Go with XP, Vista is dire!

Hmm, another Brazil Boy on here.  I thought I was the only one.     I'm an American living in João Pessoa.  You're right about Carnaval!  I have an external hard drive enclosure ordered and I know it will be weeks before I see it. 

Back to your question, here's another vote for XP.  Even though I have dumped MS entirely and now am running an iMac, I fought Windows for years until I finally gave up and went back to Apple.  My wife had Vista on a new system and eventually gave up and had it reconfigured with XP and has never been sorry.

I'm going to chuck my hat into the Vista ring here. For a beast of a system like yours running with that much RAM Vista will give you a performance boost over XP. You have to remember that a lot of people who have been burnt by ista are trying to run it on XP hardware. Your system is grade A vista material. I have an almost identical system and it runs Vista well. I have no performance issues, FSX is nice and smooth, had no crashes/instability and you can't forget DX10 which is what most new games are moving onto now. Don't go for an old OS that is past its uesd-by date, with that system you need something designed to make good use of that power.

Wingo wrote on Feb 22^nd, 2009 at 9:01pm:


Vista will give no performance boost over XP that is if you are comparing x64 OS's

jwenham wrote on Feb 22^nd, 2009 at 10:59pm:


Vista has two features that trump XP when you have a large amount of RAM available to the system. These are SuperFetch and ReadyBoost. Both of these cache regularly used files and applications either to RAM or a USB to improve every day performance of a PC. Here are two articles that explain the technologies and why Vista seems to be bloated and use so much RAM.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=735
http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2007/03/29/windows-vista-superfetch-rea...

Vista is deisnged to take advantage of today's high end systems and improve performance. As far as in game performance, they are equal and have variances depending on drivers. This isn't where the buck stops though. In day to day use Vista trumps XP, and as far as usability Vista is much easier to use and much more accessible. At least in my opinion. I have spent a lot of time on both OSes and I flatly refuse to go back to XP now that I have used Vista and understood how it works. With a brand new and powerful system like this one, do you go with the old OS whose support is slowly being wound down, or go with a current OS which is still in the prime?

On a little side note, does anyone remember when XP first came out? How everyone complained about it and trashed it alike the way everyone trashes Vista? Now everyone loves XP and hates Vista. There will be a similar situation when 7 comes out, everyone will trash and hate 7 due to poor driver compatability, bugs etc. and claim Vista is better and how the upgrade isn't worth it. It will happen every time a new OS is released. When the drivers are fixed and the bugs are worked out 7 will be better than Vista, as Vista is better than XP but people will still hold that grudge and hate the new OS even when its is fixed and better. Don't hold a grudge on Vista, and accept it as it is now.

Wingo wrote on Feb 23^rd, 2009 at 6:03am:


and both are freaking jokes

period


even the private conversations I have with Vista devs and others at MS place Vista exactly where it belongs... the same place as their current stock value and they know it which is why they are scrambling to try and fix the mess, change the look and the name...  W7


SuperF... can be shut down and the computer memory freed.. and boot and run faster. pathetic.

With 2GB or more in system memory the feature is a dead weight joke on a system and MS knows it.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement\PrefetchParameters]
"BootId"=dword:00000046
"BaseTime"=dword:0ca25fa5
"VideoInitTime"=dword:0000000f
"EnableSuperfetch"=dword:00000001
"EnablePrefetcher"=dword:00000003
"EnableBootTrace"=dword:00000000

*********************************

The line "EnableSuperfetch"=dword:00000001 is the key

The default is dword:00000003 which caches all

dword:00000001 is boot files only

0=Off
1=Prefetch boot process
2=Application Prefetch
3=Prefetch both


Flush the Prefetch folder .. reboot and let the slow boot take place which switches the system for a memory hog to a clean boot and sets up the layout.ini file..


and then run the following command in the RUN box to execute the boot prefetch layout command


rundll32 advapi32,ProcessIdleTasks


defrag using O&O as I laid out to use 'layout.ini' ... and rock on



Readyboost was designed and placemarked for a Intel system known as Robson Technology for integrated disk cache using flash memory in order to speed up disk access which requires more than just a USB stick to accomplish and at the same time the RB system in place in Vista is as useless as boobs on a bull for perf... it was a gimmick. MS had their nose up Intels rump and that was added for them. In reality it has little or no use to a typical user, period


Aces was disbanded not because of their work or their product values but because MS screwed the pooch on Vista and could not even give it away to the business and people who make MS real money. Those people in the positions to direct a switch know what works and doesnt for their mission critical systems so the suggestion of people being 'afraid' or 'dont understand' or 'comfortable with XP' is at best a laymans assumption. Those people who are Sys Admins for major corporations are not stupid or typical home users and knew/know BS when they see it and it says a lot when the director of Vista server development pisses and moans about how he cant wait for the OS to be canned...

MS lost so much on Vista they were forced to cut back drastically and remove everything but the absolute cricial projects from the budget which is what happend to ACES.










To the OP: with any 64bit OS you have to verify you can get drivers I dont care if its XP or Vista. Your friend probably has older hardware, or, hardware in which the manufacture decided to limit support for the XP x64 OS.

All you have to do is list your hardware and verify there is a driver for it in x64

so, score is 6x2 for winXP... yes i've been keeping track 

cool... i think i know which way i'll be going  ...and i'll take my chances with the drivers

oh and thanks for the tip Nick, i'll apply that to my vista laptop 

Cheers

well, a quick follow up is in order:

i don't know why, i was under the impression that all this procedure would take only a day... i completely forgot about the fact that tech guys usually have more then ONE client 

so... my simming is on hold until Saturday  

but when it gets back... omg too cool for words    
at least i still have my laptop here so i'm not completely disconnected from the outside world

Cheers

15 bars is a long boot  (i too count boot time by the number of bars)

my current rig, newly formatted, boots in 6 bars... although, it was formatted last week, and it didn't even have all the necessary programs in yet

well, it doesn't really matter if it's getting it's job done the way it should right? plus, i usually just hibernate the computer, and only reboot when necessary

Cheers

Hibernation takes up disk space and essentially does not allow the memory to completely clear because it reloads a snapshot of the systems last state into PM on boot. Its known for having issues with some video drivers too. I see absolutely no reason to use the function for a system one wishes clean performance on. Office systems, yes.. gaming and perf towers.. no