vista problem considering downgrading to xp

hey everyone it's been a while since i started a thread

i dont mean to start a new threaad about this topic(please no fanboys just want opinions)

well i have a c2d 1.5ghz, 8600m gs, 4 gb of ram, 7200rpm 200gb hdd

i want to switch to x64 xp

i have vista x64 with i love (i've been using x64 vista for a year love it i think in some ways is way better than xp)

i found it to be very very stable then xp and reliable

but they has been tiimes where i get so mad because the cpu hit 100% for no reason. i know it doesnt matter but the ram sometimes going to 3.5 gb is frusated when nothing is running and it wants to act stupid.
the hdd light super bright for no reason


reason why i thinking to change to xp iss
improved battery life (not important)
less hard drive seeks
cpu idle is better than vista
ram will be at 200-500mb compared to 2.5gb


what's holding me back is
dx10 vs dx9
i dont see the difference between the two and when i seach it up it keeps on showing crysis and halo 1 (really is that a comparision). and i have a 8600m gs ddr2 16shader cpu, not a good gpu to begin with soo i know that gaming is bad

anthoer reason is holding me back is bcause i seen a website where vista is close to xp in term of performance

 

To reduce HDD access, just run "Services" and disable Superfetch.

For improved battery life, turn off transparency (Control Panel > Perf & Tools > Adjust visual effects). You can disable Sidebar too. I don't think going to XP will help battery life any more than disabling those two items. Disabling transparency should help with CPU usage too.

As for RAM... well, you have so much of it installed, Vista decided to make use of it for caching and stuff. It'll free up RAM if any application actually needs it.

 

Actually as far as battery life goes, Vista has proven to be a little bit better than XP. This has been shown by recent reviews of notebooks like the MSI Wind on this site, and by multiple reviews of Vista v. XP Performance...

Also, for RAM Vista works differently than XP in terms of that Vista will use more RAM on idle the more RAM you have. But if you ever use an intensive program (a game or something) that unused cached space will free up so that your whole 4 GB can be used if need be. So really since you already have 4 GB, going back to XP won't help you much in this department.

 

Oh, here's what I was looking for as well:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=242891

Check that out too if you have some time. It's a great review by one of our own NBR members on performance of different OSes and is informative on what Vista is better at than XP and vice versa.

Hope this helps!

 

thanks i will look into it
how much people would recommend me to turn off super fetch

 

It's really just personal pref. I don't have strong feelings either way. You get a little bit faster program load times with Superfetch on, but you get significantly less hard disk access with it off. So I recommended you turn it off since you sounded like you were annoyed by having a lot of hard disk access. But if you don't mind your disk light blinking and hearing the disk more often, then it's fine to leave it on.

But really, just try it. You can turn it off just temporarily in Task Manager (Services tab)... only takes a few seconds to start or stop the Superfetch service to test it.

Oh yeah... I forgot to mention... in Vista's default setup, Defender runs a scan every day. This can be a bit much, IMO. On my system I change this to once a week. Defender's interface lets you change this easily.

 

thanks for the windows defender it scans at 2am everynight with my anti-virus
just turned both off

 

You have SP1 installed too, right?

 

Vista is just a Resource Hog...plain and simple! It seems to use up a ton of memory just to keep its "Aero" look. I'm not a fan boy of XP and don't hate Vista but it is what it is...

 

Aero uses about 50-70 mb of RAM. (You can test this by disabling it and looking at the RAM usage difference.) It's worth it to me. Not only does it look nice, but the taskbar thumbnails feature is a big timesaver for me... it's great when I have like 20 Firefox windows open.

I guess I should say it's worth it with 2 gb though. I've never seen my memory usage go over about 1.4 gb... so 60 mb or so is no big deal for me. But if I had to run Vista with only 1 gb installed, then I'd probably disable it.

 

Yeah with 2 GB Aero used a mere 2-3% RAM so turning it off is really nothing to write home about in terms of performance. LOL

 

Yes. I have service pack one installed on it. I know vista is a memory hog. but i wish it can lean off sometimes. I guess I'll turn off Aero and some more features that vista have. and see how much ram I can free up.