So what's the word on Vista vs. XP for gaming?

[King Flevance]

I am about to get a new computer and have been debating if I want Vista or XP. I really, really like XP. I don't care for Vista in the same way I didn't care for XP when it first came out. (I went from 98 to XP and 98 still rocks IMO.) But from how I understand it, XP is efficient, but limited. Then Vista is less limited but also more demanding. So... not sure which way I should go. I am wondering which is better for gaming. Say you were going to have games like Crysis or something on your system. Which operating system should would be best?

 

[Zelig]

Vista is better, unquestionably. UAC is annoying, and some people don't like Aero (along with other features), but they can be easily disabled. Vista has much better support for new hardware. A number of new games have various issues (and various workarounds) with 32-bit memory limitations, which aren't present with Vista 64-bit.

 

[lutzj]

Crysis wants Vista, but XP should work fine for the next few years. It mostly depends on whether your computer is powerful enough to fully take advantage of Vista, and how long you plan to keep the computer, and what games you want to play.

 

[Quintillus]

Crysis wants Vista, but XP should work fine for the next few years. It mostly depends on whether your computer is powerful enough to fully take advantage of Vista, and how long you plan to keep the computer, and what games you want to play.

That's the key. New games (2005 or later) should have no problems with Vista. The further you get back from that though, the less likely they will work perfectly. Once you get to 2001 (initial release, before expansions) and earlier it starts getting iffy - most will work but enough won't that it can get most annoying. That's when you start getting games that were released before XP - designed for Windows 98, they usually work for XP fine (at the very least patched) but may not for Vista, especially as they're unlikely to be supported for Vista. A few even from 2002-2004 won't work the way they're supposed to.

Vista will give you DirectX 10 and the ability to play Halo 2 PC (the only game that requires Vista so far), but unless you have an nVIDIA 8800 or ATI 3850/3870 card, there really is no point in DirectX 10 - it demands too much power to be feasible on other video cards - and thus there is no point in having Vista right now unless you want Halo 2 PC - Vista will only cause problems with old games and won't help you at all with new ones. So with the 8800/3850/Halo 2 exception, I have to say that for right now, XP is unquestionably better.

I also must contest that Vista has better support for new hardware. I know from experience that nVIDIA's drivers are still better for XP than Vista, and, considering that developers have much more experience designing drivers for XP than Vista, this is likely the case in many other places as well. And you won't find, except in a few proprietary cases (such as HP laptops), hardware that doesn't support XP.

As to memory limitations - if a game isn't designed to take advantage of more than the 2 GB of memory that most 32-bit games are limited to, a 64-bit OS wouldn't help. And even with Vista, 64-bit has more hardware compatibility issues than XP. Though if you want 64-bit, you're probably better off with Vista x64 than XP x64.

Long term? There will be a few Vista-exclusive titles I'm sure, but XP-exclusive titles didn't start coming out in significant numbers until 2005. The DirectX 10 advantage also will be more relevant if you are planning to upgrade your video card eventually. But I really don't think you'll have any problem using XP until at least 2011.

Vista gave me a slew of issues, drivers crashing, games not working, graphical artifacts, operating system totally crashing - it just wasn't friendly, even on "Vista capable" hardware (2.2 GHz dual-core, 8600 GT graphics card, 2 GB RAM). I don't think it's usually that bad, but it can be and I'll be quite happy using XP until at least 2011. And playing recent games such as Call of Duty 4, Medieval II Total War, and Galactic Civilizations II while I'm at it. As well as classics such as Halo 1 and Civilization III.

 

[Zelig]

I also must contest that Vista has better support for new hardware. I know from experience that nVIDIA's drivers are still better for XP than Vista, and, considering that developers have much more experience designing drivers for XP than Vista, this is likely the case in many other places as well. And you won't find, except in a few proprietary cases (such as HP laptops), hardware that doesn't support XP.

By better support for newer hardware, I was referring particularly to large amounts of memory, and multiple cores. Mac OS, Vista, Linux, BSD... pretty much everything has significantly better support for large amounts of memory and 4+ cores than XP.

Vista gave me a slew of issues, drivers crashing, games not working, graphical artifacts, operating system totally crashing - it just wasn't friendly, even on "Vista capable" hardware (2.2 GHz dual-core, 8600 GT graphics card, 2 GB RAM). I don't think it's usually that bad, but it can be and I'll be quite happy using XP until at least 2011. And playing recent games such as Call of Duty 4, Medieval II Total War, and Galactic Civilizations II while I'm at it. As well as classics such as Halo 1 and Civilization III.

Drivers have improved significantly since launch, and there are almost no serious programs that lack Vista compatibility anymore. Honestly, crashes are mostly based in user error (including poor choices of software), or hardware problems. Most of my computers are running Vista now, and they never crash. I've also got a couple rigs running XP, which also never crash, lack of stability isn't a big detractor from any modern OS. FWIW, XP tends to demand reboots more often than Vista, my XP rigs often get issues after a few weeks of uptime, while Vista is usually solid for an entire month. (I've got a monthly update cycle for all my software.)

I haven't really had any problems with any 32-bit games on Vista 64-bit. Admittedly, I haven't tried a huge selection, but Fallout 1, Civ 2, Alpha Centauri, Planescape: Torment and KotOR all work fine.

As to memory limitations - if a game isn't designed to take advantage of more than the 2 GB of memory that most 32-bit games are limited to, a 64-bit OS wouldn't help.

Games that have verified issues with 32-bit memory limits, which work fine in Vista 64-bit: Supreme Commander, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., The Witcher. There's a couple others I've played, but can't recall the titles atm, and probably more, that I haven't tried myself.

Here's a good article explaning the technical problems: http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3034


edit: I'm not saying anyone who has XP working fine should switch to Vista, I'm just saying that it makes no sense to pay for XP, rather than Vista, for a new, high performance computer.

 

[Speedo]

Long term? There will be a few Vista-exclusive titles I'm sure, but XP-exclusive titles didn't start coming out in significant numbers until 2005. The DirectX 10 advantage also will be more relevant if you are planning to upgrade your video card eventually. But I really don't think you'll have any problem using XP until at least 2011.

Vista64 will almost certainly be mandantory for serious gamers within 1.5 to 2 years. More and more games are running into the 2GB address space limitations of 32 bit.

 

[Strider]

Getting XP now and upgrading to Vista later may be the most painless and cost-saving method. Assuming that Vista drops in price in the coming years.

 

[GoodGame]

But on that point, what about 64bit XP?

I think the real reason to go with Vista is that it already comes with utilities that you'd have to pay for extra from a 3rd party software house.

I wonder if next gen devices will come with XP drivers as well?

Vista64 will almost certainly be mandantory for serious gamers within 1.5 to 2 years. More and more games are running into the 2GB address space limitations of 32 bit.

 

[Zelig]

But on that point, what about 64bit XP?

It's horrible, if you need XP, go with 32-bit, if you need 64-bit, go with Vista. There are situations where I would recommend 32-bit XP, 32-bit Vista, 64-bit Vista, but never XP x64.

I think the real reason to go with Vista is that it already comes with utilities that you'd have to pay for extra from a 3rd party software house.

I think the real reason to go with Vista is that it is faster when using high performance parts. No amount of tweaking or third party programs will change the underlying architecture of XP.

Getting XP now and upgrading to Vista later may be the most painless and cost-saving method. Assuming that Vista drops in price in the coming years.

It won't, MS never drops prices on its OS. I think the price drops on Vista MS already made were the first ever. (I could be wrong, I just can't recall any others)

 

[King Flevance]

You guys are great. I am having a hard time deciding still. I have also read through the thread of dual core vs. Quad core and I do believe I will end up going quad. (According to the thread, I will actually utilize it with 3D modeling.) I could link the computer specs I am looking at right now if needed. But I am lazy right now and dont want to dig up the site. Its a pretty nice customized machine from ibuypower.com though if anyone is familiar with that site. I was playing around with the Intel quad core configurator on the main page and got that sucker up to around $1200.

In a related field, I prefer AMD over Intel. Or at least I have back in the day around the time 1Ghz processors were coming out. Intel says wether or not it is Dual or Quad but AMD does not as far as I can tell. How does AMD let you know what your buying?

Now, back to Vista vs. XP. I recall ... I believe it was Smidlee... here at Civfanatics discussing the lag and memory leak of Civ 4. Or something of that nature. Now I know with this computer, I wont have any problems with Civ 4 - but he used an analogy about a bridge. This bridge was the operating system Now people were crossing this bridge and I believe they represented data of some kind. And I think (I dont want to put words in his mouth, this conversation happened many months ago in some thread far, far away.) he said Vista allowed a bigger bridge. SO that it was not entirely the programming's fault here - but also the incapabilities of XP. SO part of the blame was on Microsoft's design and FIraxis's oversight of the only "bridge" available for all this data flow. If that makes sense.

Now the reason I bring that crazy diluted analogy up:
I play alot of different kinds of games. MMO's, Shooters, strategy, RPG's, etc. The games I play the least are sports, racing, and puzzle. I play the rest all pretty heavily. How likely is it that another game may run into this problem? I do plan on purchasing Crysis soon and I bet it is the tip of the iceberg of the games that will be REALLY demanding of our systems. Now I am not expecting this computer I am soon to buy to last me beyond 10 years, but I would like to be well prepared for the following decade of games about to flood our way. I am leaning for quad core due to the fact I think that quad core will outlive PCI-E. It's assumption at best but its what I got to work with - quad core just seems like something games have yet to seek tapping into. But in a few years, its highly possible some benefits will arise IMO. In the meantime, I can get some use out of a quad anyways. This is exactly why I am staring at Vista and XP so hard right now also. If VIsta has more capabilities for gaming down the road it would stand to reason that going 64 bit Vista may be the road to go. However, in the same breath... I like XP, I hear its more efficient. It sounds more efficient. But if Vista is the potential holder, I wouldn't want to pass it up.

I really am unsure on which way would be right for me to go as far as the "which types of games you want to play" goes. Hopefully this post may pinpoint my curiosity a little better.

 

[Zelig]

King Flevance: Replying in order of points in your post, not bothering to quote it:

I don't have any experience with ibuypower.com, but recently read this review: http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3281
I would be very cautious with a company that sells PCs that aren't completely stable. In pre-overclocked systems like that, there's no excuse, they should be getting thouroughly hand-tested before they get shipped out to customers.

Athlon X2 processors are dual core (hence the X2), Phenom X4 processors are quad core (hence the X4). Phenoms without the "X4" are either older models, which should generally be avoided, or tri-core models, easiest way to find out is probably just to google the model number.

There aren't any major memory leaks with Civ4 (and if there were, they'd likely affect XP/Vista equally). I've had Civ4 open for weeks at a time on my computer, I just alt+tab in/out to do other stuff.

No computer is going to be playing any new games in 10 years' time. Five years, with minimum settings in new games is pushing it. A top of the line computer 10 years ago was equipped with a 333 MHz Pentium 2, a Voodoo2 video card, and 256 MB of ram. A top of the line computer from 5 years ago would get you a 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 with a Radeon 9800 XT and 2GB of ram. Would be showing it's age, but still capable of playing new games with the settings cranked down.

I wouldn't recommend Vista now if XP was better. Vista is currently a better operating system, and the differences are only going to increase as more products start supporting new high-end hardware.

 

[King Flevance]

Yeah from the sounds of it I may go ahead and start adjusting to Vista 64 and start learning the ins and outs ahead of time where I can. As for the part I mentioned about being prepared for a decade of games, I simply mean a machine that holds the most potential for upgrades in the next few years. PCI-E will soon be outdated I think by some new kick ass video input thing but I think we are safe for a while on CPU sockets. And I am sure PCI-E will last me long enough before I am forced to upgrade the mobo for the next big thing.

Your review link of Ibuypower was interesting to read. I already was planning on spending the following weeks looking into it more in depth. I am always paranoid of buying things online. Thanks for the link and thanks for everyone's advice.

 

[Quintillus]

In terms of memory, yes, Vista x64 will be the best choice. Eventually we'll hit games that require more than 2 GB of RAM, and then more than even the 3 GB you can allow with a switch to a program in XP, so long-term, 64-bit is the way to go. Who knows, maybe Civ5 will be the program that busts down the memory gates? Civ4 indicates that may well be the case, but then again, considering that Civ3 didn't indicate that at all (rather processing power), Civ5 may or may not demand gigabytes of memory.

For graphics interface, you're pretty much stuck with PCI-Express right now. And I don't think it's going to disappear especially quickly. ATI still releases cards with AGP interface and even PCI. So I wouldn't hesitate to go with PCI. You'll be waiting quite awhile otherwise, unless I've somehow missed some major news.

As to CPU sockets - those seem to be pretty steady on the desktop side. But note that having a fast Front Side Bus is very helpful for upgrading. If your motherboard only supports a 800 MHz FSB and you put a 1600 MHz FSB CPU in it, it will run (provided it is socket-compatible), but only at half its stated speed. Which could end up it it actually being a downgrade. You'll probably want one of the 1333 MHz FSB Core 2 Quads if you're concerned about upgradability. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_2_microprocessors for an overview of all the processors Intel offers in the Core 2 lineup. Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Phenom_microprocessors for AMD. I would assume the same principle applies to HyperTransport, thus making the faster HyperTransports better for upgradability, but I don't know that much about AMD processors so I'm not sure.

I think the real reason to go with Vista is that it is faster when using high performance parts. No amount of tweaking or third party programs will change the underlying architecture of XP.

Vista faster than XP? I'd like to see the tests that show that. So far the only thing I've seen show Vista as faster is wPrime, a CPU-test. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that most tests show XP as being faster.

Honestly, crashes are mostly based in user error (including poor choices of software), or hardware problems.

This could be interpreted as Civ3 being a poor choice of software...which would be blasphemy.

I wonder if next gen devices will come with XP drivers as well?

Well, there's no guarantee, of course. But I think most will, at least in the hardware realm, for at least another three years. nVIDIA supports Windows 2000 through the GeForce 7 series, for example, and thus 2006 is the first year they released a mainstream product that does not support Windows 2000 (GeForce 8 series), five years after the successor to an OS that had a much smaller market share when succeeded than XP did. And the GeForce 6 series still supports Windows 95, making it supported for seven years after its successor was released.

Peripherals might start phasing out XP a bit sooner than that, but even then I doubt it will be too soon - drop XP support too soon and they'll lose a significant number of potential buyers. Just because you're buying a new printer or digital camera doesn't mean you've got the newest operating system - it could well mean that your old one is broken.

It is true that paying for both XP and Vista is no fun, though. Perhaps you'd be best off getting Vista Business. That way you'll be able to downgrade to XP Pro if you do encounter Vista problems, but if not, you'll be able to use Vista. And if you do downgrade to XP Pro and later find you need Vista for something, you can undo the downgrade and go back to Vista. It's not quite as good as having both, and would require you to find an XP Pro disc if you decide to downgrade (but it can be any XP Pro disc - even one someone else has already used - just activate by phone), but it's the next-best thing for no increased cost. About the only thing you lose out on is Media Center.

 

[Zelig]

Vista faster than XP? I'd like to see the tests that show that. So far the only thing I've seen show Vista as faster is wPrime, a CPU-test. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that most tests show XP as being faster.

CPU and memory tests are the only places where Vista is going to be faster than XP. Graphics drivers are very mature for XP, so there simply isn't more performance to be squeezed out of them when using Vista.

In any case, I can hunt down some sources for Vista (and 64-bit specifically) being faster than XP, but I'm busy with finals now, so I'll post back here in a week or so.

This could be interpreted as Civ3 being a poor choice of software...which would be blasphemy.

I had mostly non-games in mind here.

I didn't like Civ3, so haven't tried it on Vista, but Civ2, Alpha Centauri and Civ4 all work fine in Vista.

FWIW, dosbox works fine in Vista, and for old post-DOS games that won't work in Vista, I generally just boot (or vmware) into Ubuntu to run them in Wine.

 

[Speedo]

Eventually we'll hit games that require more than 2 GB of RAM, and then more than even the 3 GB you can allow with a switch to a program in XP

You aren't going to see any games that require the /3GB switch in an effort to squeeze more life out of 32 bit Windows, as it's really only viable for use on servers under certain circumstances.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Sometime this week, I am going to install Vista on my home system to see how well/badly it works. Since I have the hard drive space, I plan to put it through all of my games and software (Newest game being Sins of a Solar Empire which came out 2 months ago)

 

[Enkidu Warrior]

What's the deal with the 2GB memory limit on 32-bit Vista? I've seen many systems advertised with 3 or 4 GB of RAM together with 32-bit Vista.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

technically, the limit is 4gb. But what you may be thinking of is the max memory addressable by one program, which is 2gb for 32 bit systems, afaik.

 

[Speedo]

What's the deal with the 2GB memory limit on 32-bit Vista? I've seen many systems advertised with 3 or 4 GB of RAM together with 32-bit Vista.

Normally in 32 bit Windows (any version) 2GB of address space is reserved for the kernel, while any single process can be allocated a maximum of 2GB.

To go beyond that limit for a single process, it must have been linked with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag, and the computer it's running on must be booted with the /3GB flag in its boot.ini. However it does this by stripping 1GB away from the kernel so that the process can have up to 3GB, and tends to cause problems that limit its usefulness except in certain situations.

technically, the limit is 4gb.

Actually, 32 bit Windows has a hard cap of 3.5GB of physical RAM, so there's always room left for the video RAM, PCI, BIOS, etc (and if the sum of those in your system is > 3.5GB, you'll only be able to use 4GB - (the sum) of RAM in your system).

 

[Grisu]

Vista is better, unquestionably. UAC is annoying, and some people don't like Aero (along with other features), but they can be easily disabled. Vista has much better support for new hardware. A number of new games have various issues (and various workarounds) with 32-bit memory limitations, which aren't present with Vista 64-bit.

If you're playing the games quoted (or any new games, basically) then yes, I agree with you. Especially since SP1 I have much fewer grievances with Vista than before.

but if you want to run older games, software or hardware, XP still is the way to go, IMHO. For example take our scanner (HP Scanjet 4400c). HP's message on their driver page for Vista:

If you are using the Windows Vista operating system on your computer, please consider upgrading to a newer HP product that is supported on Windows Vista. HP has numerous products on the market that support Windows Vista.

well, *bleep* you. I'm certainly not going to pour more money down your throat for such crappy support.

It's not really MS's fault, true, but it's annoying for the end-user nonetheless

What's the deal with the 2GB memory limit on 32-bit Vista? I've seen many systems advertised with 3 or 4 GB of RAM together with 32-bit Vista.

To my shame I have to admit I fell for that one too. I hadn't really followed the HW-market. and when a bought I new Dell last year (with 4GB RAM), I didn't realize that the theoretical max address range of 4GB can never be actually fully used as RAM
Though I find it pretty curious for Dell (and other vendors) to expect their customers to know this beforehand (at the time the only available OS with that system was Vista32). When I called customer support, they told me that it only displays 3.3...GB but 'internally' it actually uses all 4GB. Yeah, right.....
Oh, and now with SP1 it actually displays the full 4GB, though of course it still won't use all of it (I guess MS just got tired of all those support calls )