XP (32-bit) vs Vista (64-bit) on a Z690

Hello again everyone,

I know this might be a bit early to ask, but I have one last (hopefully) quick question and advice to ask from all of you.

Once I get my new Z690 in hand, any advice on which way to turn with the OS?

XP SP3 (32-bit) or Vista SP1 (64-bit)?

I've used both and I'm comfortable with both, and have no issues using either or any of their features.

My main question is with performance... are they equal? Will I see any improvements with Vista in 64-bit mode using all 4GB of my system memory vs 3GB in XP?

As always, any and all info is truly appreciated!

 

sp2 will be out soon for vista

i'm guessing 64 bit vista with 4gb is as fast as xp sp3 32bit, but since xp has less processes, it might be a tiny bit faster

but you lose many of vista's features.. i am certain you should go for 64bit vista, why use an operating system that was introduced almost a decade ago?

 

Amen to that!!!!!

 

Vista 32-bit would be fine as well. I just returned a 600 series to Best Buy which had 64-bit Vista and other than accessing more memory (the full 4GB), I didn't notice any difference between my Z90NS from Japan with 4GB and 32-bit Vista vs. the 64-bit Vista Z600 series. 64-bit also has *slightly* higher overhead (base memory usage was higher for me under 64-bit), so it was a bit of a wash.

 

Maybe it took MS a decade to fix all the bugs!

Personally I'd load XP, turn off windows update and relax. Vista 64's stupidity cost me an hour's work just last night and I so my opinion would be it's not yet to the level of XP. Maybe next release. Maybe not. Every new release adds more bloat and gets slower so I wouldn't count on SP2 being any better than the current state -- it is just a collection of the fixes, fixes to fixes, fixes to fixes to hot fixes, etc after all.

The point of an operating system is to run application programs -- I wouldn't consider it an end in itself.

Doug

 

Thanks for all the help and input on this... much appreciated!