WeGame Forums

Forums » Hardware & Gadgets

Vista or XP?

131 posts, 2691 views
Post Reply >

May 23, 2008 10:19AM

 Well just to make it clear, I have a copy of Vista Home Premium and a copy of XP sitting on my desk right now =P So when I reformat (prolly in a week), I have the option of choosing either, without having to go out and buy one or the other.
Heavy doesn't like you watching him eat his sandvich...

May 23, 2008 04:42PM

 Now I don't know what you are using your computer for except for gaming. And if that is the only thing you use it for I'd say XP. Because my experience is that vista hoggs down the framerate quite a bit. And I dont see any functionality in Vista that XP doesn't have.
And if you as I am using the Hammer Tool for leveldesigning or any other 3D development tool I'd definitively recommend you to go XP. Because those things eats system resources. And if you want to have a consistent workflow you cannot allow your OS to chew up that a lot of resources.
I mean 768MB of ram after a clean start-up of Vista is just silly.

Now the only reason why I in the feature will have to make the switch is the 3gig ram limit on 32-bit systems. And then secondly comes DX10, but the most games will still run in DX9 as a large partition of the audience will be limited to DX9.

Now don't get me wrong. I have given Vista a fair chance. I was actually one of those who joined the beta of the system came out. Back then I had bluescreens once in a while and there was no support for my sound card. I have not tested SP1 but I have done the original release and I'm basing all my statements on that experience, used it for a month or two and then it just became slower and slower as all Windows systems.
Rovanion of Manticora and The Epic Crusaders of Zenedar EU has spoken. My opinions are my opinions. You dont have to like them.

May 23, 2008 05:16PM

 Then comes the question: Why should I use linux?
For a gamer such as you there aren't to many reasons to actually make the switch. Supposing that gaming is the only thing you use your computer for. Because very few games are developed for the Linux platform, even tough I've heard rumours about that Valve is going to port the Source engine to Linux.

But even tough about no games are made to run natively on the Linux platform you can actually run a lot of games withot to much pain. For example:
Half Life 2 runs fine with the highest graphics and a resolution of 1920*1200 on my nVidia7800gtx. But it runs better under the native platform Windows.
And the reason why is that the game, along with steam, is run trough a program called WINE (Wine Is Not An Emulator).
Wine is like a second layer of code that translates the commands generated by the program into commands that are understandable for Linux.

But then why should you switch to the GNU/Linux platform?
I can make a simple comparison of how the system monitor looks after a fresh boot look of Fedora 8(wich is a cutting edge Linux distrubution) and Windows Vista.

Vista:
Ram allocated: 768
CPU load: 10-20%

Fedora 8:
RAM allocated: 321
CPU load: 1-3%

This after that I have removed the load that the task manager brings to the system. Totally clean boot after a fresh install of both the systems.

What the Linux system does, along with Mac, which both are based on UNIX, is that it's much more resource effective, but still compatible with the most hardware. For the record, my creative soundcard is not supported on either systems. Well it is on 64-bit versions of Linux but that's because Creative are stupid.

And you can do about everything in a Linux based system except for gaming because the greater market is located on the Windows side.
But the things that really separates Linux from Windows is that you can shape your own system after your own need with Linux. You can change everything.
And everything is optimized for workflow and performance. The multiple desktops on a cube for example, a function that I have used a lot.

This video shows some simple effects and 5 desktops on a pentagon:
http://www.vimeo.com/619879

This video shows beryl with desktop on a box:
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v334915zxFAM9...


So even if you are not in any way planning to change to Linux I recommend you to check out a distribution of it just to see and learn what's in it.

I recommend:
Ubuntu - The easy to learn Linux
Fedora - The cutting edge Linux

If you don't want to install any of them, which is really easy in both cases, much easier then Win XP, you can always run them as a live DVD/CD. But that will result in long load times when you start programmes.
Rovanion of Manticora and The Epic Crusaders of Zenedar EU has spoken. My opinions are my opinions. You dont have to like them.

May 23, 2008 06:37PM

 Oh and please don't be like so many other idiots I see on forums-

Vista using tons of your ram is a GOOD thing. No, really. Eons ago (in computer terms) people raped software verbally for using up certain amounts of ram that bogged down a system.

Vista does nothing of the sort and uses as much ram as it possibly can if it is available, which speeds up everything that you do.

So anyone you see shouting that Vista is a memory hog is only half right. If you have a fairly decent system (couple gigs of ram, dual core proc) there is nothing that XP can offer you whatsoever that Vista can't, except to limit you to direct x 9 and to give you a shittier media center.

May 24, 2008 08:24AM

 Now the thing is that Vista cannot offer anything that I need that XP doesn't already have. And if so it's not worth the lag I get in hammer and other tools. And I do have a dualcore processor at 3.2 gigahertz, 2GB of ram and a pritty decent graphics card, nVidia 7800gtx.

And I do know for a fact how much RAM my compiling processes takes when thy are in their heaviest act and I haven't seen Vista giving up on its RAM even during the most demanding processes.
Rovanion of Manticora and The Epic Crusaders of Zenedar EU has spoken. My opinions are my opinions. You dont have to like them.

May 24, 2008 09:23AM

 I have my doubts about the majority of gamers on this forum using their PCs to run the software you do.

May 24, 2008 11:51AM

 I'm just proving that you are wrong.
If Vista would have been doing what you are describing I would have seen it.
Rovanion of Manticora and The Epic Crusaders of Zenedar EU has spoken. My opinions are my opinions. You dont have to like them.

May 24, 2008 01:42PM

 I have seen no 'proof' of anything, I am just stating how the OS is designed to work.

Have fun with XP, I am sticking with Vista and will get Windows 7 when that comes out too.

May 24, 2008 05:33PM

 How Vista was designed and how it works are two different things, lol

Disk caching still blows compared to Mac or Linux 2.6 systems...
WeGame Client Developer and drinker of Sam Adams o/

May 24, 2008 07:15PM

 Blows up meaning that it's good or that it really explodes?
Rovanion of Manticora and The Epic Crusaders of Zenedar EU has spoken. My opinions are my opinions. You dont have to like them.
Post Reply >