XP Pro or Vista?

[jimbofoxman]

Just ordered a new rig.......plan on using XP Pro for it, but was wondering if it's even worth trying the Beta2 Vista.

New Rig:

LIAN LI PC-7A plus II Silver Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail

GIGABYTE GA-965P-S3 Socket T (LGA 775) Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

eVGA 256-P2-N624-AR GeForce 7900GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 KO Video Card - Retail

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6600 - Retail

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ - Retail

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

BenQ FP202W Black 20.1" 8ms Widescreen LCD Monitor - Retail

NEC 18X DVD±R DVD Burner With 12X DVD-RAM Write Silver E-IDE / ATAPI Model 7170A-0S - OEM

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

Never hurts to dual boot and give it a try. I've been running Vista on two boxes, both with very modest Radeon 9550 128MB AGP cards. Not the peppiest, but I still have the full Aero experience. Just upgraded one of the cards to an 256MB AIW 2006, and the speed difference was amazing, just for that modest upgrade. Your card should hardly break a sweat.

 

[Canai]

Originally posted by: Hurricane Andrew
Never hurts to dual boot and give it a try. I've been running Vista on two boxes, both with very modest Radeon 9550 128MB AGP cards. Not the peppiest, but I still have the full Aero experience. Just upgraded one of the cards to an 256MB AIW 2006, and the speed difference was amazing, just for that modest upgrade. Your card should hardly break a sweat.

Sorry to threadjack but WTF is the AIW 2006? I thought the x1900 AIW was the last one they were going to make ?

 

[masteraleph]

Originally posted by: Canai

Sorry to threadjack but WTF is the AIW 2006? I thought the x1900 AIW was the last one they were going to make ?

X1300 based. It's more designed to be a TV tuner than a video card, but compared to old cards or onboard, it's still faster.

 

[Markbnj]

Vista is sweet, but I wouldn't make it your primary OS yet. There is still some driver evolution to go through before the end of January, and maybe after. Dual boot is easy to set up. Just install XP, and make a partition on your main disk or a second drive for Vista. Boot off the Vista install DVD and install into that partition. Vista will install the boot manager and you'll have access to both operating systems.

 

[etrin]

Markbnj if I have XP on partition C and Vista install on partition D.
Later I ghost over C with the D Vista, (when IF I go full Vista and drop XP )
will the Vista still run correctly moving from D to C ?

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: etrin
Markbnj if I have XP on partition C and Vista install on partition D.
Later I ghost over C with the D Vista, (when IF I go full Vista and drop XP )
will the Vista still run correctly moving from D to C ?

As long as your cloning utility can resize partitions you shouldn't have a problem. The only thing that might become a snag is if you use different I/O controllers (i.e. 1 SATA and 1 IDE).

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: etrin
Markbnj if I have XP on partition C and Vista install on partition D.
Later I ghost over C with the D Vista, (when IF I go full Vista and drop XP )
will the Vista still run correctly moving from D to C ?

Inline's answer is probably the best. I don't know exactly, but I am taking a different approach. I'm using Vista in dual boot now, and when it has matured and I am ready to dump XP day-to-day, I will dump the install on the second drive and either upgrade XP (less likely), or reformat C: and reinstall Vista with the latest patches.