XP or Vista for Farcry2, Bioshock etc on 8600gt?

Hi.

I've had a laptop with 8600gt before, with Vista on it.
The games worked well enough, but I didn't have time to finish Bioshock for instance.

No I have another laptop with 8600gt and I'm torn whether to install Vista 32bit or XP. It's got 2GB RAM, but I'll upgrade to 4GB as it's so cheap.

I'll only be using Windows for games (can you now guess which laptop it is? ), so XP seems like a better idea as it takes less space etc.

Do the recently updated Forceware drivers provide similar performance improvements in XP? Does it even matter for mobile 8600gt?

The only advantage I can for Vista is DX10, but I suppose I could live with that, if it weren't for the fact that it might be actually faster in DX10 in Far Cry 2 for instance?
I've also enabled DX 10 surfaces in the past in Bioshock and it worked well, fast and shiny

So what should I choose?

I'll be playing:
Far Cry 2
Bioshock
Call of Duty 4, 5
Dead SPace
Fallout 3
GTA IV

Resolution 14400x900 or some half-res of full-HD (1920x1200) external Monitor

 

Is vista 64bit version? The positive to that, is if you upgrade ram, it will have access to all 4gb of ram. Other than that, XP could give you a few more frames. I guess it depends on what you like better.

 

If your going with 4GB, I'd recommend Vista x64. Make sure you have all the latest drivers and windows updates, and it will perform far better than XP. XP no longer gives me more frames than Vista. Used to, but not any more.

 

I bought the PC version of Far Cry 2 but haven't installed it yet (Fallout 3 today! ). However, when it comes to DX10 I found Crysis performed better in DX9. So personally I would still stick with Vista64 since you still have the option b/w DirectX versions.

 

Thanks for the replies.

It seems that Vista x64 driver support is good enough to try it now.

 

Try both if you have both disks. It's different for many people and hardware configs. The difference wasn't really all that noticable on my previous notebook with an 8700m GT. The only game that I really noticed a difference on that was crysis. My desktop however runs upwards of 50% better on XP. And running on vista ultimate x64 sp1 is completely unstable, crashes, locks up etc when crossfire is enabled, yet xp runs perfect no matter what.

Btw, Vista 32bit with SP1 recognizes all 4GB of ram if you have it. Not sure if it can actually use it, but it displays all 4GB on my system after the update.

 

Shows 3.5 on my Ultimate 32 bit with SP1.

 

After SP1 Vista x86 can recognise all 4 GB of RAM(depends on dynamically allocated memory as video RAM) although it can't use all of them.

 

Windows Vista SP1 shows the total amount of RAM installed on the system. But without SP1 it shows the total amount of RAM available to the operating system.

 

I'd say xp even though you have 4gb's of ram xp still runs better for gaming. The only reason I'm even considering vista now is that Directx 10.1 games are finally showing up and I'm using Radeon.

 

Yup. It's a clever bandaid courtesy of Microsoft for the users who freak out that all of their 4GB of RAM isn't being seen by Windows.

 

Vista works best for my notebook.

 

I've pretty much settled for x64 variant, I hope it'll be pain free.
For now I have 2GB installed, I'll install Vista and then add the extra 2..

 

Problem is You will definitely need 3 GB just to run vista properly. So even though vista can address more ram, it requires substantially more to run. I I've found myself pushing the ram limit loading pics and such, even though it never gave me an issue with 1.5 GB in XP. But I do like vista 64 overall, which surprised me, despite feeling bloated.

 

Been using vista x64 for a couple weeks now, with 4GB of RAM.
All the latest games work great, I even managed to play Counter Strike:Source with DIRT minimized by mistake.

Luckily all the devices and latest games work flawlessly.

 

Since I can't update video drivers in XP (weird bug in this machine ) I have been getting amazing framerates and can turn up settings that I could't otherwise get on XP, so I am sticking with Vista 64-bit, Business version.

 

I say go for XP. Before switching OS i would reccomend you check at the Manufacturers website to make sure that all the drivers are available for that laptop model under WINDOWS XP.

 

There is no noticeable difference between XP and Vista now provided your machine has up-to-date hardware, up-to-date drivers and 2+GB of RAM.

There is no reason not to use either, so pick the one you like better.
(other than DX10)

I liked Bioshock dx10 better than dx9... the particle handling is better IMHO... but I wouldn't say it was game-breaking to play in dx9.