Windows Vista (& Gaming)

The college I plan to attend in Sept. wants (not 'required' but it would be smart to get what their asking for...) everyone to use Windows Vista Business edition. How does Vista hold up in gaming these days? Would I notice a hit on my FPS even if I had a great cpu & gpu? I don't want to order a laptop soon with vista fired up, and then have all sorts of gaming related problems.

Also, when I order (not decided between m1530, asus a1, m60tu yet), do I get 32-bit vista? or 64-bit vista? Pro's/Con's of both? Because some vendors aren't even giving me the 32-bit as an option, which I think is weird... Its less expensive, is it not?

Thanks

 

1. depends on the games
2. how much ram do you plan on having?
3. if you plan on having more than 3gb of ram, then I would opt for the 64 bit, since your ram will be limited w/ the 32 bit OS

games and driver support are much much better than it was when vista was first launched, but you shouldn't have any issues

good luck in school!

 

I only do serious gaming on Windows XP. Windows Vista is still behind performance of XP when it comes to getting the most performance out of your games.

 

Lets say I was getting an 9500M, would it be much of a problem?

Then lets say I was getting a 8800M, would that alleviate the problem for now? Both with a 2.5 ghz processor

Maybe I should check some benchmarks??? The last thing I want to do is spend upwards of $1500 and not enjoy every penny of it

 

That's not true. Vista utilizes new technologies like DX10 for games. Plus if one has Vista 64bit, some games like Crysis actually run better.

 

Agreed. I run Crysis on High in Vista 64 and average over 35fps. With the exception of the typical FMOD sound problems inherent to just about everyone, I have no issues. I DO, however, recommend turning off Aero while gaming.

 

Most of the times, Aero turns itself off when a full screen app is run

 

The performance difference between Vista and XP is very small nowadays. I say go with Vista.

Yea, Aero automatically turns off when a fullscreen app is run.

 

Well it is true at least for me. Most of my racing sims and flight sims run much faster in Windows XP and under DX9 than they do under Vista and DX10. All I need as proof is viewing the FPS counter in my games to tell me that XP is much better at gaming than is Vista. Also scan the flight sim forums. There you'll see for yourself that Flight Sim X runs better under XP than it does under Vista and there is little to no visual difference between DX9 and DX10 at least in FSX.

 

If you get a machine with those specs you'll approach the performance of XP. The biggest problem with Vista is all the bloated crap that's running in the background which impedes gaming performance. In Windows XP I only have 14 processes running since it's an offline rig. That bad boy screams. In Vista I got my processes down to 33 and it still did not match the performance of XP.

 

While DX10 will generally make a game run slower, playing it in DX9 in Vista yields basically the same framerates as XP.

 

And it doesn't always remember to turn itself back on . Hence why I ran in Vista Basic 90% of the time I ran Vista.

Vista Business is recommended for network connection purposes - the same reason XP Professional often is/was recommended. However, not all that many people actually get Vista Business/XP Pro, and you can usually connect to the university's network system (i.e., your hard drive allocation on their network) even with a Home edition. You certainly will be able to connect to the wireless network with a home edition. I've yet to see any place where someone couldn't connect to something at a university due to not having Pro/Business editions of Windows, so, while it probably does happen from time to time, don't feel like you have to shell out the $$$ for Pro/Business just because the university recommends it.

The bigger plus side of going Vista Business is that you can (fairly) easily downgrade to XP Pro if you don't like Vista.

The performance difference shouldn't be very noticeable with a 9500 M - de facto having a 9500M GS (I think that's the one that is actually an 8600M GT rebranded), I couldn't tell a difference in performance between when games ran in XP and when they ran without problems in Vista.

 

I haven't experienced this problem at all. Try upgrading your video driver?

If you need to connect to a domain, you'll need Business (or Ultimate). However, you most likely will NOT need that. To make sure, check with your school's IT department.

Gaming performance in Vista is basically on par with XP now (as long as you're not running in DX10 mode).

 

Not from what i've seen. Most of my games have a faster FPS in XP. I have one racing sim that has 1-2 sec. pauses in Vista.

 

You're right, XP will almost always still provide a few extra fps, but not many. The difference is often very unnoticeable.

Here is a comparison done a few months ago comparing performance on XP and Vista (before SP3 and SP1, respectively): http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xp-vs-vista,1531-4.html

I linked page 4 where it shows that Vista is slower than XP in games by a few percent.

 

But that's the thing, DX10 milks more out of the PC. Have you tried comparing both XP and Vista under DX9?

 

It is very optimized unfortunately I can't say the same for Windows Vista.

Anyway it's a moot point because i'm more than happy with the performance of Windows XP so I have no interest in trying to get Vista to work with my games. And yes my system is more than capable of running Vista.

 

Hmm, I guess diff people have diff experiences. But you know what, as long as you're happy with the performance of XP, that's what matters.

 

I'd say stick with whatever you are happy with. But if I remember rightly certain games require Vista as there is no DX10 for XP? Games such as Halo 2? Unless they changed that, i'm not sure??

Anyway in a few years time "Windows 7" should be out and will basically end up being just like Vista but taking up much less resources. Theres not really much that Vista can do that you can't just do in XP. I'd like to see a list of the things that actually make a difference.

I'm not against or for either XP or Vista. I still have XP on my laptop because it's what willl run best on it with it's low specs. I'm going to buy a new laptop soon and I won't purposely downgrade to Vista, just not in any rush to get it either.

If you have a modern computer that will run Vista well enough then you should just use it. As said it is what the next version of Windows is going to be based off so it's worth getting used to it I suppose. Plus if you have over 3 GB of RAM then you can get Vista-64 to make full use of it, as XP 64 sucks.

 

With Windows XP i'm getting over 100FPS with certain racing sims and over 45 cars on the track. I couldn't pull that off with Vista. So i'm a happy pup with XP. Windows Vista is fine for just all around general purpose stuff.

My gaming depends on XP.

 

Well my point was that the difference in gaming performance (fps) between XP and Vista is around 5%. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Regardless, 5% of 100 frames is only 5 frames. So what's the difference visually between 100 fps and 95 fps? Nothing that the human eye can notice.

Now, if you were getting 30 fps on XP and Vista performed 5% worse, that would only be a loss of 1.5 fps. Again, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference with the naked eye.

I'm not doubting that XP is faster, just that the difference is so minimal it really doesn't matter much.

 

Can someone help me out with a driver question, PLEASE?

I have Vista Business on my Sony SZ750, and I don't understand what I'm doing wrong when I try to install the driver for my Canon i70 printer. This is the website I went to to get the driver download, but once I downloaded the driver, my notebook won't recognize it. What am I suppose to do?

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/c...loadDetailTabAct&fcategoryid=331&modelid=8720


I installed the Canon i70 software, then I went to the Canon USA site to download the driver, is there something else I need to do? THANKS ALL!!!