Need OS choice for my next comp?

[Lord Banshee]

Ok i have been thinking about my next machine and most likely it will be quad core and 8GB of RAM with whatever high-end card is out when i buy the stuff.

I do some gaming and mostly work on the machine being Work or School work involving both 3D CAD software and EE CAD software. My current setup is to use WinXP for everything involving professional apps and Win Vista for gaming and everything else and it works pretty good. I would like to use vista for my CAD apps but they have lots of problems with vista.

So the machine will more than likely have Vista 64-bit on it for normal stuff and i can not decide if i should go win2k3 server or WinXP 64-bit for my pro apps. I just don't know much about win2k3 server other than i hear it is a stable OS, not like i have problems with winxp anyway just doesn't hurt to get all the goodies.

So maybe some here can explain why i should pick one or the other?

Thanks

 

[hennessy1]

Both are based on the same core. So they are both more stable then 32bit

 

[shortylickens]

XP 64 bit is more trouble than its worth.
Vista 64 has been out less time and already has better driver support.

 

[Lord Banshee]

shortlylickens,
i don't think you answer my question lol. I already stated i will have VIsta64-bit also but unfortunate vista sucks for anything professional for the 3D world and it sucks big time. So i have to use a XP in some form or fashion. I have installed XP 64-bit on a employee's machine i built which was dual dualcore opterons and 4GB of RAM with a quadro graphics card and i did not run into any driver problems and that was when dual cores first came out so i am 100% sure it is even better now, so why the hate?

Thanks hennessy1,
i found that out a little later when i started searching google. To me it just seems like win2k3 is a striped down version of XP GUI (no theme support) this is good and addition of many server related services in the background, this isn't so good.

So anyway one have Pro/Cons of each? Again no vista talk, vista will be install no matter what lol.

 

[Nothinman]

so why the hate?

Because it's essentially an abandoned product, Vista is where all of the 64-bit development will be happening in the Windows world. So if you're really set on XP/Server2K3 you'll pretty much need server to use all of your memory.

i found that out a little later when i started searching google. To me it just seems like win2k3 is a striped down version of XP GUI (no theme support) this is good and addition of many server related services in the background, this isn't so good.

IIRC everything like theme support, sound, etc is all still there but just disabled by default so it's pretty much XP SP2 with a different set of defaults and the string Server everywhere you'd normally see Pro.

 

[Modelworks]

Winxp x64.
I don't know which app your using, but Maya, Max, autocad all run in x64 perfectly.
None officially support vista .

 

[Lord Banshee]

Modelworks,

Are you saying you have those apps running in Vista x64 perfectly or Winxp x64? What i was saying is i have had lots of troubles with vista (32-bit) with my application such as Solid Edge, Rhino3D and my older version of 3dsmax. Also Orcad Capture CIS crashes a lot and i think i received more crashes with Altera Quartus in vista than in WinXP. But one thing is for sure, vista is faster as an OS. Those apps all load up very quick with vista.

Nothinman,

Well once vista shows me a a stable OpenGL driver, not Microsoft's fault, and all my apps have vista updates i will be more than happy to move over all my works app to it, but until then it is going to be a Gaming, web surfacing, and document writing OS.

And i disagree about the RAM, i've had models, not rendering, but actual models take as much as 1.5GB of RAM trying to do calculation and removal of surfaces. Now if another 3d program open working with something complete different such as the assemblies or blueprint of the models, office open to create documentations, firefox to lookup specs, some EE apps to create circuits, visual studios for windows interface, and the good old calculator for simple 1+1. I say i rather have the most ram i can get. This is called multi-tasking not server opperations. Maybe this will only hit the 4GB range but still if i opened up one more firefox say hello to hard-disk trashing.

Also thanks for letting me know about being able to turn on all the settings in win2k3, i was just wondering, as of right now i use the basic win2k interface for my winxp now .

 

[Nothinman]

And i disagree about the RAM, i've had models, not rendering, but actual models take as much as 1.5GB of RAM trying to do calculation and removal of surfaces. Now if another 3d program open working with something complete different such as the assemblies or blueprint of the models, office open to create documentations, firefox to lookup specs, some EE apps to create circuits, visual studios for windows interface, and the good old calculator for simple 1+1. I say i rather have the most ram i can get. This is called multi-tasking not server opperations. Maybe this will only hit the 4GB range but still if i opened up one more firefox say hello to hard-disk trashing.

I was merely saying that you should avoid XP64 since it's a dead product so you're stuck using Server2K3 if you want to use all of your memory since MS has crippled XP32.

 

[Lord Banshee]

Ok, but as far as drivers go i just checked a couple driver sites, creative, nvidia mobo, and intel mobo. It seems they both have more drivers for WinXP 64-bit compared to Win2k3. So could you give examples of your reasoning? Are you just talking about updates from the big daddy himself, MS, or updates for hardware?

 

[Nothinman]

XP SP2 and Win2K3 are basically the same core so I can't imagine that a driver for XP wouldn't work in Server2K3 unless the driver had code to limit itself to Pro for some reason.

MS has pretty much dropped development on XP64 now that Vista's out, I'm sure they'll keep releasing security updates for a while but I would be extremely surprised if anything else were to come out for it. The same goes for 3rd parties, there's no real reason to support XP64 so all of the 64-bit work will almost certainly be targeting Vista64.

 

[Canterwood]

I would without doubt use XP x64 with the recently released SP2.

For starters XP x64 is FAR cheaper than any Server OS
Also, XP x64 shares the same kernel as server 2003, but doesn't have as many issues with some software. (You'll need a Server class Anti Virus with 2003)

I've found most major vendors support x64 quite well now, (better than server with drivers) and obviously you can upgrade to Vista at a later date if things become more compatible.