XP-32 and Vista-64

.. beaten moreso than any dead horse I've seen but..

I'm most likely getting my NP9262 from Xotic PC sometime within the next 7 days, with the full works.. 2.66GHz Quadcore, 4Gb 800 Ram, GeForce 8800 GTX, 7200 Harddrive. Everything but SLI pretty much, which would be my next upgrade in the future

It's coming with Vista Home Premium 64-Bit, but I have my XP Home 32-Bit lying around waiting to be used if something were to go awry.

This laptop will solely be used at a desktop replacement for gaming purposes and the occasional term paper..

So.. Taking that into consideration.. Should I keep Vista on the laptop when I get it?

Or would it just be saving time by formatting it off the hard disk and installing XP?

I know Vista will probably replace XP in the future, but I don't see that being the NEAR future, so I will keep those disks on hand.

 

From a gaming standpoint, XP is the stronger one currently.

Check out my latest review showing the differences in Crysis.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=211255

Personally, I will be using XP32 for the most part, but I have Vista 64 on my dual boot just in case I need it for anything.

 

a 64 bit OS recognize the 4gb of ram xp-32 only 3

 

But, 64bit sometimes has driver and compatibility issues. You really need to do research if Vista64 is right for you, because there are some issues. At least two programs of mine do not work, nor does my scanner. And all three items are available in stores right now. Vista64 just is not supported that well IMHO.

Anyway, XP is the best Windows OS out there right now. XP32 FTW!

 

You can't utilize all cores if you use XP home. Max 2 cores for XP home IIRC.

 

Here's some good reading:
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/highlights/multicore.mspx
http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/20...core-processors-will-windows-xp-support-both/

XP Home supports one processor, regardless of how many cores are in it. XP Pro supports two. So a Q660 or Q6700 or whatever quadcore would work fine with both OSes.

 

I made a boo-boo

I have XP Pro, not XP Home.

Aryantes, you're my savior btw. Reading right now.

 

You're right. My bad.

 

Aryantes made some good points about the performance gains with XP (excellent comparisons BTW). If you have your own XP Pro, a Dual boot is not that complicated to do and would give you the best of both worlds.

 

Thanks Justin.

The only reason why I have Vista installed, is so that I can keep tabs on the performance gains IF there are any with later drivers and such, when SP1 comes out officially I'll try again.

XP is my main OS and I see no reason to change this.

Dual boot is very simple, the complications only come around if you have a single hard drive with a single partition, and you do NOT want to format your drive and lose your current OS install. There are tutorials for doing it this way though.

 

[EDIT]Answered my own question, the same memory limit exists in 32-bit Vista as well.

Another helpful link to help understand exactly what is going on.