XP v. Vista

[clocker]

From a hardware perspective.

Given that I apparently have no life, hence LOTS of spare time, I decided to
perform some head to head comparison tests.

Conditions identical, hardware identical, latest/greatest drivers for each OS.
XP Pro SP2.
Vista Ultimate SP1.
Both OS are fully patched/updated.

Hardware consists of:
-AMD s939 3800+ dual core
-1GB (2 x 512 MB) Patriot DDR (2,3,2,5 @1T)
-2 x 250GB Seagate SATAII in RAID0
-nVidia 6800 GT
-Creative Soundblaster X-fi
-Asus A8N SLI Deluxe
System overclocked to 2.35GHZ.

Ran all tests three times on each OS and averaged the results.

Everest memory benchmarks....

Pro:................................................Vista:

read- 6147 ......................................6080
write- 2635......................................2220
latency- 46.4....................................48.7

Pro gets the nod here, especially in the write category.

PC Pitstop
( Chosen because it's a fast, easy system comparison test not because it's especially good...)

Pro:............................................. Vista:

CPU- 1520......................................1430 ( -5.6%)
RAM- 902........................................901 ( even)
Video-322 ......................................149 ( -54%)
HDD- 264 .......................................192 ( -28%)

TOTAL- 3058..................................2722
(scores for internet performance and deductions for crap they consider detrimental were the same for both OS)

Pro wins again with Vista disturbingly worse in the video area and also HDD utilization.

Not sure what conclusions to draw from this but a couple of things seem a pretty
safe bet...
- Vista not only requires a higher hardware spec but makes worse use of the
hardware it has.
- Video performance is the most glaring discrepancy, so it's safe to assume that
gaming would suffer horribly...must be the drivers, I suspect.

I have no idea why the hard drive I/O scores in Vista are as bad as they are,
you'd think they would have that figured out by now.

Too bad I've become quite enamored of a couple of Vista's undeniable perks...the
GUI is great and the way the Sleep/Hibernate works is ace.
Unfortunately, I'm thinking these aren't enough to justify the losses,
especially with my (comparatively) weak hardware specs.

If I get ambitious (i.e.,even more bored), I might compare the 32 v 64 bit versions of
Pro and see what happens.
Maybe even get Ubuntu in there if I can figure out how...

Just thought I'd share.

[Broken]

These results are all over the Internet, Xp simply performs better than Vista. M$ knows and justifies this by saying that no newer version of Windows has ever performed better than it predecessor in benchmarks. In exchange, each new version of Windows has instead been more stable and secure.

Vista was delayed several times before release, it was rushed out the door at the end - still full of bugs. This became apparent after I ran it for about a month. Although one by one the bugs weren't enough to stop running Vista. But, compounded I was banging my head against the wall. The entire time, I felt like I was running glitchy beta software. I would have been really pissed off if I had paid $300 for it, luckily M$ is literally giving away Vista for free over the net if you look hard enough. They even paid the shipping, lol.

Windows 7 will be out in 2010, or there about.
Vista, from what I understand, will be the last M$ OS that will offer 32-bit. They will also be moving on to a new kind of OS, not focused on maintaining backward compatibility, but instead performance. If this is so it really is a head scratcher why Vista was ever released. Xp is still a very good OS and even according to M$ will always perform superiorly to Vista. Why would they let themselves suffer such a black eye at the end of a generation of software. Did they just have so much money invested that it would have been too painful to walk away?

Anyways, I don't see a need to upgrade to Vista... ever. It's a dead end. It only has an expected three year lifespan, one of which has passed.

[Detale]

I get the "I should try it again" bug and decide to do a re-install and figure let me give Vista another shot, the longest I kept it thus far was a week and I couldn't take it anymore. Thanks for the specs to go with my "Vista just sucks" speech. I guess Vista will become the Windows2K it'll just linger around for a while until 7 comes out, meanwhile M$ just keeps pumping it out on new machines to make even more money.

[S!X]

I get the "I should try it again" bug and decide to do a re-install and figure let me give Vista another shot, the longest I kept it thus far was a week and I couldn't take it anymore. Thanks for the specs to go with my "Vista just sucks" speech. I guess Vista will become the Windows2K it'll just linger around for a while until 7 comes out, meanwhile M$ just keeps pumping it out on new machines to make even more money.

I for one really like vista, been using it for a month or so now. The only thing that really annoys me is the ram usage. It seems so slow with 1GB so I have no choice to get another gig or switch back to xp (which I really don't wanna do). Other then that vista is nice. :ermm:

[mr. nails]

video game comparisons?

[Broken]

video game comparisons?

Xp kills Vista in all benchmarks, especially gaming.
Here (http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/page4.html) is a comparison done by TomsHardware.

[Volt]

I upgraded from Vista to XP some days ago :)

[Broken]

I upgraded from Vista to XP some days ago :)

I'm very sorry for your loss. :cry1:
I hope you have a very painless downgrade back to Xp.

[dineshreddy]

win xp is faster than vista,vista doesnot support games

[DyNast]

XP
After I saw how Vista is like, I'm not getting any near it till SP1

[kaiweiler]

I have been using Vista for several months now and do not really have many complaints.
I do not use it for a lot of gaming, so that does not bother me that much.
I have not encountered any of this "buggy beta software" activity, and overall am pretty pleased with the OS. It runs smooth on my system after some tweaking. RAM usage is indeed quite high. It seems that the more RAM you have, the more Vista will use. I am also running Vista 32 bit, even though I am using a 64bit processor and 4gb of RAM. The reason for this is that very few applications are threaded in a 64bit environment and are in turn forced to be emulated. I will switch to 64bit Vista when 64 bit applications become closer to the standard.
I do love Vista's GUI though.
I intend to keep Vista as it has not given me any grief, as it apparently has to many.
For those interested, my system specs are as follows:
Vista 32bit
Athlon64 X2 4400+ (@ 2.8 Ghz)
4x1gb DDR2 667Mhz (3.3gb recognized)
Radeon 3850 256mb
2x250 7200rpm Sata2 Drives

Vista works well for me, but for those that really crunch numbers and care about a few saved seconds here and there, sure stay with XP and it's ugly interface.

[Broken]

I have been using Vista for several months now and do not really have many complaints.
I do not use it for a lot of gaming, so that does not bother me that much.
I have not encountered any of this "buggy beta software" activity, and overall am pretty pleased with the OS. It runs smooth on my system after some tweaking. RAM usage is indeed quite high. It seems that the more RAM you have, the more Vista will use. I am also running Vista 32 bit, even though I am using a 64bit processor and 4gb of RAM. The reason for this is that very few applications are threaded in a 64bit environment and are in turn forced to be emulated. I will switch to 64bit Vista when 64 bit applications become closer to the standard.
I do love Vista's GUI though.
I intend to keep Vista as it has not given me any grief, as it apparently has to many.
For those interested, my system specs are as follows:
Vista 32bit
Athlon64 X2 4400+ (@ 2.8 Ghz)
4x1gb DDR2 667Mhz (3.3gb recognized)
Radeon 3850 256mb
2x250 7200rpm Sata2 Drives

Vista works well for me, but for those that really crunch numbers and care about a few saved seconds here and there, sure stay with XP and it's ugly interface.



Vista sets 2007 land-speed record for copying and deleting48167 Days and 23 hours to create CD (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/20/more_vista_copying_problems/)

"When Procter tried to create a CD with just 168Mb of pictures, Vista told him it would take more than 131 years to complete the job."

http://regmedia.co.uk/2007/12/20/long-goodbye.jpg


This is why Vista sucks. This kind of shit is just a result of bad programing.
I had a the same deleteing/moving/renaming files problem, that M$ says does not exist.

My system:
C2D 6600 OC'ed to 3Ghz
2 GBs of DDR2 800
2 SATA2 Segate HDs set in RAID 0
ATI Radeon X1950 PRO 512 MBs memory

[Detale]

I upgraded from Vista to XP some days ago :)

I'm very sorry for your loss. :cry1:
I hope you have a very painless downgrade back to Xp.


He said "upgraded from Vista to XP" Meaning Xp was an upgrade to Vista...I think.

As far as the "Ugly interface goes, I have a Vista transformation from the XP Black edition that keeps the performance of XP with most of the snappy looks of Vista. so :P

[kooftspc11]

I upgraded from Vista to XP some days ago :)

I'm very sorry for your loss. :cry1:
I hope you have a very painless downgrade back to Xp.

i think you missed the point

[clocktower]

winxp wins hands down :)

[peat moss]

I'm very sorry for your loss. :cry1:
I hope you have a very painless downgrade back to Xp.


He said "upgraded from Vista to XP" Meaning Xp was an upgrade to Vista...I think.

As far as the "Ugly interface goes, I have a Vista transformation from the XP Black edition that keeps the performance of XP with most of the snappy looks of Vista. so :P

Good point Detale , I'm looking for the New XP Dark to try just for the hell of it . I don't get too excited about anything Vista has to offer .

[scottwile]

Vista sets 2007 land-speed record for copying and deleting48167 Days and 23 hours to create CD (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/20/more_vista_copying_problems/)

"When Procter tried to create a CD with just 168Mb of pictures, Vista told him it would take more than 131 years to complete the job."

http://regmedia.co.uk/2007/12/20/long-goodbye.jpg


This is why Vista sucks. This kind of shit is just a result of bad programing.
I had a the same deleteing/moving/renaming files problem, that M$ says does not exist.

My system:
C2D 6600 OC'ed to 3Ghz
2 GBs of DDR2 800
2 SATA2 Segate HDs set in RAID 0
ATI Radeon X1950 PRO 512 MBs memory





and XP has never crashed or caused a similar error??

[Broken]

and XP has never crashed or caused a similar error??


Post it....
I would love to hear about about anything similar in Xp. Not the rare case, but a mass experienced case like this.

Besides. For Vista, I really have a long list to complain about.
Google, Vista bugs (http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu5oOe3ZHEIUBv6JXNyoA?p=Vista+bugs&fr=b2ie7&ei=UTF-8)





I'm very sorry for your loss. :cry1:
I hope you have a very painless downgrade back to Xp.


He said "upgraded from Vista to XP" Meaning Xp was an upgrade to Vista...I think.



http://i7.tinypic.com/8b7lyk8.jpg

[MrX]

wouldnt touch vista with a 10ft poll for at least another 3 - 6 months

[100%]

@clocker - thanks for doing the tests.

[sanjana]

Vista sucks because of it does not support some of the old hardware and also it is very buggy too much resource eater.

[clocker]

@clocker - thanks for doing the tests.
No prob.
Oddly, even after seeing the results on my own machine, I'm still using Vista.
I did add another gig of RAM ( now running 4 x 512MB) which helped a bit.
I have no hardware issues, BSODs or other problems and whenever I do boot to XP it looks painfully flat and boring.

So I'm a sucker for eye candy...sue me.


Vista sucks because of it does not support some of the old hardware and also it is very buggy too much resource eater.
As long as people insist that software supports "old hardware" we're going to be saddled with bad compromises.

Hardware advances at a blinding rate and at some point you just have to let the old stuff die.
Besides, the "resources" you so jealously guard are abundant (and cheap) in new PCs.
Hell, I could buy 8 GB of DDR2 memory for what a single gig of DDR costs.

[sanjana]

No prob.
Oddly, even after seeing the results on my own machine, I'm still using Vista.
I did add another gig of RAM ( now running 4 x 512MB) which helped a bit.
I have no hardware issues, BSODs or other problems and whenever I do boot to XP it looks painfully flat and boring.

So I'm a sucker for eye candy...sue me.


Vista sucks because of it does not support some of the old hardware and also it is very buggy too much resource eater.
As long as people insist that software supports "old hardware" we're going to be saddled with bad compromises.

Hardware advances at a blinding rate and at some point you just have to let the old stuff die.

In order to shift to Vista we have to change the entire PC. If that was the case then I have plenty of other options too.. like shifting to Linux atleast that supports more old hardwares than Vista does...

[clocker]

In order to shift to Vista we have to change the entire PC.
My XP box made the change to Vista Ultimate with no problem.
Granted, it was a pretty nice machine to start with but with the exception of DX10, I'm not missing anything.

What do you consider the service life of a PC to be?

Personally, I think three years.
Now, this means it's probably running SATA hard drives, a 64 bit CPU, DDR RAM (with at least 1GB) and a PCI-E vid card.

Such a machine can easily handle one of the flavors of Vista.

As far as Linux goes...
So far I haven't figured out how to get my Creative X-fi sound card to work in Ubuntu nor have I managed to install Ubuntu to a RAID array.
Windows will do both with ease.

Naturally, I'm more familiar with Windows so that has to be factored in.

This should not be construed as Vista fanboi-ism...I'm aware of all the shortcomings and also aware of what Vista was supposed to be before MS started gutting it.
I am also not a real PC power user, so my expectations are lower than many folks, but I still don't consider Vista to be the unmitigated disaster that others do.

YMMV.

[sanjana]

In order to shift to Vista we have to change the entire PC.
My XP box made the change to Vista Ultimate with
YMMV.

Please check the link and let me know why people want to go back to xp.

http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=42987

[clocker]

Let's ignore the link and instead you tell me about your experience with Vista.

[sanjana]

Let me tell you the experience. I am using the P5WD2-E-Premium. I had lot of difficulty installing the Vista and at last I installed. However this board is not compatible with Vista. I purchased recently. 1 year back with 975X chipset. I also use the Mercury TV tuner I am not able to find any drivers for that.

My Vista was keep giving me the Bluescreen error whenever I search the files and However no error with xp. It works like crystal clear.

I still want to stick with XP and if you think that Vista has good looks then we can get the Vista transformation pack.

In my opinion. I will wait for the next operating system in future or else stay what I have it.

[clocker]

You are blaming the OS for problems that are clearly the vid capture card's fault.
A quick google for drivers showed that people have been having problems with that card since 2002.

Now I see why you're so attached to "old hardware" support.

Also, I see from the Asus support forum that your motherboard is not supported for Vista.
A shame, but again, not the fault of the OS.

If you wait for the next OS to come out what do you think the chances are that it will work on your "old hardware"?

[sanjana]

You are blaming the OS for problems that are clearly the vid capture card's fault.
A quick google for drivers showed that people have been having problems with that card since 2002.

Now I see why you're so attached to "old hardware" support.

Also, I see from the Asus support forum that your motherboard is not supported for Vista.
A shame, but again, not the fault of the OS.

If you wait for the next OS to come out what do you think the chances are that it will work on your "old hardware"?

I want to know one thing. You create the hardware to specific to OS or you create the OS to run the hardware.

I don't understand this. Secondly ASUS launched this board when the beta version was released and they were waiting for final version unless they don't have any final version they cannot test and make changes to the motherboard.

If Vista is one of the best then there should be something bad with vista where people are switching back to XP. I already gave the link to this.. Currently I don't think I will change my hardware just to run on Vista.

I will wait for another 2-3years. If something new in terms of hardware or speed. I will upgrade. Not because of OS I will change the entire hardware... You know there are people who are still using 98 from quite a long time and they don't want to change the hardware and nor the OS.They are happy with it. I believe if you are happy with Vista and use DX10.. Please go ahead and use it. I am happy with XP..:yup:

[Ronnie Coleman]

When WindowsXP was released, it required average PC for very good performance. Windows Vista requires much more than average PC. And, even with non-average hardware configuration, Vista doesn't run smoothly as WinXP. That was deal-breaker for me.

So, I am using Windows XP Professional + Service Pack 2.

P.S. To anyone uninformed, Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 1 doesn't allow patching of theme.dll system file. That means visual style can't be used if it is installed while it doesn't bring any important update.

[clocker]

... You know there are people who are still using 98 from quite a long time and they don't want to change the hardware and nor the OS.They are happy with it.
Oh, tell me about it...I used to work in a small PC repair shop and saw plenty of 98 machines.
Usually, they were in because the hardware was getting too old and failing or because they couldn't install their iPod software.
Or they couldn't play a DVD, or they couldn't open an email attachment...etc.

Sadly, both sides of the industry- hardware and software- are in cahoots and the goal is to keep your feet firmly on the upgrade path.
That's just the way it is- you gotta pay to play.

BTW, the motherboard you bought just a year ago was dead in the water before it was even released.
The P4 CPU it supports was a lame duck (already superceded by the C2D) and, given it's limited future upgradability, I'm not surprised Asus didn't spend much time trying to ensure it's Vista compatability.

I'm reconfiguring my PC (again!) soon and the first Os to go back on will be the two flavors of XP (Pro 32 and 64 bit)- so it's not like I have anything against legacy operating systems.
If I had more recent hardware though- specifically, a platform that ran DDR2- it'd be Vista all the way.

[Mr JP Fugley]

I use XP SP2 Student licence on one machine and Vista Ultimate on another. Both of which will happily take updates from MS.

The only reason I use Vista is that I wanted to see what it looked like and was re-doing that PC anyway. I like the way it looks so I have left it on. I also use some of the available gadgets in the sidebar as well. That's a fun idea. Ironically I use the fuzzy clock as a kind of retro homage. It gives times as twenty past twenty five past etc. Nothing more specific than the nearest five minutes. I enjoy the irony and it's as accurate as I need to be in real life.

I can assure you the PC it's on is far from high spec, however for what I want it to do that's not an issue, so I just go for the fun and the pretty looks. It also appears to be really stable, however as stated I don't really push it very hard.

[clocker]

OK, more stats.

First of all, I broke the RAID array and pulled one of the 250GB drives out (it's now in an external eSATA drive case...more about why later).

I then partitioned the remaining drive into three equal partitions and installed XP Pro x64 (SP2) on the first, XP Pro x86 (SP2) on the second and XP Pro x86 (SP3) to the last.

I then cycled through the partitions, running the Everest memory benchmarks (one time).
Repeated the cycle five times and averaged the results.

* I did it this way to even out any impact that heat might have on the results...not sure it was necessary but it seemed like the way to go.*

The results were remarkably consistent- and equal- between the three OS's.
The 64 bit was slightly slower in "write" (22 pts.) but had consistently lower "latency" (54.2 v. 56.3 for 32 bit).

The 64 bit was also the fastest to boot...basically, about 1/3 pass of the progress bar before hitting the desktop compared to over one pass for the 32 bit versions.

Although numerically there was no real clear winner, I made a gut decision to declare the 64 bit Pro the winner.

You might have made another choice and I admit that there were a lot of intangibles involved, not the least of which is an irrational opinion that somehow a 64 bit OS should work better with a 64 bit chip.

So sue me...

Then I destroyed all three installs ("killMBR") and repartitioned the drive again...this time into two equal sizes.

64 bit Pro went into the first and Vista Ultimate (32 bit...sorry, it's all I've got) in the remaining space.

BTW, none of this would have practical without nLite and it's cousin, vLite.
If you have yet to try them, these apps make a custom install disk with Service Packs and drivers integrated...among other things.
A nLite install of XP Pro takes about 12 minutes.
Seriously.

After install, both OS's got fully updated and the appropriate programs put on each.
This was followed by tweaking, defrags and personalizing.
All told, about 8 hours.

Then each OS went through a 24 hour stress test (WinStress).
Neither failed.

Finally came testing of a variety of video drivers (newest and some older nVidia and Omegas as well).

Whew.

Finally, a head to head at PC Pitstop.

The CPU and memory tests were a wash but video and disk I/O were Pro's by a long shot.
Pro almost doubled Vista's video performance (248 to 145).

No wonder gamers hate Vista.

Next up is going to be file copying.
This is why the second SATA drive went into the external case...it's SATAII and combined with the eSATA transfer should make this as painless as possible.

I have about a 50GB folder made up of tons of different things...pictures, apps, drivers, ISOs, etc. that will be the test piece.

I'll let you know how it goes.

[makoon222]

As far as Linux goes...
So far I haven't figured out how to get my Creative X-fi sound card to work in Ubuntu nor have I managed to install Ubuntu to a RAID array.
Windows will do both with ease.



Creative has released a 64 bit beta Linux driver (http://opensource.creative.com/soundcard.html) for X-fi. Beats me why they chose 64 bit over 32 bit. Anyway, it's enormously disappointing that they didn't release these before mid-2007. X-fi has after all been on the market since mid-2005. Talk about letting the customers down.

Creative even has the guts to take money for Vista drivers of older sound cards. Something to have in mind when you consider buying from them next time. Are we supposed to buy new sound cards for every Windows release?

[Mr JP Fugley]

I'll have no truck with any species of Linux until it gets decent support for wifi devices.

To me wireless interwebing has become an integral part of the computing World.

[clocker]

File transfer results...

First of all, a weirdness I ran into with Vista.
My external drive connects via eSATA to the same controller as the internal drive (nVidia NF4).
This allows for identical transfer rates and is much faster than USB (proof to follow).

In XP, when the external drive is switched on, after a few seconds Autoplay pops up and the drive is accessible.

Vista however, does nothing.
I googled the problem and discovered that it's pretty common and workaround success was spotty.

I tried a few methods and only one proved semi-useful.
This involved replacing some System 32 drivers and still requires that I scan for new hardware after the drive is activated.
During the scan the OS locks up and won't respond for about 30 seconds, then comes alive and the external drive appears.
Also, if the drive is turned off while in Vista, unless I rescan the hardware (the external then disappears) the OS will take forever to shut down...I assume it's trying to close a drive which it can't find and just gets petulant.

Very clunky.
Not sure if this behaviour is OS or driver based.
Installing Vista SP1 RC1 did not alleviate the issue (admittedly, I had no reason to think it would) and I would consider this to be a black mark against Vista.

Anyway, I did perform the file transfer test and the results are as follows:

I'll start with some HDD Tach results for the two drives.

Vista: Internal drive, then external...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v78/clocker/VisI.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v78/clocker/VisE.jpg

XP Pro: Internal, external...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v78/clocker/XPI.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v78/clocker/XPX.jpg

A shot of the folder to be copied...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v78/clocker/Folder.jpg

Vista took 20 minutes to copy the folder and XP Pro took 13 minutes.

This is relatively consistent with the HDD Tach results (which also correlate well with the Disk I/O scores at PC Pitstop). To be fair though, I did NOT run into the absurdly long copy times reported by others in Vista.
That problem may be unique to the type of files being copied, I'm not sure.

Essentially, for reasons unknown to me, the newer OS handles the HDDs less efficiently than the previous version.

Again, this may be a driver issue and may in fact be specific to my older chipset.
Perhaps the newer Intel platforms do not suffer from this but I don't have one to test.

So, that's how it works for me.

Just for giggles here is my Vista Experience Index...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v78/clocker/Perf.jpg

Given my titularly "old" hardware spec, not too shabby.

Next up, moving back into the TJ-07 case.

[grimms]

I get the "I should try it again" bug and decide to do a re-install and figure let me give Vista another shot, the longest I kept it thus far was a week and I couldn't take it anymore. Thanks for the specs to go with my "Vista just sucks" speech. I guess Vista will become the Windows2K it'll just linger around for a while until 7 comes out, meanwhile M$ just keeps pumping it out on new machines to make even more money.

I for one really like vista, been using it for a month or so now. The only thing that really annoys me is the ram usage. It seems so slow with 1GB so I have no choice to get another gig or switch back to xp (which I really don't wanna do). Other then that vista is nice. :ermm:

Don't let Vista's beauty fool you. It still lags behind XP big time in all areas. The support for device drivers are still horrible and where in year 2 since Vista has launched. It was a money thing for Microsoft (IMO). They should of focused more on SP3(Thank god they finally are now). They need to built a new OS from the ground up eliminating any pre existing code or ms dos. How there going to pull that off i don't know.:whistling We'll see though.

[Shiranai_Baka]

I for one really like vista, been using it for a month or so now. The only thing that really annoys me is the ram usage. It seems so slow with 1GB so I have no choice to get another gig or switch back to xp (which I really don't wanna do). Other then that vista is nice. :ermm:

Don't let Vista's beauty fool you. It still lags behind XP big time in all areas. The support for device drivers are still horrible and where in year 2 since Vista has launched. It was a money thing for Microsoft (IMO). They should of focused more on SP3(Thank god they finally are now). They need to built a new OS from the ground up eliminating any pre existing code or ms dos. How there going to pull that off i don't know.:whistling We'll see though.

But MS did built vista from scratch.

[clocker]

Don't let Vista's beauty fool you. It still lags behind XP big time in all areas. The support for device drivers are still horrible...
When did it become Microsoft's responsibility to provide drivers for third party hardware?

It's not like MS kept Vista a big secret (hell, they were giving away betas for public testing to anyone who wanted them), why aren't you directing this malice at the companies who didn't prepare their product's drivers for timely release instead of MS?


As I recall, there was a tidalwave of bitching about XP when it first came out for exactly the same reason.

[Acid_death69]

Don't let Vista's beauty fool you. It still lags behind XP big time in all areas. The support for device drivers are still horrible...
When did it become Microsoft's responsibility to provide drivers for third party hardware?

It's not like MS kept Vista a big secret (hell, they were giving away betas for public testing to anyone who wanted them), why aren't you directing this malice at the companies who didn't prepare their product's drivers for timely release instead of MS?


As I recall, there was a tidalwave of bitching about XP when it first came out for exactly the same reason.

was just thinking about all the bitching that XP had to put up with when it came out. I dont know what every one else thought asbout the other OS before XP and Vista came out.

[100%]

I just did a dual boot thing with vista and xp pro sp2

Could you take a look at my results.
Which one would be better to keep for me?
I mainly use it for grfx & video editing,
seems like they both have their own advantages....

the test was done with passmark

what do you think?

http://a.imagehost.org/0151/Vista_vs_XP_8.jpg

cd read is seriously slow in vista :huh:

[ChiefCRO]

i think vista ;)

[Nemesis123]

I have Vista and it's very great os! Much better than xp.

[Acid_death69]

some things in vista still anoy me, for example how if you input more ram vista will use more:S

[Shiranai_Baka]

some things in vista still anoy me, for example how if you input more ram vista will use more:S

I think its because vista has this feature that remembers what programs you use often and will pre-load it into memory for you so you don't have to wait for such a long time for it to load. I'm not sure if thats true since that piece of information came from a microsoft rep at an MS seminar I was attending.

[Steve02]

i prefer Win Vista!!

[clocker]

what do you think?


What do you think?

Vista looks like it'd win a number crunching contest but XP would play a game better.
XP makes better use of the system memory but Vista seems to have better disk usage (which does not mirror my results).

Did you perchance take note of system temps while running these tests?
XP runs significantly cooler on my PC.

Much as I like the general GUI of Vista (particularly the transitions between screens) I find that I'm in XP most of the time- to the point that I may just delete Vista altogether.

Why not run each OS exclusively for a week and then decide?

[100%]

thanks for your response, and explanation.
what is the importance of "system memory" over "disk usage"?
will do a few more tests + temp

[Broken]

Vista will have it's day. I firmly believe this.
I think pure horsepower of new systems over the next few years will manage to hide most of Vista's flaws, to the point that it will appear to perform better than Xp.

But, that's not today.
And, it'll probably be just in time for the release of Windows 7.

[clocker]

what is the importance of "system memory" over "disk usage"?

Depends on what you're doing.
Memory intensive programs (like Photoshop, for instance) would probably run better in XP.
The disk I/O tests are just a reflection of how quickly/efficiently the OS reads and writes to the hard drive...not sure of a real world example of where this might be noticeable.

Although you can't quantify it, I don't think you should discount the way the OS "feels" to you.
Right now, even with the hard data I've amassed, I just like XP better and the whole PC experience seems more responsive and snappy.
If (or when) I upgrade to some modern hardware, I'll revisit the comparison and see how I feel then.

[mayhemInc]

I've been running Vista for like 10 months, but then I switched back to XP. At first I liked the new look and everything. But the copying of files was killing me. As the system got older, i went from bad the worse...I reinstalled the OS a couple of times, but the same problem occurred after some weeks.
I thought, that something wasn't right with my harddrives, and then i installed XP. And it is FAST as hell.

I will wait for the Service Pack 1 for Vista to arrive and see if there are some improvements to my problems.
But I'm running XP now with the Vista Inspirat 2 Visual Theme Pack and enjoy the Look of Vista and the speed of XP :) And on top of that my games run a lot faster now...no coincidence here i guess

[100%]

Well that was a headache,
switched it to xp
feel safer, lighter now

although i will miss a few of the niceties about it.
- the auto focus thing on left side of explorer
- the rename file feature
- windowsbutton X
- find target in context menu (found one for xp here (http://www.virtualplastic.net/download/regfiles/TARGET10.ZIP))
- that it was a legal version + updates.

Damn you vista

[tenis69]

I like Vista and it's very great os! Much better than xp so enjoy vista coz is the future.

[Dark Archon]

At the moment Vista is just for eye candy, there is really nothing stunning about it. SP1 was meant to rescue some of the features but it hasn't got a good review yet.

[NorBis]

win xp is faster than vista

[Bionic]

AS I've said earlier. Vista is kinda Office-ish, rarely used and maintained.
Use XP if you've one stable PC, and Vista if more than one.

[brotherdoobie]

I get the "I should try it again" bug and decide to do a re-install and figure let me give Vista another shot, the longest I kept it thus far was a week and I couldn't take it anymore. Thanks for the specs to go with my "Vista just sucks" speech. I guess Vista will become the Windows2K it'll just linger around for a while until 7 comes out, meanwhile M$ just keeps pumping it out on new machines to make even more money.


Windows 2000 is the finest OS that Windows has put out - Period.



-bd