Why Vista?

[JackBurton]

Vista Pros: DX10 gaming, Virtual machine (Ultimate), great integration with XBox 360, the ability to use a cable card (in theory), AWESOME search feature (it is REALLY fast), better wireless management, not having to upgrade the OS for a good while (I'm doing a full system build for Vista).

I don't think I'd upgrade to Vista on my current machine because I just don't want to go through the hassle of reinstalling my OS. But since I'm building a new machine, I might as well go with Vista and have teh extra features available to me.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: nullpointerus
Something's wrong with your configuration. Somewhere in the performance options -- near the performance rating? -- there's a performance troubleshooter that can show you which things are causing slow boot-up times. (I wish I could be more specific, but I deleted my Vista RC2 partition a while ago.) Most likely there's some USB driver that's not playing well with Vista.

I'll have to check that out then! Thank you. It's not too much of an issue except probably in this early phase since I'm restarting often for newer drivers and such.

One interesting thing I noticed is.. I use Logitech Z5450 speakers on my PC and the console controller device for it says what source type it's receiving. Before in Windows XP, it always said it was receiving a Dolby Digital source (as long as I had it turned on, I turned it off quickly to switch to headphones.. quite convenient), but in Vista, as soon as there's no actual sound coming through, the console says there's no data. It's almost like Vista sends nothing if there is nothing instead of sending "nothing" (in sound data).

 

[LintMan]

My copy of Vista should be arriving today, along with the rest of new new system components. If I wasn't putting together a new system, though, I probably wouldn't be quite so quick to switch.


Pros: 4GB RAM support, increased security features, DX10, improved UI/look

Cons: All that DRM stuff they've added bogs things down and takes control away from the PC owner. I'd rather not be able to play that stuff at all than have it bog down and complicate even the non-DRM stuff.

 

[FireChicken]

Signed driver requirements for Vista 64. I won't ever be able to use Rivatuner or many other apps written by individuals that need to access hardware and so require a kernel-mode driver unless they fork out the cash and get a PIC. I am hoping that MS is forced to lower this requirement later in Vista's lifecycle as 64-bit becomes mainstream.

So how are we supposed to overclock our nvidia cards in 64 bit vista

 

[Nightmare225]

Originally posted by: FireChicken

Signed driver requirements for Vista 64. I won't ever be able to use Rivatuner or many other apps written by individuals that need to access hardware and so require a kernel-mode driver unless they fork out the cash and get a PIC. I am hoping that MS is forced to lower this requirement later in Vista's lifecycle as 64-bit becomes mainstream.

So how are we supposed to overclock our nvidia cards in 64 bit vista

nTune?

 

[TheRyuu]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
Vista pros:

Ability to play DX10 games (when they come out and if you have a DX10 based graphics card)
Shiny Aero Glas (Yeah? So?)



Vista cons:

Reduced gaming performance compared to XP (could change over time and most likely will)
Hardware resource hog. (Can run on 512MB of ram, but not very well. MS recommends 2GB)


Indifferent:
Keys

Well.

The bad gaming performance compared to XP I think is a driver problem and should be fixed with subsequent driver releases.
Nothing I can say about the RAM except to get more
I still think 2GB's should be fine.

New VISTA PRO's (that SHOULD be there ):
Gaming performance should be greater then that of XP.
DX10 support
Better performance in DX9 games.

But they're not are they?
Hopefully with a few driver releases they will be.

 

[SPARTAN VI]

Is there any advantage when getting a x64 version over the x86 (32-bit) version of Vista?

There's a deal on campustech.com to get a Vista 32-bit upgrade for $69.00.

 

[FireChicken]

Originally posted by: Nightmare225

Originally posted by: FireChicken

Signed driver requirements for Vista 64. I won't ever be able to use Rivatuner or many other apps written by individuals that need to access hardware and so require a kernel-mode driver unless they fork out the cash and get a PIC. I am hoping that MS is forced to lower this requirement later in Vista's lifecycle as 64-bit becomes mainstream.

So how are we supposed to overclock our nvidia cards in 64 bit vista

nTune?

forgot bout ntune

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: LintMan
My copy of Vista should be arriving today, along with the rest of new new system components. If I wasn't putting together a new system, though, I probably wouldn't be quite so quick to switch.


Pros: 4GB RAM support, increased security features, DX10, improved UI/look

Cons: All that DRM stuff they've added bogs things down and takes control away from the PC owner. I'd rather not be able to play that stuff at all than have it bog down and complicate even the non-DRM stuff.

You can use 4 Gig on Windows XP. XP also has DRM support that bogs it down with media files.

Seriously, 99% of these responses have no basis outside of emotion. Back up your responses people! You cannot honestly think people will believe that Vista has NO PRO'S over XP.

-Kevin

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
You can use 4 Gig on Windows XP.

It's touchy. Sometimes BIOS limitations cap you at 3.2 or 3.5GB actually accessible.

Also, single applications (unless they use PAE, which is only supported on server versions of NT/XP and is an enormous pain) are limited to 2-3GB of RAM each, no matter how much you physically have installed.

64-bit OSes/apps work a lot better with 4+GB of RAM.

Other than DX10 (and I don't want to start a long discussion on why DX10 can't be done easily in WinXP), there isn't really any need for Vista in terms of gaming (or most applications). Then again, we could all still be using Win95/98 if we really wanted to. Vista makes a lot of under-the-hood improvements (better memory management, new driver models, ground-up 64-bit support) that should help improve performance in the long run. I'm sure that with everything unnecessary stripped out/disabled, Vista won't use much more in terms of resources than XP.

But I would not upgrade immediately if you are a gamer. Driver support is probably going to be touchy for a while. Stick with XP until Vista's early bugs and issues get ironed out.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
You can use 4 Gig on Windows XP.

It's touchy. Sometimes BIOS limitations cap you at 3.2 or 3.5GB actually accessible.

Also, single applications (unless they use PAE, which is only supported on server versions of NT/XP and is an enormous pain) are limited to 2-3GB of RAM each, no matter how much you physically have installed.

64-bit OSes/apps work a lot better with 4+GB of RAM.

Other than DX10 (and I don't want to start a long discussion on why DX10 can't be done easily in WinXP), there isn't really any need for Vista in terms of gaming (or most applications). Then again, we could all still be using Win95/98 if we really wanted to. Vista makes a lot of under-the-hood improvements (better memory management, new driver models, ground-up 64-bit support) that should help improve performance in the long run. I'm sure that with everything unnecessary stripped out/disabled, Vista won't use much more in terms of resources than XP.

But I would not upgrade immediately if you are a gamer. Driver support is probably going to be touchy for a while. Stick with XP until Vista's early bugs and issues get ironed out.

I had heard about those memory limitations. I also heard that applications can only address 2 Gig of RAM directly at one time. Is that also true?

Thanks for clearing that up, I hope I didn't cause any confusion with my generalized response.

-Kevin

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
I had heard about those memory limitations. I also heard that applications can only address 2 Gig of RAM directly at one time. Is that also true?

Like I said:

Also, single applications (unless they use PAE, which is only supported on server versions of NT/XP and is an enormous pain) are limited to 2-3GB of RAM each, no matter how much you physically have installed.

It's normally 2GB each, but there's a setting in the OS you can enable that will allow 3GB of address space for each application. Some programs don't work properly with it enabled (though this is mostly things that interface directly with hardware).

But no 32-bit Windows game would ever count on being able to allocate >2GB of RAM, so the limit is effectively 2GB.

 

[Skiutah]

Will Vista be better for media like music and videos?

 

[JonnyBlaze]

Originally posted by: Skiutah
Will Vista be better for media like music and videos?

I say yes. People will say no because of the DRM but without it you wouldnt be able to enjoy your HD content that you purchase.

I came from XP pro and I'm lovin' this media center. Never played with the XP version before.

I love the way explorer handles folders with pictures. I did have 1 problem with Com Surrogate crashing on me when I was in a folder with xvid files but I already fixed that.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Skiutah
Will Vista be better for media like music and videos?

Define "better".

If you just want to play music and video files on your computer, I doubt it will be much 'better' than WinXP at this. It's going to depend more on the player than anything else.

Vista's MCE version should allow you some capability (limits/DRM restrictions not yet disclosed) to record encrypted digital cable with a Cablecard tuner. However, at the moment they appear to be restricting this to OEM-built HTPCs.

Given the hacks already seen on XP-based HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players, at some point you may only be able to watch HDCP-encrypted content in Vista.

The new driver models may (eventually) improve realtime performance for things like audio/video recording and on-the-fly encoding/editing.

 

[mooncancook]

I'll wait for Vista SP2

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: mooncancook
I'll wait for Vista SP2

geez, at least SP1

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: nullpointerus
Something's wrong with your configuration. Somewhere in the performance options -- near the performance rating? -- there's a performance troubleshooter that can show you which things are causing slow boot-up times. (I wish I could be more specific, but I deleted my Vista RC2 partition a while ago.) Most likely there's some USB driver that's not playing well with Vista.

I checked out an example boot and here's what I got for a boot duration: 93186ms! Almost a minute and a half just to boot up!

I found a critical error with this:

Session manager initialization caused a slow down in the startup process:
Name : SMSSInit
Total Time : 68193ms
Degradation Time : 58193ms
Incident Time (UTC) : 1/28/2007 8:40:12 AM

That session manager in itself took over a minute to start up :Q.

Oh, to get to this, open My Computer, Click on "System Properties", Click on "Windows Experience Index", Click on "Advanced Tools", and Click on "View performance details in Event Log". You could just open the event log, but this puts you right in the boot up section.

 

[Mem]

It's touchy. Sometimes BIOS limitations cap you at 3.2 or 3.5GB actually accessible.

Limit on my XP 32 bit was 3.25gb,however now I'm on Vista x64 all 4GB is seen .Nice security features,great at memory handling.Feels fast.Long life for Vista is always a good point and improved driver and gaming support from now on.



I hope Vista x64 DX10 games that I hear are coming give a nice boost,I do have O& 8.6 Defrag Vista x64 version installed and that is fast at defragging.

So far all my 32 bit software programs work so I'm quite impressed with Vista .


OEM prices are great even compared to XP.

Cons:
you will need a decent computer with at least a GB of RAM(which I have so it is not really a con for me)
Gaming is slightly down(but yesterday's ATI driver release has closed the gap and actually performs some games better than XP) I expect this to keep getting better.

Especially when you consider how mature XP drivers are and Vista was only officially launched today.


I read somewhere Microsoft's next OS is going to be 64 bit only ,so one of the reasons why I jumped for 64 bit version(installed all my drivers for my hardware except my leadtek usb dtv tuner,not bad for 1 day old OS).

 

[CorCentral]

I'll order the upgrade disc from Microsoft. I'll wait to install for 4-6 mths or untill they have all the little quirks and driver fixes worked out.

Back in Nov/06 I purchased the retail version of XP Pro from New Egg. You can upgrade to Vista Business for free from Microsoft (well it's $9.99 for shipping). Offer expires 3/15

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek

Originally posted by: LintMan
My copy of Vista should be arriving today, along with the rest of new new system components. If I wasn't putting together a new system, though, I probably wouldn't be quite so quick to switch.


Pros: 4GB RAM support, increased security features, DX10, improved UI/look

Cons: All that DRM stuff they've added bogs things down and takes control away from the PC owner. I'd rather not be able to play that stuff at all than have it bog down and complicate even the non-DRM stuff.

You can use 4 Gig on Windows XP. XP also has DRM support that bogs it down with media files.

Seriously, 99% of these responses have no basis outside of emotion. Back up your responses people! You cannot honestly think people will believe that Vista has NO PRO'S over XP.

-Kevin

Vista IS *fluff* over *substance*

they could have done the *exact same thing* with XP's search ... and *security* is no advantage with Vista [yet].


FUTURE dx10 gaming . . . is not a +plus+ ... yet

it's a pretty interface loaded with DRM infection

i'm giving it some time before i pay to be a beta tester for MS and when the *real forum people* that i *trust* - not MS viral *seeds* giving a knee-jerk thumbsup - on these forum report it is *mature* and relativly *fixed*, i will buy it ...

until then there is NO advantage whatsoever for me to migrate to Vista ... now ...
nada ... zero ... zip

fin

 

[LintMan]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
You can use 4 Gig on Windows XP. XP also has DRM support that bogs it down with media files.

As others have said, you can't use the whole 4GB RAM in 32-bit XP.

XP's DRM is not as tied in and intrusive to the core OS and driver architecture as it is in Vista.

Seriously, 99% of these responses have no basis outside of emotion. Back up your responses people! You cannot honestly think people will believe that Vista has NO PRO'S over XP.

Did I not list several pros and also state I just purchased Vista?

 

[Acanthus]

I will not pay $150 for Windows NT 8.0

 

[Gstanfor]

Originally posted by: CaiNaM
i've been around computers since the ti99, and used windows since the first release. this is the very FIRST time I haven't been running the latest version of windows by release... not sure if/when i'll take the plunge. not likely until dx10 games make it mandatory.

another first for me today - i tend to agree with Gstanfor that vista may actually hurt microsoft's OS monopoly (at least current version). it will likely be the slowest widespread adoption for an MS operating system in history - there will be many still running w2k/xp for some time.

the only reprieve for MS is that linux isn't viable as an entertainment platform (this from me who has over a dozen servers running some flavor of 'nix), and outside the coporate world there aren't many pc's which aren't used for gaming.

The way I see it, you can always dual boot into you existing copy of XP when you want to game (and we gaming enthusuiasts need to make it abundantly clear to the industry that we don't think abandoning Xp "just because" is an acceptable move, just as we need to impress upon Micro$oft that no DX10 for XP is unacceptable).

Having said that, there is a very significant proportion of home-pc's that do not get used for gaming (the owners tend to be older or have young families with consoles) and mainly use their computer for internet/photography/music/video. Linux, especially flavours such as PCLinuxOS will do everything they require and more, all without costing a cent or ripping up your rights.

 

[tuteja1986]

I bought Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit oem for $253.00AUD (195USD) and i don't regert my buy. I do however wish that i had option to install windows vista ultimate 32bit.