX10 mode, then you could see that kind of difference.currently there is no real performance difference in DX9 or DX10. I dont know if it was the update, drivers or combination of both. when I first got Crysis there was a 3 fps difference in the GPU benchmark between DX9 and DX10 but now the benchmark results are the same.

now there is a difference between XP and Vista with XP being slightly faster. Crysis is the only game that I own that runs slower in Vista then XP.

DeathFromBelow

02-16-2008, 01:51 AM

IMHO 64-bit Vista is one of the finest OS's that Microsoft has ever produced.

desrin

02-16-2008, 02:22 AM

I just went from Vista 64bit back to xp to try sp3 and it is definately better.

when im using dreamweaver cs3 + flash cs3 + photoshop cs3 everything just seems to be snappier.

i do miss the ui of vista tho, it just looks much more modern.

Rebel44

02-16-2008, 06:46 AM

IMHO 64-bit Vista is one of the finest OS's that Microsoft has ever produced.

I agree.

Finn

02-16-2008, 01:11 PM

Vista search is utterly useless. 100% of the times I've used it to search something it doesn't find it. I have to use the traditional unindexed search which takes more time than in XP in the end.

That and I need to search stuff max once per week.