Poll: I'm Reformatting. Vista or XP?

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: pcslookout

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: pcslookout
What happens when someone has 4 GB of ram then ? Are you forced to go Vista or should you use xp 32 bit still ?

If you want to use all 4gb, then yes you need Vista.

Is it worth being able to use all 4GB ? Lets say you don't care? How many GB or MB of ram will you loose ?

You can use around 3.2GB of it. For XP you don't really need that much ram anyway. It's not like it can make use of it. Vista has Superfetch which will make use of all of your ram. It's why ignorant anti-vista trolls say Vista is a memory hog. It isn't, it just actually uses your ram instead of letting it sit there doing nothing.

The only problems with Vista are driver problems, and it's really not the fault of the OS. It's been a year now and Hauppauge has yet to release a working 64bit HVR-1600 driver. It's the only think keeping me on 32bit Vista. Needless to say I will never buy another Hauppauge product again.

Newsflash. On a 32-bit Vista install, you still won't be seeing 4GB of ram. Expect a maximum of 3.5GB.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: pcslookout

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: pcslookout
What happens when someone has 4 GB of ram then ? Are you forced to go Vista or should you use xp 32 bit still ?

If you want to use all 4gb, then yes you need Vista.

Is it worth being able to use all 4GB ? Lets say you don't care? How many GB or MB of ram will you loose ?

You can use around 3.2GB of it. For XP you don't really need that much ram anyway. It's not like it can make use of it. Vista has Superfetch which will make use of all of your ram. It's why ignorant anti-vista trolls say Vista is a memory hog. It isn't, it just actually uses your ram instead of letting it sit there doing nothing.

The only problems with Vista are driver problems, and it's really not the fault of the OS. It's been a year now and Hauppauge has yet to release a working 64bit HVR-1600 driver. It's the only think keeping me on 32bit Vista. Needless to say I will never buy another Hauppauge product again.

I have the same problem Shawn sorta. I could not bear losing my Santa Cruz sound card and force having to use my onboard sound because it is so much lower in volume than the Santa Cruz. So I had to go back to Windows Vista 32 bit over Windows Vista 64 bit It really sucked but at least my Santa Cruz sound card now works! Though my Hauppauge tv card PVR 150 works fine in both Vista 32 bit and 64 bit just wish someone would make 64 bit santa cruz drivers. I don't want to buy a new sound card.

Do you know if vista 32 bit is any worst than vista 64 bit?

 

[MrPickins]

Originally posted by: Ns1

Originally posted by: MrPickins

Originally posted by: Ns1
xp by a landslide

vista is the new ME

Bull.

ME was the most unstable operating system I've had the displeasure of working with.

My Vista install has crashed twice in almost a year, and both times were due to crappy drivers from Nvidia.

That's great. Vista is the most god awful slow ass bloated POS I've had the pleasure of consistently working with.

Did you ever use ME, though?

The comparison is like night and day.

 

[Chiropteran]

If your board was DDR2, I would say just upgrade to 4GB of RAM and run vista64. But DDR1 is getting expensive. Vista32 will run fine on 2GB, but XP will perform marginally better and you are used to XP. I would go with Vista but if you don't want to learn a new OS just stick with XP.

 

[pcslookout]

BigJ what would happen if you turned off Vista 32bit page file would you then be able to use the full 4 GB ? I hate having to be stuck with vista 32 bit but I hate low sound.

 

[mcvickj]

Originally posted by: pcslookout

Originally posted by: mcvickj
Another XP vote. Windows XP can only see 4gb of ram period - system ram and virtual ram. If you want it to see the full 4GB you will need to disable the pagefile.

Does this really work ? If so that would be awesome. Though would disabling the page file in windows xp effect anything ?

Never tried it myself. Others have claimed success doing this. YMMV.

EDIT: - pcslookout what Santa Cruz card do you have?

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: BigJ

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: pcslookout

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: pcslookout
What happens when someone has 4 GB of ram then ? Are you forced to go Vista or should you use xp 32 bit still ?

If you want to use all 4gb, then yes you need Vista.

Is it worth being able to use all 4GB ? Lets say you don't care? How many GB or MB of ram will you loose ?

You can use around 3.2GB of it. For XP you don't really need that much ram anyway. It's not like it can make use of it. Vista has Superfetch which will make use of all of your ram. It's why ignorant anti-vista trolls say Vista is a memory hog. It isn't, it just actually uses your ram instead of letting it sit there doing nothing.

The only problems with Vista are driver problems, and it's really not the fault of the OS. It's been a year now and Hauppauge has yet to release a working 64bit HVR-1600 driver. It's the only think keeping me on 32bit Vista. Needless to say I will never buy another Hauppauge product again.

Newsflash. On a 32-bit Vista install, you still won't be seeing 4GB of ram. Expect a maximum of 3.5GB.

Why do you think I'm annoyed? Anyway I'm only using about 1.35GB of ram right now. I only upgraded to 4GB because I got extra 2gb for $16.

 

[sutahz]

Dual-boot...?

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: mcvickj

Originally posted by: pcslookout

Originally posted by: mcvickj
Another XP vote. Windows XP can only see 4gb of ram period - system ram and virtual ram. If you want it to see the full 4GB you will need to disable the pagefile.

Does this really work ? If so that would be awesome. Though would disabling the page file in windows xp effect anything ?

Never tried it myself. Others have claimed success doing this. YMMV.

Would the same work in Vista 32 bit or is it not recommended in vista ?

 

[Ns1]

Originally posted by: MrPickins

Originally posted by: Ns1

Originally posted by: MrPickins

Originally posted by: Ns1
xp by a landslide

vista is the new ME

Bull.

ME was the most unstable operating system I've had the displeasure of working with.

My Vista install has crashed twice in almost a year, and both times were due to crappy drivers from Nvidia.

That's great. Vista is the most god awful slow ass bloated POS I've had the pleasure of consistently working with.

Did you ever use ME, though?

The comparison is like night and day.

Yeah I did

Win2k -> ME = horrible
WinXP -> Vista = horrible

So, in regards to being a successor operating system, Vista = ME

I will concur that vista is leaps and bounds above ME, but I don't see it as being better than XP

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: pcslookout
BigJ what would happen if you turned off Vista 32bit page file would you then be able to use the full 4 GB ? I hate having to be stuck with vista 32 bit but I hate low sound.

Everything you need to know about 32-bit Vista Memory Management:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html
http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/...3/4gb-memory-problems/

 

[mugs]

My personal experience with Vista was two "OS not found errors" over the course of a few months that each resulted in the need to reinstall the OS. The second time I reinstalled XP and have been happy ever since. Aside from my negative experience, I just didn't really feel Vista offered me much. Certainly not enough to pay for an upgrade, which I fortunately didn't have to do.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: BigJ

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: pcslookout

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: pcslookout
What happens when someone has 4 GB of ram then ? Are you forced to go Vista or should you use xp 32 bit still ?

If you want to use all 4gb, then yes you need Vista.

Is it worth being able to use all 4GB ? Lets say you don't care? How many GB or MB of ram will you loose ?

You can use around 3.2GB of it. For XP you don't really need that much ram anyway. It's not like it can make use of it. Vista has Superfetch which will make use of all of your ram. It's why ignorant anti-vista trolls say Vista is a memory hog. It isn't, it just actually uses your ram instead of letting it sit there doing nothing.

The only problems with Vista are driver problems, and it's really not the fault of the OS. It's been a year now and Hauppauge has yet to release a working 64bit HVR-1600 driver. It's the only think keeping me on 32bit Vista. Needless to say I will never buy another Hauppauge product again.

Newsflash. On a 32-bit Vista install, you still won't be seeing 4GB of ram. Expect a maximum of 3.5GB.

Why do you think I'm annoyed? Anyway I'm only using about 1.35GB of ram right now. I only upgraded to 4GB because I got extra 2gb for $16.

I am just as annoyed but I really don't think I will ever use all 4GB but it means I can't upgrade my ram to 8 GB without it ever being a waste. It would still be nice to have the extra ram though to use.

 

[Shawn]

Turning off the page file doesn't make any sense. I am only missing 500mb of ram, yet my page file is 3.8gb.

 

[pcslookout]

I guess not but maybe turning off the page file would work.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: Shawn
Turning off the page file doesn't make any sense. I am only missing 500mb of ram, yet my page file is 3.8gb.

What video card do you have?

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: pcslookout

Originally posted by: Shawn
Turning off the page file doesn't make any sense. I am only missing 500mb of ram, yet my page file is 3.8gb.

What video card do you have?

Radeon X1650. Why?

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: pcslookout

Originally posted by: Shawn
Turning off the page file doesn't make any sense. I am only missing 500mb of ram, yet my page file is 3.8gb.

What video card do you have?

Radeon X1650. Why?

That must be why you are seeing 3.5 GB of ram and I think I am only seeing 3.2 GB of ram. I have a Geforce 8800 GTS which has more video ram than your Radeon X1650. I remember that the video ram is included so the more you have the less system ram a 32 bit OS sees

 

[pcslookout]

How much ram maximum can windows 2000 see ? I asking out of curiosity.

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: pcslookout
How much ram maximum can windows 2000 see ? I asking out of curiosity.

Windows 2000 Memory Support. With Windows 2000 Professional and Server, the maximum amount of memory that can be supported is 4 GB (identical to Windows NT 4.0, as described later in this section). However, Windows 2000 Advanced Server supports 8 GB of physical RAM and Windows 2000 Datacenter Server supports 32 GB of physical RAM using the PAE feature of the IA-32 processor family, beginning with Intel Pentium Pro and later.

Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 Memory Support. The maximum amount of memory that can be supported on Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 is also 4 GB. However, Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition supports 32 GB of physical RAM and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition supports 64 GB of physical RAM using the PAE feature.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: pcslookout
How much ram maximum can windows 2000 see ? I asking out of curiosity.

I think professional is limited to 4gb too, but server is 8gb. I could be wrong though.

Thanks. If I could I would still use windows 2000! Best Microsoft OS that has ever been created I think! I don't know what is was about it but it was just such a good OS. Even though it wasn't meant for home users it was worth it!

 

[Chiropteran]

Pagefiles have nothing to do with it. Windows 32 bit OS are just limited to 4GB total, which includes memory mapped for video cards and other devices. The limit usually seems to be around 3-3.5GB. The 32 bit server OS that support more than 4GB use some tricks that involve some performance penalties to allow more than 4GB of RAM, it's not something you want to use when you could just run 64bit Vista instead.

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: pcslookout

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: pcslookout
How much ram maximum can windows 2000 see ? I asking out of curiosity.

I think professional is limited to 4gb too, but server is 8gb. I could be wrong though.

Thanks. If I could I would still use windows 2000! Best Microsoft OS that has ever been created I think! I don't know what is was about it but it was just such a good OS. Even though it wasn't meant for home users it was worth it!

I used Win2k until 2005 or so. It took me a long time to switch to XP. I switched to Vista right away though because of it's Media Center. If it wasn't for Media Center I probably would have never given Vista a chance. I'm glad I did though.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: pcslookout

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: pcslookout
How much ram maximum can windows 2000 see ? I asking out of curiosity.

I think professional is limited to 4gb too, but server is 8gb. I could be wrong though.

Thanks. If I could I would still use windows 2000! Best Microsoft OS that has ever been created I think! I don't know what is was about it but it was just such a good OS. Even though it wasn't meant for home users it was worth it!

I used Win2k until 2005 or so. It took me a long time to switch to XP. I switched to Vista right away though because of it's Media Center. If it wasn't for Media Center I probably would have never given Vista a chance. I'm glad I did though.

I had the same trouble. Windows 2000 was just awesome for its time! Media Center is great with Windows Vista! One of the biggest reasons why I use Vista as well. To bad xp or 2000 never had it.

I am surprised the server versions of 2000 and xp can support more than 4 GB of ram sense they are a 32 bit. I wonder how that works ? Who knows.

 

[Chiropteran]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

I guess the answer is here-
"Windows XP SP2 and later by default on processors with the no-execute (NX) or execute-disable (XD) feature runs in PAE mode in order to allow NX. The NX (or XD) bit resides in bit 63 of the page table entry, and without PAE, page table entries only have 32 bits; therefore PAE mode is required if the NX feature is to be exploited. However, desktop versions of Windows (Windows XP, Windows Vista) limit physical address space to 32 bits for driver compatibility reasons."

Seems that enabling PAE requires new drivers just like switching to 64bit windows, so it's not really an easy solution.