Gaming OS

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As a student I have a membership to MSDN. I have access to XP pro 32/64 and Vista Business 32/64.

I currently use x64.

I know when Vista first came out its performance in games was definitely worse than XP. Also, all gaming Vista test seem to be from when Vista first came out.

What I want to know is how Vista performs gaming-wise now that many updates have occurred and SP1 has been released.

I also don't like Vista boot up times compared to XP.
 
You're better off finding for yourself, you will get mixed answers.
I tried it recently and found it was 20% slower for Crysis and hard drive file copies took many times longer, that (and a few other things) was enough to put me off moving to Vista.
 
I have x64 Vista Ultimate with 6GB of memory. If you can afford the memory, I highly recommend x64 Vista. If you are going with less than 4GB of memory, then go with 32-bit XP.

The 32 bit version of Vista isn't worth it because it can't address the amount of memory that would make it worthwhile.

x64 XP isn't worth it because of lack of driver support.
 
I have been using XP x64 for around 8 months and have had zero issues with drivers.

Since I have Vista 64 just sitting on the shelf, I was considering upgrading to it.

I have 4GB ram (see sig), I am well aware of the 32-bit limitations.
 
Sniper|3d-R| said:
If you read anything about Vista SP1 you will know it's far worse.
Click to expand...
Not if you read something factual. We have been to the point where Vista is a very viable gaming platform for sometime now, and SP1 certainly doesn't hurt Vista's performance at all.
 
It's a mixed bag. Almost all ames take some hit in Vista compared to Xp. However, most of the time the hit is minimal. In a few cases it is noticeable. YMMV. If you already have Xp installed, imho, it is not worth it to change. If this is a new build with higher end components Vista is prolly a good bet. If you have both dual boot and see for yourself if the hit is worth it to you.
 
If you remembered when XP was first released it was pretty terrible. But two SP's later and it was the OS of choice.

Vista 32/64-bit OS with SP1 is a very nice thing to have for games, amongst other things.
 
You shouldn't see any noticeable difference in gaming performance.

As a response to the 20% slowdown on Crysis, benchmarks I have seen put Vista 64 at least as fast if not faster. Crysis is one of the few games with a native 64bit client.
 
i just bought vista with a hard drive and installed it alongside my xp drive. i haven't used the xp drive since, actually.

suprised it took me this long to make the jump, in retrospect.

my gaming performance feels very similar to the same games in xp.
 
I don't notice a huge difference, and Vista is worth it for the expose like feature it has (Switcher, http://insentient.net/). Stuff like that exists for XP, but it's a bit buggy. Switcher alone makes me a bit more productive.

Also it's nice to have DX10 ready to go whenever a game comes out that really justifies it. At this point I would never buy a new copy of XP. Better to just go directly to Vista if you're thinking about actually purchasing a new MS OS. Regardless install the 64 bit version of either, no reason to limit your upgrade path down the road and be stuck with 3.5GB of memory.
 
I noticed a performance decrease between Vista. I actually ran different benchmarks on my equipment using WinXP 32, WinXP64, and Vista 64. Vista was a bit slower in the benchmarks, but not enough that I really worried about it. I stuck with Vista 64 because I actually liked the OS.

The everyday operations that are a bit slower drive me nuts, like copying large files, etc. And the OS is different enough that I find it fun learning new things about it.

I'd give Vista a try. There's nothing I can't do in vista, and it fixed some problems I was having with a game (prince of persia 3) in XP. Service Pack 1 has made many improvements, and I would say wait until that is official before you try it.
 
shmo007 said:
(snip)I also don't like Vista boot up times compared to XP.
Click to expand...

As for Vista's boot-up time, I suggest never powering your computer down completely. Vista's sleep mode is very close to being completely powered down, and it turns back on almost instantly.
 
As mentioned before I have been using a 64-bit OS for quite a while and will never go back to 32-bit.

My spring break is next week and I may go ahead and reformat and install Vista.

I am using a Raptor 150 as my boot hard drive. I am considering partitioning it. How big of a partition should I give just to just Vista (no program files or storage, only OS necessary files)?

Edit: Also, I am not actually purchasing any OS. Because of MSDN I have LEGALLY cd keys and iso's for: Vista Business 32-bit, Vista Business 64-bit, XP Pro 32-bit, and two copies of XP Pro x64.
 
shmo007 said:
I am using a Raptor 150 as my boot hard drive. I am considering partitioning it. How big of a partition should I give just to just Vista (no program files or storage, only OS necessary files)?
Click to expand...
There's no reason to do that. Leave the Raptor as one solid drive, and put your OS, apps, and games there. If you don't have one, now's a great time to get a second drive to handle your data file storage.
 
In that case, leave the Raptor as C and the 250 GB as D. You can use something like SyncToy to backup important files, game saves, e-mail etc from C to a Backup folder on D.
 
I had always heard there was an advantage to have a partition purely for the OS. Especially since the transfer rate on the outside of the hard drive is roughly double that of the inside.
 
In theory, yes. In reality, not so much. There's no benefit to separating programs from the OS, either.
 
I'm dual-booting, but I got XP Pro and Vista free through school. It wouldn't have been cost-effective otherwise.

It's a good way to see how they compare. Vista does copy/move files a little slower, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft is addressing that. Could be wrong. I haven't installed any games under Vista yet. We'll have to wait until SP1 is released and see how it improves gaming and general performance.
 
DeaconFrost said:
In theory, yes. In reality, not so much. There's no benefit to separating programs from the OS, either.
Click to expand...

There is one advantage to splitting up a drive into partitions: seek times. With a smaller partition, like the 150GB partition I have on my 1TB XP drive, with the other 800GB as my data drive, the seek times go way down. with that set up, any files that need to be found on the OS drive are only 1/6 of the disk away.

My Vista install is on my 150GB Raptor, and I did not split that up.

Splitting up the programs from the OS is sometimes a bad thing for performance, since you wind up with the OS on the fastest part of the drive (the first partition) and the programs further down the drive, reducing their load performance. I wouldn't recommend splitting the OS/programs drive to anything smaller than 150GB these days.
 
I have a 250GB drive split in half, one for XP and one for Vista, and I have a 3GB partition on another drive that both operating systems use as a second paging file. Seems to be working pretty well. I'm quite satisfied with speeds.
 
dgingeri said:
There is one advantage to splitting up a drive into partitions: seek times.
Click to expand...
Again this is really only in theory. You're full stroke times are the same, and the drive itself will seek at the same speed (speed of the heads). The rotational speed is increased on the outer edges, but that never seems to translate into any real, noticeable performance gains. I remember when the "fad of the day" was to move your page file to the outer edge of the drive, but that has dissipated in the past few years as well. I just some google searching on this and can't find any links to support a decrease in seek times for more partitions. This is why I always try to have two drives in the system...one for OS related things, and one separate drive for editing, opening, reading my data files.
 
DeaconFrost said:
Again this is really only in theory. You're full stroke times are the same, and the drive itself will seek at the same speed (speed of the heads). The rotational speed is increased on the outer edges, but that never seems to translate into any real, noticeable performance gains. I remember when the "fad of the day" was to move your page file to the outer edge of the drive, but that has dissipated in the past few years as well. I just some google searching on this and can't find any links to support a decrease in seek times for more partitions. This is why I always try to have two drives in the system...one for OS related things, and one separate drive for editing, opening, reading my data files.
Click to expand...

Seek times of hte drive is a physical limitation, true, but if you limit how far the drive has to seek within that drive, then the functional seek times are reduced proportionately. using only 1/6 of the drive for the OS and programs will give you only 1/6 the normal seek time maximum when running anything off that drive. this would be eliminated by running other programs from other partitions on that drive. This is why I keep my OS and programs on the first 150GB of my 1TB drive and my data on the rest. With programs that need the seek time reduced, like WoW, the load times are much better.
 
I just moved to XP x64 and I absolutely love it. It was like getting a whole new computer. Sure there are a few weirdo issues like having to hack iTunes for full support and downloading some x64 editions of programs but overall I am very impressed.
 
Azhar said:
As for Vista's boot-up time, I suggest never powering your computer down completely. Vista's sleep mode is very close to being completely powered down, and it turns back on almost instantly.
Click to expand...

I never shut down Vista either. It wakes up in about 5-15 seconds or less. It takes a couple seconds or so longer for my G15 to light back up though.
 
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