I am putting together a new gaming rig. I was just wondering what are the pros and cons of installing a 64-bit os (vista)?
i'm not sure about 32 bit but with vista 64 bit gears of war keeps crashing. no problems with call of duty 4 or crysis though
x64 does not have as much driver support at x32. It is basically stable and good to use if you don't have too many peripherals and like the option of upgrading your RAM beyond the 3.5 or so x86 systems pick up. x64 apps also run faster that their x86 counterparts. x32 bit is more stable, but it does not recognize all of your RAM if you have 4GB+. XP x64 is not worth considering as far as I can tell and XP x86 seems like the most stable and safe. I am going with x86 XP for my new rig, but may dual boot x64 Vista at one point or another.
Use 32-bit, mainly because 32-bit XP is the only fully working OS out there, XP 64-bit is hopeless, Vista 64-bit isn't that great, and neither is Vista 32-bit.
If you're using 4GB or more RAM then go for Vista 64bit. Try not to pirate it and you will have a better experience.
For reference, the first time I tried Vista and had all the problems it was from a legitimate copy, just thought I'd mention that...
Well I just said that because people download from torrents and the activation thing screws them over. If not that then the activation cracks and whatnot mess up performance and cause problems.
(There are ways of taking care of that... hehe) Anyway, enough suspicious talk. Fact remains, While Vista has improved since its first conception, XP is still the more mature and friendly OS.
Opinion derived from real experience. You are aware of the hurdles needed to be overcome to make Vista a useable OS - sure, it may be fine once you have done so, but in XP the hurdles don't exist to start with.
yeah, and my opion is from over a years worth of use. it takes about 1/2 after installation to get it to what i need. with XP i have to look at a crap OS, and end up with alot of bsods
Now you know that's not true... The only BSODs in both Vista and XP are driver related. 32-bit Vista doesn't see them that often because they're pretty solid, as they are with XP. 64-bit Vista only sees them more often because manufacturers can't get them right, that's no fault of the OS, that's the fault of hardware developers who haven't spent enough time and attention on getting 64-bit drivers right. Aesthetically Vista is marginally superior to XP - the interface is a little more cluttered and confusing, especially to old XP nuts, but it gets the same job done in a similar amount of time. Anyone who buys a new OS just for the sake of prettier themes has obviously never heard of visual styles. Vista only works from the get go if you use nothing but vista, if there are any remnants of XP in your system, either from drives plugged in that used them, or fils on your vista drive created by it, you have a hell of a time trying to get your files to work properly. Vista is all well and good on a clean fresh system when its absurd hard disk and memory usage greed isn't so obvious, but when you install it on a system that's used to XP, it's not pretty, not pretty at all. XP: Background applications open: 17 Total memory used: 780MB Total memory available: 2.5GB Vista: Background applications open: 10 Total memory used: 2150MB Total memory available: 1.9GB Those upgrading to 64-bit Vista to 'unlock' the extra RAM from their 4GB might want to reconsider! (These figures taken from hardware memory usage monitor)
well most people would install vista on a formatted HDD. and vista may use more resources, but i bet if you had windows 98 and XP, youd see the same thing. you have the gfx card, why not stick with vista and use DX10? is the RAM there to use or to look at?
It's to use, but not if you run out of it! XP does indeed use a lot more resources than 98, but look at all the advantages it has, plug and play support, vastly improved stability and a whole host of integrated features. What does vista give us? Aero, Directx10 and 3+ GPU support. Wonderful. Directx10 offers very little change in graphics with big performance hits, Aero offers a snazzy but largely purposeless desktop environment with big memory hits, and 3+ GPU support is really very infantile so far, with minor performance gains for yep, you guessed it, big power consumption hits. I am unable to use Vista for any real purpose at the moment as I am still barred from accessing a considerable proportion of my files.
Because XP doesn't have any real disadvantages over 2000, it performs similarly and it's just as compatible, if not moreso. I'm not one to randomly use outdated software for no reason, but I do use outdated software when the new versions are unusable, such as AVG 8 versus 7.5, and Windows XP vs Windows Vista. I also used to use Firefox 2 rather than 3, but in the end I suffered 3 as it fixed some extension bugs. Still unstable, but what the hey.
re firefox 3, it works alright mainly, but occasionally sites can cause it to hang for a few seconds. A lot of the issues were caused with AVG-related incompatibilities. re Vista, actually read my post above for once...
At first FF3 didn't work for me because of some extensions and Windows Live Hotmail not properly working. I just checked and it works perfectly fine now. I'll get around to installing it in a few hours or so.
A lot of it arose from the Better Gmail extension I used based on a screenshot someone provided here, I think it may have been LOCOENG, not sure. however, the extension is so horrifically buggy (at least it is for the good looking style) that I stopped using that part of it, and it worked well after that.
