Its been a while.. hows Vista stack up to XP?

I

inotocracy

Supreme [H]ardness
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I ran Vista, pretty early after its release, for about 6 months or so. I went back to XP because I was pretty unhappy with gaming performance compared to XP, just didn't sit right with me that the same system on XP would have about 30% more performance, and smoother gameplay overall. Now SP1 is out, and its been refined a bit since then, and since performance was my only gripe I'm curious how far its come. Considering gaming performance was just about my only gripe, anyone care to chime in? Hows it compare now?
 
IMO there is no diference in games right now, video and audio drivers are mature enough and since SP1 can be slipstreamed with Vlite, i think there is no reason to no go with vista..
 
I prefer Vista in every aspect when comparing it to XP. It's awesome. As long as you accept that your PC has to actually meet the specs, you should be fine.

With only 2Gb of ram though, I would stick with 32 bit. I didn't like the way x64 ran on a 2Gb machine. I upped it to 4Gb and it was much improved. Aero is awesome and has earned a place in my heart. I makes sense that the 'graphical' display is powered by the 'graphics card', don't it? Silly things they do now days. (the other 2Gb was on RMA)

The best part is, I ran Crysis with aero off and with aero on and there was 100% zero difference in performance.
 
It's been a while.....since this was really any debate. Vista has been pretty much caught up in the performance game for a while now. Aero won't make a difference in gaming because it is designed to release it's resources when another application (like a game) comes calling.
 
bigdogchris said:
I prefer Vista in every aspect when comparing it to XP. It's awesome. As long as you accept that your PC has to actually meet the specs, you should be fine.

With only 2Gb of ram though, I would stick with 32 bit. I didn't like the way x64 ran on a 2Gb machine. I upped it to 4Gb and it was much improved. Aero is awesome and has earned a place in my heart. I makes sense that the 'graphical' display is powered by the 'graphics card', don't it? Silly things they do now days. (the other 2Gb was on RMA)

The best part is, I ran Crysis with aero off and with aero on and there was 100% zero difference in performance.
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Just so you know, even with Aero on, it disables itself when you're in a full screen game. So technically it's always off, thus why you don't see a difference.
 
I have been using VIsta x64 for about 6 months now w/ no real problems to speak of. It runs 32bit apps w/o a problem and everything is as easy as it was w/ XP once you get the OS tweaked like you like.
 
I have Vista Ultimate x32 on my HTPC and I've always been a die hard XP fan..

I'm still on the fence. XP is more stable (my hardware is certified for Vista and relatively new still). Occasionally Explorer crashes.. Firefox crashes.. or I get a random error in Vista - but Vista IS better at recovering errors than XP ever was.

It definitely LOOKS nicer.. and has some cool features, but..

All in all, I don't hate Vista as much anymore, but I don't think it's worth upgrading from XP, honestly. Might as well wait until 2010 for Windows 8.
 
Azhar said:
Just so you know, even with Aero on, it disables itself when you're in a full screen game. So technically it's always off, thus why you don't see a difference.
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Yeah, I heard that it did that but when I alt-tab it's always in Aero mode. I did notice once I was full screen, then went back to windows and it was in normal mode so I can see that it does, or at least is supposed to :D
 
bigdogchris said:
Yeah, I heard that it did that but when I alt-tab it's always in Aero mode. I did notice once I was full screen, then went back to windows and it was in normal mode so I can see that it does, or at least is supposed to :D
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that just means your computer is pretty fast.. with slower computers, you would see non-Aero mode for about a second or two before it flips Aero mode back on when you alt-tab to your desktop. Not ever seeing Aero mode off when alt-tabbing is a compliment to your system building prowess ;-)
 
Zero82z said:
Go for it. Once you get used to the interface, you won't want to go back to XP.
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That wasn't the issue for me, I was quite fond of the interface and features and really didn't want to go back to XP, but I didn't like feeling as if my hardware was dated (and at the time it really wasn't). I was an early adopter though and ran it with all the issues at inception time, so performance was much slower compared to XP at the time. I was getting a 5.2 performance rating (if that even means anything).
 
inotocracy said:
That wasn't the issue for me, I was quite fond of the interface and features and really didn't want to go back to XP, but I didn't like feeling as if my hardware was dated (and at the time it really wasn't). I was an early adopter though and ran it with all the issues at inception time, so performance was much slower compared to XP at the time. I was getting a 5.2 performance rating (if that even means anything).
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Hopefully you'll find it faster then. I can't comment on how much it's improved since release because I only started using it last September when I got my laptop, but since I upgraded to 2GB of RAM it's been running really smoothly, and the only lag I ever experience is due to Aero straining my integrated graphics a little too much.
 
I made te move to Vista x64 about 2 months ago and never looked back. I was surprised at how smoothly went the transition. The only app that won't work is an .RAX to .WAV conversion utility (I fucking HATE Rhapsody!!!!) All of my games and programs run very smoothly on Vista. Give it a chance!
 
Mr. Wolf said:
I made te move to Vista x64 about 2 months ago and never looked back. I was surprised at how smoothly went the transition. The only app that won't work is an .RAX to .WAV conversion utility (I fucking HATE Rhapsody!!!!) All of my games and programs run very smoothly on Vista. Give it a chance!
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Ditto, I made the move from XP to Vista about 2 weeks ago. You've got to give it time. Like I mean, REALLY give it time. You have to give it at least a week for Superfetch to do its thing (adjust to your usage and pre-load programs you use a lot). After that, you'll be amazed at how fast Vista x64 is. Imagine my awe when after defragging for the first time, Windows loaded all my system tray icons at startup in about 15 seconds flat. And that's with 18 system tray icons. :eek: It takes WinXP about 1 minute and 30 seconds to load all that.
 
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