Vista vs XP

i'm aboutto buy a new gaming laptop with dx10 hardware (8800gtx).
however, i hear so many horror stories though that i can't decide on the OS.

i was thinking xp for now and maybe vista later?!

your thoughts?

 

I thought I will never switch to Vista but it changed me. In fact, all my software for Engineering running on Vista smoothly. It has nicer interface, too. I found it more convience sometimes, so I don't have any reason to go back

 

If you want to play DX10 games, you need Vista as DX10 is for Vista only. In any case, XP achieves marginally better frame rates than Vista; whether or not that is a deciding factor for you is your choice.

 

Probably a good idea. Up to now, WinXP is still a better OS for gaming than Vista.

If you have some patience and wade through posts containing benchmark postings, you should find posts where the poster pulled benchmarks on both XP and Vista, and generally WinXP did a little better than Vista (the forum I know best is the Sager and Clevo forum, which contains a fair number of postings by folks who tried both Vista and WinXP).

 

I'm running vista happily and game a lot DX10 performance isn't all it should be for my spec, but I believe that like XP it will get there soon, hopefully with the advent of DX10.1 later this month (if MS are to be believed). There is a small difference in the frame rate compared to xp, but it not enough for me to want to swap back and lose all the creature comforts of vista. Don't forget that vista has only been out for just over a year and DX10 the same time, XP was exactly the same in its infancy with people complaining about poor performance, XP is good with the latest DX9c, NOT with it's original DX9.

 

I root for this suggestion as well. However, I don't think DX10.1 is going to improve any gaming performance, since it is nothing more than a bar that sets graphic standard, such as mandatory 4x AA (might be old news, i have not look into the issue recently). I believe is also the reason why the newer 9xxxx cards, even mid ends now have 256-bit bus width.

To OP: if gaming is a concern then sticking with XP will be a better choice.You can then switch to Vista in the future.

 

It's a good point. Don't forget though that MS are pulling OEM XP from their distributers soon.

 

Certain games are going Vista only, even though patches are coming out, sooner or later it will be inevitable.

Ive got Vista and it feels so much nicer and its all easier (in a way). For instance, the Search box in the start menu was an awesome idea, saved me so much time, and you've gotta love the Aero transparency

 

All good points raised in this thread.

1. Vista v. XP performance difference is small.
2. DX 10 games will continue to come out with optimized code.
3. XP wil cease to be sold soon.
4. Vista is now and the near future.

Add just that up and the choice should be Vista. Why pay for Vista later just for the chance today of a few frames rates more in some games in XP that won't adversely alter your gaming experience?

 

I switched to 64-bit Vista in order to get 4GB+ RAM support. Otherwise I'd have stuck with XP. Given how cheap a pair of 2GB SODIMMs is at this point you might as well go straight to 64-bit Vista and hope that Microsoft eventually debugs it to the point that it's no more unstable than XP was.

 

I'd go with Vista on a new DX10 enabled gaming machine. At this point, unless you hold a serious grudge against Microsoft for personally offending you, there really is no significant reason to keep digging into the past.

Vista is just about at that point it was supposed to be after launch, better than XP. It took a year's worth of updated hardware and software patching, but I think the time has come for people to switch to Vista.

Now if you just HATE HATE HATE it, you can try and live with XP for the next 2-3 years until Windows 7 arrives, but I would hate to deal with that final year when suddenly newer hardware/software just wont run in XP.