Re: Q - 32-bit vs 64-bit pros/cons?
Let me summarize your very informative post--Vista does some neat tricks, some of which provide a tangible, marginal benefit, for the low, low price of at least one very nice graphics card.
Maybe two after rebates, depending on whether your choice of DRM infections is 32 or 64-bits wide.
Originally posted by Stormy{CAN}
Why yes it does. Vista's memory management is also far superior to XP's. Open BF2 with Task Manager open (dual monitors helps) and you can see Vista move almost everything over to the pagefile even before the game has really started to load, that's Superfetch in action. Yes Vista uses more memory than XP when just in Windows, but Vista also frees it up faster and more efficiently than XP.
Been there, done that. Only difference is I have Vista so I used the real Vista Sidebar in XP,
An addition to the memory bit above involves the Sidebar and the latest version of Everest. Everest now comes with built in Sidebar support allowing you to see anything that Everest can monitor (cpu usage/temps, memory usage, etc). Have used it in both Vista and XP, and while Vista can be using somewhere between 3-500 mb more when just in Windows than XP, once a game or other memory intensive app is launched the difference is usually less than 100 mb.
Also as far as memory usage goes there is an old saying that "unused memory is wasted memory". So what is the big deal if while just in Windows if Vista uses the memory and frees it up as needed. It has also been shown on numerous sites that Aero has little to no affect on gaming whether it is enabled or disabled.
Can't speak about ATI drivers other than what I have read as I have an Nvidia card, but 2-3 months ago when the article you are referring to (a link would be nice) was written Nvidia's Vista drivers for the most part sucked. For me up until the release of the 158.XX series of drivers almost all games were unplayable in Vista due to stuttering (and for a lot of others), but since the new drivers came out games for me have been nice and smooth. So maybe the articles author needs to revisit his tests using the latest drivers.
As for the comments about 3d Mark same thing applies. Using the latest drivers at least for me the scores are a lot closer to what I was getting in XP (less than 5%, which can happen in XP just between one run and another).
Another advantage of Vista over XP is that Vista supports multi-threading natively without the need of an extra driver. And I can also attest that while BF2 is not a multi-threaded app it does benefit from it on Vista, as I just recently changed from a single core A64 to a dual core a the difference in BF2 is quite noticeable.
And yes I am running Vista 64 and have had zero driver problems.
For anyone that thinks all Vista is is XP with a fancy new interface you might want to give this a read,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista
Been there, done that. Only difference is I have Vista so I used the real Vista Sidebar in XP,
An addition to the memory bit above involves the Sidebar and the latest version of Everest. Everest now comes with built in Sidebar support allowing you to see anything that Everest can monitor (cpu usage/temps, memory usage, etc). Have used it in both Vista and XP, and while Vista can be using somewhere between 3-500 mb more when just in Windows than XP, once a game or other memory intensive app is launched the difference is usually less than 100 mb.
Also as far as memory usage goes there is an old saying that "unused memory is wasted memory". So what is the big deal if while just in Windows if Vista uses the memory and frees it up as needed. It has also been shown on numerous sites that Aero has little to no affect on gaming whether it is enabled or disabled.
Can't speak about ATI drivers other than what I have read as I have an Nvidia card, but 2-3 months ago when the article you are referring to (a link would be nice) was written Nvidia's Vista drivers for the most part sucked. For me up until the release of the 158.XX series of drivers almost all games were unplayable in Vista due to stuttering (and for a lot of others), but since the new drivers came out games for me have been nice and smooth. So maybe the articles author needs to revisit his tests using the latest drivers.
As for the comments about 3d Mark same thing applies. Using the latest drivers at least for me the scores are a lot closer to what I was getting in XP (less than 5%, which can happen in XP just between one run and another).
Another advantage of Vista over XP is that Vista supports multi-threading natively without the need of an extra driver. And I can also attest that while BF2 is not a multi-threaded app it does benefit from it on Vista, as I just recently changed from a single core A64 to a dual core a the difference in BF2 is quite noticeable.
And yes I am running Vista 64 and have had zero driver problems.
For anyone that thinks all Vista is is XP with a fancy new interface you might want to give this a read,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista
Maybe two after rebates, depending on whether your choice of DRM infections is 32 or 64-bits wide.
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