Please Help! Vista or XP for gaming? Which is better?

[Albuquerque]

Cool maybe I will get sooner than later then . I wounder if I can upgrade my vista home Premium to the 64 bit ?

If you have a valid retail license key, you can call Microsoft and have them ship you a 64-bit disk for the cost of shipping and handling. If you bought an OEM version, then you're stuck buying a new copy

One thing you can't do is "upgrade" from a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit OS. You'll have to wipe and reload to make that happen.

 

[Albuquerque]

Only has better performance on 64bit apps. Games are coded in 32bit afaik, and will not benefit from a 64bit OS.

The games themselves may not go faster, but the underlying OS (and driver sets) will -- which in turn, helps your games

Edit: You sure about all those 64bit available games?

Yup, go have a look There's more 64 bit out there than a lot of people realize...

 

[trickson]

If you have a valid retail license key, you can call Microsoft and have them ship you a 64-bit disk for the cost of shipping and handling. If you bought an OEM version, then you're stuck buying a new copy

One thing you can't do is "upgrade" from a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit OS. You'll have to wipe and reload to make that happen.

I do not know what an OEM version OS is , I bought what the store had is all it is a upgrade version so maybe that is OEM ? if so I will just pay for a full version of the 64 bit OS then .

 

[prime81]

The only problem with this is Vista is not a stellar OS... I get better game performance on XP Pro 32bit myself. Now if you want crossfireX with more than 2 GPUs, then vista is a must. And if your benchmarking 3dmark Vantage, it requires vista.

I've seen a few reviews where 32bit games actually run slower on a 64bit OS for whatever reason.

 

[Albuquerque]

I do not know what an OEM version OS is , I bought what the store had is all it is a upgrade version so maybe that is OEM ? if so I will just pay for a full version of the 64 bit OS then .

Actually you're in luck -- if you bought it from a store, that's a retail copy. Call up Microsloth's 1-800 number and tell them you want a 64-bit flavor instead. I think it costs like $15 and they'll ship you a 64-bit DVD; you will use the same key that you already have.

Or even better, if you know someone who bought Ultimate at the store, they already have the 64-bit disk. Just borrow their 64-bit disk and type in YOUR key when prompted and you have the same result.

For those who may not know: only the key decides which version of Vista is installed; all the DVD's hold all the versions of Vista. So a 32-bit DVD will have Starter, Home basic, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate and whatever the other flavors were...

I've seen a few reviews where 32bit games actually run slower on a 64bit OS for whatever reason.

I saw some older benchmarks that showed this, but they were very very high framerate games that were being hampered by bad video drivers. I'm not currently aware of any such issue. But I'd be glad to see some links if you have them...

 

[trickson]

Sweet thank you I am looking into this now .
My disk says right on it "Includes windows anytime upgrade" .

 

[deathman20]

OK you are right get the 64 BIT OS FTW !!
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Half-Life 2
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Lost Coast
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Bet On Soldier: Blood Sport
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Codename: Panzers (Phase one)
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Colin McRae Rally 2005
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Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
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Far Cry
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Fahrenheit
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Shadow Ops: Red Mercury
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Unreal Tournament 2004
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WWII Tank Commander
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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl
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Dreadnought

WOW that is a big list ...

Forgot Crysis... saw a 10FPS increase from 32-bit to 64-bit! From 45 to 55 About a 20% improvement.
Like for HL2 as well 64-bit is recommend for that Cinematic MOD for the game, says its not responsible for crashes if you run 32-bit after version 7. Currently its version 8 right now, but that modification takes a huge amount of ram up with the great textures and higher res models and such.
STALKER is 64-bit as well? Hmmm, wow even Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, thats an older game.

Vista is slow for gaming is being overrated now, its dang near dead nuts with XP. Just the thing is yes you'll need acceptable hardware to make up for the slight difference there can be if you use slow hardware, but IMO its the best choice there is currently.