XP v. Vista

[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The P4 CPU it supports was a lame duck (already superceded by the C2D) and, given it's limited future upgradability, I'm not surprised Asus didn't spend much time trying to ensure it's Vista compatability.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 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...




XP Pro: Internal, external...




A shot of the folder to be copied...


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...


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.

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. 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.

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. 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.