XP 32 vs Vista 64 for Games

B

Brownstone

Gawd
Joined
Mar 12, 2007
Messages
873
Hope it doesn't get me banned but i in spite of serch i could find anything
I just finnished my new PC and been out of the loop for a long time, so as far as i know XP32 is a solid OS for gaming... but i dnno how Vista 64 treats games

I'd be running with the system on the sig, with a 4870

PS: dont kill me :(
 
This is a completely legitimate question, in fact it's one I asked a few months ago when I built the system you see in the sig below.

I'm happy to report that I have experienced nothing but positives with gaming and vista.


This is the thread that resulted from my original question, if thats helpful.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1291818
 
I'll be honest. For me I was doing everything but gaming with vista 64. I kept getting the infamous " nvldisp has stopped working" over and over in mostly every game that I own. After muliple reformats and what not I ditched it and reinstalled xp 32 bit with sp3. So far so good.
 
Sweet, sounds good... thank u :)
Does the fps drop apply in SP1 ? Or did they iron that out
 
Darkatom said:
I'll be honest. For me I was doing everything but gaming with vista 64. I kept getting the infamous " nvldisp has stopped working" over and over in mostly every game that I own. After muliple reformats and what not I ditched it and reinstalled xp 32 bit with sp3. So far so good.
Click to expand...

I remember I had that problem too. Really, it's super annoying and I tried everything to get rid of it. I don't even remember how it stopped--I guess one time I reformatted and it went away. But really, something like that would be enough to drive me back to XP as well.
 
Well your kinda wasting 1.5gb of ram if your running a 32bit OS with 4gb total. vista and XP are tied for FPS but ram usage is another story between vista and XP. but being that you have over 2gb shouldn't be a problem.
 
well, tomhardware did an article about 4 gig in 64 bit vs 32 bit. Turned out to be the same performance because 64 bit itself uses more ram. And also, I think 32 bit recognizes 3.5 gigs, so it's only wasting .5gb.
 
i would still be using windows xp if it wasnt for directx10. since there are more and more games with dx10 support im kinda forced to use vista.
 
I havent kept up with dx10 much but has it reached a point in games where its actually notciable in making a game look better ?
 
I made the jump to Vista 64 about two weeks ago, and so far the experience has been a net positive. Most of my drivers ran fine without any issues (sans a known issue with nForce motherboards and SATA optical drives, but that occurred on both XP 32 and Vista 64). I am running SP1, btw.
 
32bit = 2gb of ram max.
We are getting to the point where 2 gigs are MINIMUM for running programs. I prefer to have double what is "standard".
 
lloose said:
32bit = 2gb of ram max.
We are getting to the point where 2 gigs are MINIMUM for running programs. I prefer to have double what is "standard".
Click to expand...

err... no.

I was able to see 2.9 gigs of ram out of 4 gigs in XP 32, and thats because my video card ram is 640 MB.
 
I have vista ultimate x64 and I don't have issues with games. I'm glad I switched from xp.

I suggest you atleast try Vista.
 
As long as you have a decent system, Vista rocks at pretty much anything. Your PC is pretty beefy, so it should work beautifully.
 
Vista x64 has absolutly no problems running any modern game.

However there might be some problems with old classics (Kotor 1 and Medieval Total War "old" :) )
 
Asking 'should I get vista 64' now is like asking should I get win98 over XP. If you have the computer potential (which you do) get 64.
 
Do what I do I dual boot both XP Pro x86 and Vista Home Premium x64.
 
The only game I've ran into any sort of problems, at least since driver updates and service pack 1, has been the original Metal Gear Solid. After installing, running the game said my GPU didn't support features required for hardware mode so it was going to run in software mode. Except then it crashes. Even with compatibility modes selected.

Other than that, performance and stability is excellent. Even better than XP in my experience. I say go for Vista, 32 or 64-bit. 32-bit will now show 4gb of RAM being installed after SP1, but it still will not use the full amount.
 
I have been using Vista x64 for only a few days, but I have had no problems thus far. DX 10 is a great plus. I think alot of the driver compatibility problems that users were experiencing at Vista's launch have been fixed.

With a decent rig (like mine in my sig) you won't suffer any performance due to Vista's "Luggage". It runs rather smoothly, in both games and desktop.
 
lloose said:
32bit = 2gb of ram max.
We are getting to the point where 2 gigs are MINIMUM for running programs. I prefer to have double what is "standard".
Click to expand...

4GB is actually the limit on 32bit systems (only about ~3.5gb usable in Windows).
 
inotocracy said:
4GB is actually the limit on 32bit systems (only about ~3.5gb usable in Windows).
Click to expand...

I thought it depends on how much memory your video card has too. so if you have like 4gb of ram on a 32bit OS and a 1gb video card then you will only see like 2.5-3gb of ram. i might be wrong.
 
Gabe3 said:
I thought it depends on how much memory your video card has too. so if you have like 4gb of ram on a 32bit OS and a 1gb video card then you will only see like 2.5-3gb of ram. i might be wrong.
Click to expand...

No you are pretty close. It is not just video card memory though, and device that maps to memory(pretty much any device) will cut into that. Video cards just happen to take the biggest chunk normally.
 
m1abram said:
No you are pretty close. It is not just video card memory though, and device that maps to memory(pretty much any device) will cut into that. Video cards just happen to take the biggest chunk normally.
Click to expand...

The only way your video card has anything to do with how much RAM Windows sees and uses is if it is integrated into the motherboard. Your system RAM then becomes shared RAM between the onboard graphics card.

Those of you with video cards plugged into a slot on your motherboard do not experience this "shared RAM". I'm not sure where you guys would have heard such things...
 
gobBobo said:
The only way your video card has anything to do with how much RAM Windows sees and uses is if it is integrated into the motherboard. Your system RAM then becomes shared RAM between the onboard graphics card.

Those of you with video cards plugged into a slot on your motherboard do not experience this "shared RAM". I'm not sure where you guys would have heard such things...
Click to expand...

Wrong. Do a search before posting next time.
 
Please save me the work since you are so confident and provide me with the information. Or perhaps you misunderstood the guy's question...
 
m1abram said:
No you are pretty close. It is not just video card memory though, and device that maps to memory(pretty much any device) will cut into that. Video cards just happen to take the biggest chunk normally.
Click to expand...

Correct. XP 32bit can use 4gb total, however almost every device uses some ram, so depending what you have and more importantly how much RAM your video card has will depend how much the OS can use/see. That could vary from 2gb to like 3.8 or something.
 
m1abram said:
A slightly easier read for some people:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000811.html
Click to expand...

Ok to be fair here, we are walking a fine line between technicalities and what really matters.

While on a hardware level, your video card will be mapped through some system memory. On the software side (the OS), the total amount that the hardware architecture supports will be visible and available for use, providing you have it installed.

What he's asking is if I have 4gb of RAM on a 32-bit OS and I install a video card with 1gb of RAM, will that 1gb be subtracted from the amount the OS will see and use. The answer is no. If the answer were yes, then no matter the amount of system RAM you have, whatever amount of RAM your GPU has would be subracted from the amount of RAM your system would show.

I'm running Vista with 2gb system RAM and a video card with 512mb RAM. Vista does not show 1.5gb of RAM because the GPU has 512mb.

Taken from the first linked article:
To all the people who are going to email me to tell me about the /3GB switch in Windows, please don't. It has absolutely nothing to do with this. The /3GB switch is all about how much virtual address space a program can have. The problems described in this article are all about physical address space, which is not the same thing at all. This is not a Windows problem - running Linux won't help. The fundamental problem is that the memory is inaccessible to the CPU. It's a hardware problem.)
 
gobBobo said:
Ok to be fair here, we are walking a fine line between technicalities and what really matters.

While on a hardware level, your video card will be mapped through some system memory. On the software side (the OS), the total amount that the hardware architecture supports will be visible and available for use, providing you have it installed.

What he's asking is if I have 4gb of RAM on a 32-bit OS and I install a video card with 1gb of RAM, will that 1gb be subtracted from the amount the OS will see and use. The answer is no. If the answer were yes, then no matter the amount of system RAM you have, whatever amount of RAM your GPU has would be subracted from the amount of RAM your system would show.

I'm running Vista with 2gb system RAM and a video card with 512mb RAM. Vista does not show 1.5gb of RAM because the GPU has 512mb.

Taken from the first linked article:
To all the people who are going to email me to tell me about the /3GB switch in Windows, please don't. It has absolutely nothing to do with this. The /3GB switch is all about how much virtual address space a program can have. The problems described in this article are all about physical address space, which is not the same thing at all. This is not a Windows problem - running Linux won't help. The fundamental problem is that the memory is inaccessible to the CPU. It's a hardware problem.)
Click to expand...
Ok you miss read something.

The OS will NOT have access to 4GB of RAM if it is 32bit OS. Because some of that address space (not ram) is needed for other devices. This is probably the confusing part. A 32 bit OS has an address space of 4GB, that does NOT mean it can handle 4GB of RAM but that it can address up to 4GB. Now other things need to be in that address space to operate so some of the RAM is pushed out and can not be accessed and is COMPLETELY unusable.

Now there are methods out to get around this and trick the OS however these are all designed for server environments.
 
gobBobo said:
Ok to be fair here, we are walking a fine line between technicalities and what really matters.

While on a hardware level, your video card will be mapped through some system memory. On the software side (the OS), the total amount that the hardware architecture supports will be visible and available for use, providing you have it installed.

What he's asking is if I have 4gb of RAM on a 32-bit OS and I install a video card with 1gb of RAM, will that 1gb be subtracted from the amount the OS will see and use. The answer is no. If the answer were yes, then no matter the amount of system RAM you have, whatever amount of RAM your GPU has would be subracted from the amount of RAM your system would show.

I'm running Vista with 2gb system RAM and a video card with 512mb RAM. Vista does not show 1.5gb of RAM because the GPU has 512mb.

Taken from the first linked article:
To all the people who are going to email me to tell me about the /3GB switch in Windows, please don't. It has absolutely nothing to do with this. The /3GB switch is all about how much virtual address space a program can have. The problems described in this article are all about physical address space, which is not the same thing at all. This is not a Windows problem - running Linux won't help. The fundamental problem is that the memory is inaccessible to the CPU. It's a hardware problem.)
Click to expand...

To add to m1abram, if you have 2GBs of RAM and a 512MB video card, the video card has the memory addresses from 2GBs - 4GBs to map its ram to, so that's why you don't lose memory with not much memory installed. But if you have 4GBs installed and a 512MB video card the video card has to map itself somewhere in the first 4GBs of memory addresses so you only get 3.5GBs or less depending on other ram mapped devices.
 
gobBobo said:
What he's asking is if I have 4gb of RAM on a 32-bit OS and I install a video card with 1gb of RAM, will that 1gb be subtracted from the amount the OS will see and use. The answer is no. If the answer were yes, then no matter the amount of system RAM you have, whatever amount of RAM your GPU has would be subracted from the amount of RAM your system would show.
Click to expand...

You should read this article as well:
http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm

With a 32bit OS and 4GB of RAM, you only be able to use about ~3.5GB of RAM. Add a video card with 1GB of VRAM, you're now down to 2.5GB of RAM. I'm using 4GB of RAM myself but can only use 3GB of it due to my 8800GT 512MB.
 
If you really like Vista's interface and are planning to play a fair amount of DX10 games, then I'd go with Vista, otherwise go with XP 32bit.

Or you can do what I did for awhile. Dual Boot XP 32 and Vista Ultimate 64. Use Vista for DX10 games and XP for general use and all other games
 
why use xp for all other games? Vista x64 works fine with other games as well, ok well theres a small number that either need special fixs or just wont work but thats a small number of older games. My biggest reason for moving my gaming computer to vista 64 was I wanted 4 gigs of ram and I couldnt be happier, I personally find it much quicker than xp, and unlike XP it doesnt slow down over a few months like xp does.
 
Michaelius said:
Vista x64 has absolutly no problems running any modern game.

However there might be some problems with old classics (Kotor 1 and Medieval Total War "old" :) )
Click to expand...

Its been pretty smooth sailing for me, just a few issues

I had to update Command and Conquer 3 to run under 64 bit.
KOTOR gave me some bad FPS but it ran.
Brothers in Arms EIB wouldn't even start the autoplay or the setup.exe

gobBobo said:
The only way your video card has anything to do with how much RAM Windows sees and uses is if it is integrated into the motherboard. Your system RAM then becomes shared RAM between the onboard graphics card.

Those of you with video cards plugged into a slot on your motherboard do not experience this "shared RAM". I'm not sure where you guys would have heard such things...
Click to expand...

Yea, I thought it depended on your motherboard.
 
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