XP or Vista

F

Firecracker*infowars

Rookie
FireCracKer* here to tell you that at this time and date (March 1st, 2007) all new computers are being sold with the Vista operating system on it. There are lots of flavors of Vista and I have tried all of them.

My system specs:

CPU: AMD64 SanDiego 3700+(2.2)1megL2
HDD: WD IDE 80gig 8meg Cache
Video: EVGA 7900GS PCIX 256
Sound: Realtek Onboard 5.1
Memory: 2Gigs DDR 400 CAS2
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XP Pro Installed fresh install with latest drivers=

DOD:Source fps average 60

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Vista (any version) fresh install with latest drivers=

DOD:Source fps average 27

results in over 50% fps loss

Upon doing investigations on why this is happening, I feel that we all should wait on purchasing a new computer for now and build one from your local computer store like we do at F-3 Computers in Topeka. That way you will not get stuck with the Vista operating system. Maybie in a year from now the drivers for hardware will mature and be more optomized but I cannot accept this kind of performance.
 
Not to knock your results FireCracker, but I've done extensive work with Vista myself and did not see anywhere near the FPS performance hit you were seeing. I did take a slight drop, but I blaim ATI's Vista drivers for that. Bottom line - I only saw the performance drops in benchmarks, nothing was visible in game play. How much RAM where you running? So far I'm noticing the biggest problem with Vista is that it's RAM hungry. With at least 1GB memory it settles down a bit, but anything less is painful. I haven't been able to pinpoint the cause of the memory use, but I have determined it's system specific. I have Vista running on two physical systems and 1 VM - the VM and 1 of the physical systems runs fine, but the third system uses memory like there's no tomorrow. Only thing I can figure out is something to do with AMD's onboard memory controller or a chipset issue. I will agree that people should hold off a little bit with Vista unless they are confident with their system and don't mind tweaking a little bit. Let the dust clear and wait until drivers and software are updated for Vista (and fine tuned).

System Specs for reference:
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (2.4GHz)
Memory: 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200
HDD: 2x150GB Raptors
Video: ATI 1900XT
Vista Versions - Home, Business, Ultimate (Please note that core was there is no difference between products, just in features)
 
Well as i have mentioned before on these forums I have been running vista buisness 64 bit on my computer for about the past months now (on a 2month old new build)

The specs are:

Intel E6600 core 2duo (2.4ghz) running at 3.3ghz
2GB pc 6400 ram running at 970(ish)mhz
gforce 7900 GS 512 ram
250GB Sata II hdd
Asus P5W Deluxe mother board

And yes i have experienced a noticible dip in performance. At the start when i was being forced to use the nvidia beta drivers it was pretty much unplayabe but this has improved and the full release drivers seem to be workin great so far (except the lack of support for gpu overclocking tools ntune, coolbits etc)

After hours of tinkering i am gettin almost back up to my 60fps constant (depends on map really) but its definately very very playable. As for CS Source im getting 100+ fps which is nice.

So in all honnesty i have to say i am very very happy with vista. I love the new layout for everything and some of the new features. My only word of warning is that unless you kind of know what you are doin in regards to tinkering with systems etc i would hold off for a while as it did take me many many hours(days/weeks?) to get things going, which i also happen to enjoy doing.

But if you are like me and enjoy tinkering about with stuff and are happy enough to wait arround for gfx card companies to realease some good drivers then i cant advise this anymore.

James.
 
Im basing my specs on someone who is on a budget that cannot spend an arm and a leg to get that kind of gear but want to play the games. Even your specifications are better than mine and therefore cannot really play in the same ballpark as mine. We sell brand new computers still that are P4 3.06 running IDE drives with 512 megs of ram with AGP. Or a 3600+ amd with Sata 2 hdd and 1 gig of ram. XP would rock on those systems with a decent graphics card but if you put vista on it, well you would have to strip everything down to make it ugly, and basically like xp, so whats the point?
 
Well to be brutally honnest any1 looking to buy a budget pc with vista is crazy. As ive mentioned im quite an intense tweaker and im ALWAYS monitering and toying with my setup. One of the big things ive noticed is that even when idle the ram is working at 45% in vista so that like 800mb of ram CONSTANTLY working. For this reason I fail to see how a system with 512 ram could be a successful and even with 1GB you wouldnt have much headroom.

I would say 1GB absolute minumum (yes it runs on 512 but there is a large difference in running and being usable) and idealy 2GB. As for gfx cards your card, pctech4646, is the same as mine (mines plait with 512 ram but that is pretty insignificant difference) so graphically speaking your not too bad off, if not in a slightly better position to myself as if you are running xp you could use a overclocking program from withinin windows to help boost performance. Some of these such tools are:

- Ntune (official Nvidia tool)
- Coolbits
- ATI Tool (yes it does support Nvidia cards aswell)
- River Tuner

If you are going to do that mahe sure you read up on it alot before and have a good idea of what you are doing etc (and yes i take no responsability for your actions :p)

Just thought i would throw them up there incase some1 wanted them. Back to the topic.....

.....my solution to the problem is good pc - get vista, reasonably old or budget pc - stick to xp. Will save a lot of trouble and heartache aswell as let you run things better

James.
 
[quote1172803215=Jimb0_d]
One of the big things ive noticed is that even when idle the ram is working at 45% in vista so that like 800mb of ram CONSTANTLY working.
[/quote1172803215]

Careful, you're probably looking at the "Commit Charge" which is a combination of how much physical and how much virtual memory Windows is using. It can look scary (800Mb) but this isn't too much out of the ordinary.

I agree with both of you guys...Vista on a budget PC just isn't going to play nice. There are some things you can do to help like turning off drive indexing and any other Vista features you don't need. No matter how MS advertises Vista, in my opinion it is destined for high-end PC's and not the average PC, which is too bad because there are quite a few features in it the average user might benefit from.
 
Yea i know its pretty normal compared to every1 I know runnning vista aswell and im just talking about the performance moniter in taskmanager, if thats what you mean?
 
Now, I haven't used Vista and am not about to switch because XP is now the 'old thing'. I am only going to switch when I can't get a custom computer without it and a lot of the complnies stop providing drivers for it. I don't want to use Vista as it eats up too much RAM and (if I got the Ultimate edition) the Graphics RAM too. So my advice would be to get a very powerful computer and put Vista on it, or get a good computer and have XP on it (I would also go for the powerful coputer with XP as there would be much more resources available for my games).
 
probably his windows 2000, you wouldnt see us vista users doing that :pPEFOFS\asf[;'34£"$PPP:pF_D£$$%%$ BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH

darn it.
 
[quote1173041931=Vengeance]
is it bad that i'm still running windows 2000? lol j/p
[/quote1173041931]

No way dude! Win2K is a great OS, I ran it forever until an app I heavily used started requiring XP.
 
This PC im using is running vista, it cost me almost 300 bucks just to have this, but I think it doesnt support openGL just yet.
 
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