Thread: Vista or XP?

Originally Posted by Bravo

Well I just added another of these, makes it 2 total...Them apples good?

http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16820231098

So you have 2 2x1 sticks for 4 GBS of RAM total? Then yeah, you should be set in terms of RAM.

Depends on the specifics mike. If it is memory dumps, that is usually related to your hard drive if I remember correctly. Depending on the Blue Screen you get, Vista may tell you when you boot up. I've gotten a number of them when I game lately, but it is an nVidia driver issue because I'm using one of the beta's as it worked better with AoC at the time. I'll probably switch back to the WHQL certified one as I haven't had a problem with that driver.

Your Quad Core Processor and dual channel RAM have nothing to do with each other besides one is the RAM and the other is the CPU.

They are just saying Dual Channel memory only works when you have two sticks plugged into the dual channel slots. So a single stick is not in dual channel, 2 sticks is dual channel, 3 sticks means two are dual channel and one is not, while 4 sticks is all in dual channel.

The memory and CPU have no affect on each other as far as number of cores and dual channel memory go. Number of cores and RAM are in no way dependent on each other.

Originally Posted by WileECyte

For non-Creative sound cards there's a couple choices...

My personal card is the bGears Inspirirer:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829127002

The M-Audio Revolution:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829121122

The M-Audio has received decent reviews from several sites.

The ASUS DX:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829132006

The ASUS D2X:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829132006

I've heard good things about the ASUS cards. They're PCI Express to boot...

I've heard great things about the Auzentech cards. One of them is on sale now for $60 after MIR... I might be getting that.

Originally Posted by Keiron

Vista does require more RAM because it has more features and bells and whistles so it will require more. Remember though, XP was the same when it came out as well. With every new OS, you should be expecting to see an increase in the needs of your hardware to keep up with the new features of the OS.

What are the news features that require so much not including the eyecandy?

Vista is fine if you are running high end systems, but try running it on a regular desktop and you will see the difference. It's a crime that stores sell Vista systems with 512MB-1GB of memory. I have seen a few people at work who just wanted a simple machine (no games) and bought one of the $600 Dell/Best Buy specials. They couldn't figure out why the menus and others features were going slow. For these people XP would work perfect, but because MS is a money hungry whore they couldn't get a machine with it installed.

I still want to know what Vista has that couldn't be done with XP.

You're missing the point. It's a new OS, meaning the old one will be obsolete because that is just the way technology works. Most of the actual new features that make it use a lot of resources are the things that many users turn off or are the ones that piss them off. The Side Bar is a neat little feature, but it does use up a good amount of RAM. The UAC is suppose to be more of a security feature, but really it's more of a security for the user to protect from themselves if they don't know what they are doing.

Windows Defender, Dreamscene, Silverlight, etc. are all Vista based features, although they are also optional and don't all necessarily work with most of Windows. Dreamscene and Silverlight are suppose to allow enhanced web features/browsing that you supposedly cannot get with FireFox currently or other browsers. I have yet to really notice a difference, but I assume many sites just don't have anything that special programmed into it with them.

It would be stupid of Microsoft NOT to promote Vista, as it is there new OS. Why not promote it? Why stick with XP if it is an older OS? The whole of a new OS is to sell it, and make it the new standard. We all know that this isn't the case as many people are still using Windows ME in some cases Windows 2000, same thing with Macs and other standard OSes.

Also, the main difference between Vista and XP. DirectX10+. I don't remember the specifics, but because of the way DX10 is set up, it supposedly would or could not be used to its fullest with XP. I don't necessarily believe that, but then again I didn't think you'd need a whole new video card to go from DX10 to DX10.1, but you do.

So currently, the standard user might not need Vista, but as I said before, it's the new OS, why make a new product and not try to push it? It is just good business.

So like I said most of the new features are eyecandy. Vista being a resource hog is my biggest problem.

MS has such a hold on the market that they can poop out a turd and force it to everybody without anybody really having a choice. Home users could use Mac or Linux for most needs. Gaming is still a problem on those platforms.

DX10 could have been released on XP if they wanted. DX10 was used to get people to buy Vista. If DX10 was released on XP how many people here would have Vista now?

I have XP now. I am not saying that I will not buy Vista one day. One reason would be to use DX10, but seeing as I don't run top settings now it wouldn't help much anyways. Another reason would be when I am forced as the updates will stop and things like the EA downloader give me the finger. If it was free then I might think more about it.

Still...Vista only seems like a resource hog because it is newer and the new features require more resources to run. The exact same thing happened when XP came out. Why are people still complaining about this? It has been this way for years and years and nothing is going to change about it. New technology comes out daily. You can't expect the new things to run at the same speed on an older machine. Most users running XP now think it runs better or outperforms Vista because XP was designed to run on the technology it had when it came out.

And no, they are not just eyecandy, but that is part of it. I'm not going to go into details about that now though. I'll say this though, how can you call enhanced security (even if some people don't use it) eye candy?

Given another year or two, everyone will be on Vista and thing it is the best thing in the world and think XP sucks balls, just like they did to Win2000 when XP first came out. It is a stupid cycle if you ask me, because you shouldn't expect 2 different OSes to run the same.

Sorry Bravo as this probably isn't much help to you and I know we've gotten off-topic. I'll leave it at that and save this discussion for another thread.