Windows XP 64-bit or Windows Vista x64?

[AmdInside]

Since memory is so cheap, I decided to upgrade to 4GB of system memory. I have a valid copy of Vista x64 and Windows XP 64-bit. Actually, I have a valid Vista Ultimate license so I was thinking of getting rid of the 32-bit version and install the 64-bit version. But then I started thinking that maybe Windows XP 64-bit would provide better compatibility and performance, especially with games and older software? Anyone have any clue? I basically want compatibility with games, best performance with games and compatibility with photo editing software (Adobe Photoshop, Capture One, etc..). Just curious what people with 4GB of RAM or more are running?

 

[JoLLyRoGer]

Stick with Vista.... I went through this too a few weeks ago and asked the kind people of Anandtech Operating Systems forum to convince me why I shoud go with Vista. The thread generated some pretty good responses. You can read it here.

I ultimately went with Vista for the following reasons:
1. Better support now and for the long haul. Drivers, patches, etc... (XP is on the way out)
2. DX-10 support for gaming (Won't ever get that with XP)
3. Better security features with Vista.

JR..

 

[sutahz]

Vista. Who have you heard of that uses XP x64? That was kind of trial and error for m$ perhaps. Vista x64 ran just fine for me, on a laptop and a desktop. Well not just fine, UAC is a drag, and so is file xfers. Vista is highly supported, XP is all but forgotten.

 

[AmdInside]

Thanks. I guess I was concerned that the gain in performance from having 4GB of RAM would be lost with the upgrade to Vista over XP and also issues with compatibility with older games/programs.

 

[JoLLyRoGer]

If your worried about your older games, Vista has compatability mode too you know (so did XP for that matter). Just R. click your launcher, select properties, and run it as XP (or 98, or NT, or even 95 if that's your thing).

This compatability mode thing works too. I've tested it. My wife recently got some MRI images back on CD that explicitly required XP to run. When I tried to launch it in Vista it sure enough failed. Then I did the compatability mode thing and everything was Aces from there.

 

[andrei3333]

Security is not better with Vista, only if you are comparing the stock firewalls ect...but who uses that ? everyone knows its all in the aftermarket as far as virus scan and firewall with spyware scan...this means nothing

Vista better support now ? its a hardware hog, plug in your camera and tell me what you see... in fact, plug in anything and tell me if it shows up... the drivers for Vista are not developed, most of your peripherals will not work on Vista

DX 10 support ? only one game is worth it = crysis, will you have the hardware to play it the way its "meant to be played" ? i dont think so, cause if you did you would not be on these forums discussing money saving techniques

sorry for the rant, i just had to point these things out

 

[MegaVovaN]

I used XP64 for about a month, switched to Vista 64 and it makes a nice use of 4gb RAM (Superfetch).

 

[JoLLyRoGer]

Originally posted by: andrei3333
Security is not better with Vista, only if you are comparing the stock firewalls ect...but who uses that ? everyone knows its all in the aftermarket as far as virus scan and firewall with spyware scan...this means nothing

Vista better support now ? its a hardware hog, plug in your camera and tell me what you see... in fact, plug in anything and tell me if it shows up... the drivers for Vista are not developed, most of your peripherals will not work on Vista

DX 10 support ? only one game is worth it = crysis, will you have the hardware to play it the way its "meant to be played" ? i dont think so, cause if you did you would not be on these forums discussing money saving techniques

sorry for the rant, i just had to point these things out

Sigh....:roll: I'm not gonna go though this with you Junior, because I've already played Devil's Advocate from your side of the fence. You can read all about it in This Thread if you're all that interested. Then you can come back in here with your hat in your hand like I did if you so choose.

As you're reading I'd strongly encourage you to follow some of mechBgon's posted links. Not only that I'd encourage you to spend some quality time on some of those linked sites digging a little deeper than just what's on the surface.

Do all that, and if your brain doesn't start to bleed first, you might just learn a couple of things that will undoubtedly change the way you see Vista...

Happy Hunting!
JR.. 😀

 

[andrei3333]

Vista is not ready man, why are you pushing it on me, its just like the 360, Microsoft released it not ready an they admitted to it (33% hardware failure rate) they just had to get it out before the PS3, same with Vista, they had to get it out before Tiger...you know this, so dont overload me with this morality BS and realise tha tVista is not ready to take over....Give it anothr year ( or two for perfection) you know how Microsoft does business!!!

 

[MegaVovaN]

Originally posted by: andrei3333
Vista is not ready man, why are you pushing it on me, its just like the 360, Microsoft released it not ready an they admitted to it (33% hardware failure rate) they just had to get it out before the PS3, same with Vista, they had to get it out before Tiger...you know this, so dont overload me with this morality BS and realise tha tVista is not ready to take over....Give it anothr year ( or two for perfection) you know how Microsoft does business!!!

:roll:

Let me guess: you never even touched Vista.

Those that say Vista is good have been USING Vista since it's early days, on multiple computers. Somehow they didn't have any serious problems. Nor did every third computer DIE BECAUSE OF VISTA!! zomg!1111

If you want, stick with XP. We'll continue to be in 2008, not 2005.

 

[BeefcakeVA]

I made the jump to Visa 64-bit on my most recent build. Been using it for a month and think it is great.... basically zero problems.

 

[jdkick]

I've also been running Vista 64-bit for a month and no complaints... drivers, games and applications are all fine (including 32-bit).

 

[imported_wired247]

Originally posted by: JoLLyRoGer
Stick with Vista.... I went through this too a few weeks ago and asked the kind people of Anandtech Operating Systems forum to convince me why I shoud go with Vista. The thread generated some pretty good responses. You can read it here.

I ultimately went with Vista for the following reasons:
1. Better support now and for the long haul. Drivers, patches, etc... (XP is on the way out)
2. DX-10 support for gaming (Won't ever get that with XP)
3. Better security features with Vista.

JR..

Agree wholeheartedly.

I love XP and am very used to it, I was an early adopter of XP as well.

I am getting used to vista, and vista is a much more powerful OS with much better future support.

Some of the arguments to stick with XP over vista that I've heard sound an awful lot like what some people used to say back when XP was gaining steam over windows 2000. it didn't take long for windows 2000 support to dwindle away. however, some people were quite confident that windows 2000 was the best way to go. In retrospect I have one machine in my lab that was running windows 2000 and it was becoming a huge pain in my ass. I swapped it out for a newer system with XP 32 bit, since then life's been smooth.

XP will stick around for a long time, but vista is definitely the best option for the immediate future, IMHO.

 

[Roguestar]

I'm using Vista Ultimate x64 and have had zero problems with it over the last nine months. I got all my drivers fine, all working perfectly, and my older camera, my USB memory card reader and my phone's USB adaptor have all been working fine.

I used Windows XPx64 for two months some time a while ago and it's terrible 🙁. It's an abortion that MS rushed out when we all had Athlon 64s so we'd finally get a 64-bit bone to chew on.

Originally posted by: andrei3333
Security is not better with Vista, only if you are comparing the stock firewalls ect...but who uses that ? everyone knows its all in the aftermarket as far as virus scan and firewall with spyware scan...this means nothing

Vista better support now ? its a hardware hog, plug in your camera and tell me what you see... in fact, plug in anything and tell me if it shows up... the drivers for Vista are not developed, most of your peripherals will not work on Vista

DX 10 support ? only one game is worth it = crysis, will you have the hardware to play it the way its "meant to be played" ? i dont think so, cause if you did you would not be on these forums discussing money saving techniques

sorry for the rant, i just had to point these things out

- Security is better with Vista, especially with x64. UAC is a huge leap in security for Joe Schmoe at home, too.
- Vista has great hardware and driver support.
- All of my peripherals (printer, scanner, joystick, camera, memory card reader, phone connection, iPod as a removable hard drive, not to mention mouse and keyboard) work perfectly.
- Windows XP won't be getting DX10 so Vista's range of DX10 games will only increase.

Originally posted by: andrei3333
Vista is not ready man, why are you pushing it on me, its just like the 360, Microsoft released it not ready an they admitted to it (33% hardware failure rate) they just had to get it out before the PS3, same with Vista, they had to get it out before Tiger...you know this, so dont overload me with this morality BS and realise tha tVista is not ready to take over....Give it anothr year ( or two for perfection) you know how Microsoft does business!!!

FYI most of the upgrades released with the new version of OSX are in fact new wallpapers :laugh:.

 

[UTFan81]

I used Vista 64 for a long time but switched to Vista 32 because after testing it seems a bit faster in just about everything but games especially run smoother.

 

[venusiansky]

Go with Vista. Your system can obviously handle it. I only recommend XP to people with older systems. Anyone that says Vista is less secure absolutely knows nothing about the system or is just an M$ basher. Trusted Installer, UAC, .NET Framework native, IIS 7, Windows Firewall w/ Advance Security are just some of the security leaps included with Vista that are not native or included with XP.

 

[pcslookout]

I love Vista 64 bit but forced myself to go back to Vista 32 bit because I wanted to use my Santa Cruz sound card.

 

[AllGamer]

between the 2 i'll chose vista 64 over XP 64
ironically there are more drivers for vista 64 than XP 64

 

[compman25]

Originally posted by: andrei3333
Vista is not ready man, why are you pushing it on me, its just like the 360, Microsoft released it not ready an they admitted to it (33% hardware failure rate) they just had to get it out before the PS3, same with Vista, they had to get it out before Tiger...you know this, so dont overload me with this morality BS and realise tha tVista is not ready to take over....Give it anothr year ( or two for perfection) you know how Microsoft does business!!!

Yeah, that's what worries MS. :laugh:

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: compman25

Originally posted by: andrei3333
Vista is not ready man, why are you pushing it on me, its just like the 360, Microsoft released it not ready an they admitted to it (33% hardware failure rate) they just had to get it out before the PS3, same with Vista, they had to get it out before Tiger...you know this, so dont overload me with this morality BS and realise tha tVista is not ready to take over....Give it anothr year ( or two for perfection) you know how Microsoft does business!!!

Yeah, that's what worries MS. :laugh:

I have been using Vista x64 for over a year now,lets see ALL my hardware works fine ,I have drivers for everything,56 games so far tested (all working fine),my software all runs fine.

Do note Vista official SP1 is right around the corner,we are talking weeks.....



Personally Vista is ready,and nobody is forcing you to buy it but stop spreading FUD,read up on security and you'll find more to it then just firewall improvements,as to DX10 there's more then one game and I won't even bother meantioning DX11 etc down the road....remember when DX9 was released?...samething happened then ie took awhile before we started to see all those games(they take years to make in most cases).

Vista x64 is more future proof so another good reason to go for it IMHO over XP 64 bit.


Btw thanks to apoppin for this link,

Here's the timing for SP1 availability for current Windows Vista users:

* In mid-March, we will release Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese) and to the download center on microsoft.com. Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1. If Windows Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1. Since we know that some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so.
* In mid-April, we will begin delivering Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have chosen to have updates downloaded automatically. That said, any system that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully will not get SP1 automatically. As updates for these drivers become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update, which will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1. The result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but only when we are confident they will have a good experience.
* The remaining languages will RTM in April.

Link.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: compman25

Originally posted by: andrei3333
Vista is not ready man, why are you pushing it on me, its just like the 360, Microsoft released it not ready an they admitted to it (33% hardware failure rate) they just had to get it out before the PS3, same with Vista, they had to get it out before Tiger...you know this, so dont overload me with this morality BS and realise tha tVista is not ready to take over....Give it anothr year ( or two for perfection) you know how Microsoft does business!!!

Yeah, that's what worries MS. :laugh:

I have been using Vista x64 for over a year now,lets see ALL my hardware works fine ,I have drivers for everything,56 games so far tested (all working fine),my software all runs fine.

Do note Vista official SP1 is right around the corner,we are talking weeks.....



Personally Vista is ready,and nobody is forcing you to buy it but stop spreading FUD,read up on security and you'll find more to it then just firewall improvements,as to DX10 there's more then one game and I won't even bother meantioning DX11 etc down the road....remember when DX9 was released?...samething happened then ie took awhile before we started to see all those games(they take years to make in most cases).

Vista x64 is more future proof so another good reason to go for it IMHO over XP 64 bit.


Btw thanks to apoppin for this link,

Here's the timing for SP1 availability for current Windows Vista users:

* In mid-March, we will release Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese) and to the download center on microsoft.com. Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1. If Windows Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1. Since we know that some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so.
* In mid-April, we will begin delivering Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have chosen to have updates downloaded automatically. That said, any system that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully will not get SP1 automatically. As updates for these drivers become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update, which will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1. The result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but only when we are confident they will have a good experience.
* The remaining languages will RTM in April.

Link.

did i hear my name again?
😕

i should spend more time here
:evil:

this may help the OP decide [it is a gamer's 4GB rig comparison]:

Vista32- vs. Vista64-bit OS Showdown *Pt 1 Done!*

heck, maybe the OP would care to *join* the testing *in progress*
-then you will know the truth -- and it will set you free
.. a gamer has no reason to pick Vista 64 over 32-bit - *yet* ... but check out the FarCry bench [which is one in a thousand games ported to 64-bit] ... 64-bit IS the future.
:Q


--thanks for the personal head's up, Mem

 

[compman25]

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: compman25

Originally posted by: andrei3333
Vista is not ready man, why are you pushing it on me, its just like the 360, Microsoft released it not ready an they admitted to it (33% hardware failure rate) they just had to get it out before the PS3, same with Vista, they had to get it out before Tiger...you know this, so dont overload me with this morality BS and realise tha tVista is not ready to take over....Give it anothr year ( or two for perfection) you know how Microsoft does business!!!

Yeah, that's what worries MS. :laugh:

I have been using Vista x64 for over a year now,lets see ALL my hardware works fine ,I have drivers for everything,56 games so far tested (all working fine),my software all runs fine.

Do note Vista official SP1 is right around the corner,we are talking weeks.....



Personally Vista is ready,and nobody is forcing you to buy it but stop spreading FUD,read up on security and you'll find more to it then just firewall improvements,as to DX10 there's more then one game and I won't even bother meantioning DX11 etc down the road....remember when DX9 was released?...samething happened then ie took awhile before we started to see all those games(they take years to make in most cases).

Vista x64 is more future proof so another good reason to go for it IMHO over XP 64 bit.


Btw thanks to apoppin for this link,

Here's the timing for SP1 availability for current Windows Vista users:

* In mid-March, we will release Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese) and to the download center on microsoft.com. Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1. If Windows Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1. Since we know that some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so.
* In mid-April, we will begin delivering Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have chosen to have updates downloaded automatically. That said, any system that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully will not get SP1 automatically. As updates for these drivers become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update, which will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1. The result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but only when we are confident they will have a good experience.
* The remaining languages will RTM in April.

Link.

I don't know why you quoted me and said I was spreading FUD, I agree with you and have been running Vista 64 on my laptop since the day I got it.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: compman25

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: compman25

Originally posted by: andrei3333
Vista is not ready man, why are you pushing it on me, its just like the 360, Microsoft released it not ready an they admitted to it (33% hardware failure rate) they just had to get it out before the PS3, same with Vista, they had to get it out before Tiger...you know this, so dont overload me with this morality BS and realise tha tVista is not ready to take over....Give it anothr year ( or two for perfection) you know how Microsoft does business!!!

Yeah, that's what worries MS. :laugh:

I have been using Vista x64 for over a year now,lets see ALL my hardware works fine ,I have drivers for everything,56 games so far tested (all working fine),my software all runs fine.

Do note Vista official SP1 is right around the corner,we are talking weeks.....



Personally Vista is ready,and nobody is forcing you to buy it but stop spreading FUD,read up on security and you'll find more to it then just firewall improvements,as to DX10 there's more then one game and I won't even bother meantioning DX11 etc down the road....remember when DX9 was released?...samething happened then ie took awhile before we started to see all those games(they take years to make in most cases).

Vista x64 is more future proof so another good reason to go for it IMHO over XP 64 bit.


Btw thanks to apoppin for this link,

Here's the timing for SP1 availability for current Windows Vista users:

* In mid-March, we will release Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese) and to the download center on microsoft.com. Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1. If Windows Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1. Since we know that some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so.
* In mid-April, we will begin delivering Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have chosen to have updates downloaded automatically. That said, any system that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully will not get SP1 automatically. As updates for these drivers become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update, which will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1. The result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but only when we are confident they will have a good experience.
* The remaining languages will RTM in April.

Link.

I don't know why you quoted me and said I was spreading FUD, I agree with you and have been running Vista 64 on my laptop since the day I got it.

Not you,check again

Originally posted by: andrei3333

.

 

[rudder]

I would say go with Vista x64. I run XP x64 with 8 gigs primarily for photoshop. For the most part the OS does great... just that pesky driver issue with a few devices (my HP printer has to use old beta drivers from HP). Then there are things like the Cisco VPN client not working on xp64... which I use for my day job.

I think all development for Xp64 has come to a standstill with Vista 64 coming out. Overall you will have less headaches with Vista 64. The reason I use XP64 is because my cost was $0 (got it licensed from work).

Photoshop smokes with 8 gigs of ram paired with a E6400. And yes its a 32 bit program, but along with the OS will take nice advantage of the extra ram (keeping scratch disk in RAM for instance). Just check some photography boards about color calibration and Vista if you are into it that much. I have heard from both sides regarding Vista and problems with color correction.

 

[Canterwood]

Originally posted by: Roguestar
I used Windows XPx64 for two months some time a while ago and it's terrible 🙁. It's an abortion that MS rushed out when we all had Athlon 64s so we'd finally get a 64-bit bone to chew on.

LMAO! :laugh:

The Athlon64 was out for a good few years before MS managed to release XP x64.
It certainly wasn't 'rushed' or 'an abortion'. :roll:

Its probably more stable than XP x86, being based on the Server2003 kernel.

The only thing that held it back was insufficient support from hardware vendors.

Microsoft made a very good, stable and efficient OS with XP x64. :thumbsup: