Which OS?

[TheThingIs]

I've just built my son a new pc, it's a amd x2 64 6000 with a nvidia 8600gts grfx card. It's for doing his college work on but he also plays world of warcraft a lot aswell....so which os should I put on so he gets the best performance from it?

xp?
xp 64bit?
vista ultimate?
vista ultimate 64bit?

any other I should consider?

[dpSparhawk]

Being completely honest, I'd stick with XP. 64 bit if that's what you really want.

VISTA is a horrible bloated piece of rubbish.

For example. I have a Core2Duo E6600, 2GB Corsair Dominator RAM, EVGA Geforce 7950GX2, ASUS P5WD2 Extreme workstation motherboard configured for extreme gaming. SATA II Drives in a RAID 0 format...

VISTA Gives everything a 5.8 Score on it's benchmark test which overall gives me a 5 (as it's the highest score possible), yet, emptying the recycle bin of a paltry 2KB text file takes around 10 seconds.

Opening various applications is slower than what it was on XP 32bit and the whole OS just seem clumsy, sluggish and a downright pain in the ass to use.

This is just my opinion of course.

When playing World of Warcraft, you want ALL of the very nice power you have bought him directed at the game and not the over bloated OS.

As for 32 bit over 64bit.. you have a 64Bit CPU so may as well use a 64Bit OS.

[Sanj[UK]]

LMAO i dont know what vista your using but.. i got vista ultimate on me lappy (2ghz dual core, 2gb ram..intel 950 graphics wank card) it run fine boots quicker and shut downs quicker then xp and thats it...Stable as fuck but so was XP. They made a lot of things complicated in vista, took me a while to get used to it..if it wernt freee i would have stayed with XP. I say go the xp route.

[Sanj[UK]]

also XP 64 is suppose to have ots of compatability issues with programs and drivers, but that was a while back so i dont know if theres been any progress since then. Check before if your going to install xp 64

[headsortails]

Agree with regards to Vista 64, I had originally ordered the 64 bit version but after a lot of research I found a of the programs I would use were incompatible.

[Mickey]

Stick with the well tried and trusted Wind0ws XP Pro 32bit

as youll gain about 10% to 20% in game performance alone

[BertRoot]

XP 64 is wank. Use Vista Ultimate. Why have cotton when you can have silk?

[TheThingIs]

well I've used vista and thinks it's lovely but I'm leaning towards xp 32bit both because of the compatibility and the resources...10-20% loss to the os is quite a lot!

[Mickey]

well I've used vista and thinks it's lovely but I'm leaning towards xp 32bit both because of the compatibility and the resources...10-20% loss to the os is quite a lot!

toms hardware did a review and compared the pros/cons of it and for a gamers positions it was xp32bit otherwise vist@ for non gamers, ill see if i can find the link to it and edit this when i can

Edit: This to see the game scores
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/....html#3d_games

This for full review


I dont like the scores for UT4 though thats very slow
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/...sta/index.html

[FireBlade]

Well i have used both extensively I do favour Vista Ultimate on more powerful machines that I dont play games on like hi end laptops or desktops. Mind you I have just bought a Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC
1 gig ram
60 gig hd
(Tiny thing) it had Vista home on as standard and ran like a bag of shite i have just installed XP Tablet edition and its miles faster.

At teh end of the day microsoft will stop supporting XP in a few years so its only a matter of time where everybody has to jump on the vista bandwaggon.

[marcode]

ill be waiting for sp1 before i bother with vista.

ive read too much about driver and software compatibility woes (including the crazy deletion times etc) to bother with upgrading xp.

this thing stays on for months at a time.. unless i can say the same about vista (which i dont think i'd be able to yet tbh), it can blow me.

[DJAd]

I'd give Vista another shot maybe in a few months but at the moment it's just like XP but with fancy underwear on to make it look nice.

[TheThingIs]

ok so now I'm leaning towards vista lol

but for either one, 32bit or 64bit? What's the difference really?

[BertRoot]

I'd give Vista another shot maybe in a few months but at the moment it's just like XP but with fancy underwear on to make it look nice.

I'd always go for something with fancy underwear mate.

[TheThingIs]

indeed, that way i can happily thrash the pants off it

[dpSparhawk]

LMAO i dont know what vista your using but.. i got vista ultimate on me lappy (2ghz dual core, 2gb ram..intel 950 graphics wank card) it run fine boots quicker and shut downs quicker then xp and thats it...Stable as fuck but so was XP. They made a lot of things complicated in vista, took me a while to get used to it..if it wernt freee i would have stayed with XP. I say go the xp route.

Well to be honest, boot ups and shut downs are not a concern as I reboot on average once per week.

Don't get me wrong, it ran "ok" in general terms, I just found it to react and feel more clumsy than XP.

As for the 64 bit. Well, it IS true regarding compatibility however, there are lots of patches and re-releases of software with 64 bit support.... I run 32bit version of XP because it's what I have and I refuse to pay for any other version... I tested Vista on a "trial" version anyway if you get my meaning.

[Drogo]

I am still currently running XP as I believe its just to early to run Vista yet. Also at work I have not rolled out Vista nor will I be doing so for at least some 2-3 years. Give Vista another year or so for home use, and it should be ok ..

Stick with XP and I would say 32bit version even if you are running a 64bit CPU, or better still do some testing and see what works best for your setup. Or one other thing you could try is to set your system up as a dual-boot and run both xp and vista ... or even triple XP, Vista & OS-X