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I am contemplating getting a new PC for Christmas (It will be a Dell) and I really like how Vista looks and functions on my daughter's new PC that I purchased for her recently so I would like to see whether I should get Vista for myself because I know I have the option of keeping XP on a new Dell.

My main concern with switching over to Vista (aside from peripheral issues like printers) is whether I can still game using Vista. I'm a huge Total War fan and I like my Civilization IV and other games of that ilk and I just want to make sure that I am not screwing myself gaming wise by getting Vista.

Anyone can give me the low down on what I lose by switching from XP to Vista in the next coming months?

The only game I can't play is Supreme Commander, apparently because Vista hates huge files and Supcom has a single 6GB datafile. Other Vista users can install it fine, though, so maybe it's just me.

I play everything from Star Control 2 to Unreal Tournament 3 on Vista, with no problems. Sometimes you have to kick it in the pants (ie give full access to the game folder, or create a file that Vista prevents the game from making itself) though.

I found this list of software that is compatible with Vista in my recent search to find out what I could play on my new PC. Rome Total War is on the list.

Are there lists of software that's incompatible, so I can laugh at it? I've had so many google morons tell me that 'such and such a game doesn't work with Vista lol' or 'wow you use Vista how do you play game y' when they actually work fine, I'm curious to see what 'doesn't work'.

I've never had any trouble running games in Vista. I even got old shit like Populous: The Beginning to work on Vista with no trouble. As long as you have sufficiently powerful hardware you should be fine.

Yeah, I actually found older games worked much better under Vista than XP. The problems I had were UAC-related 90% of the time, so fixable if you know what to do.

Still, there is generally a noticeable performance hit on Vista vs. XP, is there not?

No.

People say there is, and maybe with shitbox systems there is, but I've had 2GB of RAM for two years and I don't notice squat. Requirements are often significantly different (ie dodgey AU-MMO Fury wants 512MB for XP, but 2GB for Vista ) but the only performance differences I notice are improvements in some games. If by 'noticable' you mean 'one frame a second, 45 down from 46' I'd say 'stop whining', but I don't notice anything while actually playing games.

Playing games on Vista has been totally fine for me, in the sense that I haven't had any problems I pin down specifically to Vista. Plus you get DX10 support, though pretty much immaterial unless you have an insane machine and the right games, but who knows when you'll get a machine upgrade?

Gaming with Vista is interesting. If you have only 1GB of RAM, I found that it's a weaker experience. If you have two, though, I actually found improvements in performance. It depends on what sort of a system you're trying to build, but realistically 2GB's is pretty standard, now.

Vista is perfectly fine for gaming, and as it turns about, basically everything else. I'm not sure what printers work where, but I've got 2 aging HPs running into my vista machine without any sort of trouble.

Stark wrote:No.

People say there is, and maybe with shitbox systems there is, but I've had 2GB of RAM for two years and I don't notice squat. Requirements are often significantly different (ie dodgey AU-MMO Fury wants 512MB for XP, but 2GB for Vista ) but the only performance differences I notice are improvements in some games. If by 'noticable' you mean 'one frame a second, 45 down from 46' I'd say 'stop whining', but I don't notice anything while actually playing games.

I somewhat disagree.

My system is far from being a shitbox*, yet I notice distinct performance issues, such as stuttering at higher resolutions, with Vista as compared to XP.
However, the difference appears to be mostly the result of nvidia's shitty Vista drivers (the last release went a long way towards closing the gap) instead of faults with Vista itself.

Perhaps a good ATi card and a fully patched Vista install would give better gaming results.

Also, Vista driver availability for older (and some not so old ones, like some low end current model HP printers) peripherals is spotty at best.
If you go Vista, make sure that there are drivers available for all of the hardware you want to use with it before ordering.



*E6400 OC'd to 3.2Ghz, 2GB Crucial Ballistix RAM, 8800GTS 320MB videocard, all on a Gigabyte 965P-DS3 mobo.

I can confirm that Total War games work without issues on Vista.

As far as the rest... I'm agreeing with Stark - I've yet to find a game who's problems couldn't be fixed by going into properties/compatibility and giving it admin rights and XP comp. fixes. And needing even that is rare (the most recent one being, slightly ironically considering its a MS title, Starlancer).

Performance-wise, its a bit more difficult to judge since I haven't installed XP on this laptop that I use for gaming currently before Vista so I don't know how much better, if at all, it would have performed under XP, but under Vista its performance is very acceptable and what you'd expect from a computer with its specs (Turion 2Ghz, x1600, 1GB RAM).

Glocksman wrote:I somewhat disagree.

My system is far from being a shitbox*, yet I notice distinct performance issues, such as stuttering at higher resolutions, with Vista as compared to XP.
However, the difference appears to be mostly the result of nvidia's shitty Vista drivers (the last release went a long way towards closing the gap) instead of faults with Vista itself.

Perhaps a good ATi card and a fully patched Vista install would give better gaming results.


*E6400 OC'd to 3.2Ghz, 2GB Crucial Ballistix RAM, 8800GTS 320MB videocard, all on a Gigabyte 965P-DS3 mobo.

I can't have sympathy for you, since you're obviously playing in 8 million x seventeen million, you damn 8800 person. I never used the older drivers, though. I've only noticed real performance hits when using 'DX10 games' in DX10 mode, like WiC: you lose about 10-15fps. My 8600 in 16x10 runs fine in everything else, without any spikes in performance.

Is it my fault I want to play IL2 1946 with everything maxed out?

I have supreme commander installed on Vista, and it runs fine. Except that when I get to a certain point in a match, the game freezes and crashes. Nothing consistent, except that it always crashes, usually before I get to T3 or finish the mission.

The installer crashes for me. I've seen plenty of people online who use it with Vista, but I've never been able to work out the issue.

If its an installshield install, its possible that one of the older installation information is messing with it - I've seen it happen a few times. The solution is to go into Program Files and look up the hidden InstallShield Installation Information folder and delete everything in it (I've yet to notice a problem do to doing that, although supposedly its possible to screw up things do to different InstallShield versions installing different things and then using that folder for the information about which version did it, and consequently how uninstallation should be handled), before firing up the installer again.

Or, of course, you could just have problems do to having a bad disc.

Master of Ossus wrote:Gaming with Vista is interesting. If you have only 1GB of RAM, I found that it's a weaker experience. If you have two, though, I actually found improvements in performance. It depends on what sort of a system you're trying to build, but realistically 2GB's is pretty standard, now.

I'm looking at a rig with 4 gig RAM with Dual COre processors and a 1 TB HD. Expensive but I've worked my ass off this year and deserve it. I take it that with something like that I should not have any issues then? That's a real sense of relief.

I've got an e6750/8600GTX/2GB/820GB, and I have no problems. I *am* used to a 6600, though.

Netko wrote:If its an installshield install, its possible that one of the older installation information is messing with it - I've seen it happen a few times. The solution is to go into Program Files and look up the hidden InstallShield Installation Information folder and delete everything in it (I've yet to notice a problem do to doing that, although supposedly its possible to screw up things do to different InstallShield versions installing different things and then using that folder for the information about which version did it, and consequently how uninstallation should be handled), before firing up the installer again.

Or, of course, you could just have problems do to having a bad disc.

I finally got home and tried this, but no dice. I remember once having some Installshield version conflict, and having to do something similar before (on an older game), so what's up with Installshield and version conflicts?

The only real problem I've had was with Homeworld 2, I had to entirely disable Data Execution Prevention in order to get it to run.

Stravo wrote:

Master of Ossus wrote:Gaming with Vista is interesting. If you have only 1GB of RAM, I found that it's a weaker experience. If you have two, though, I actually found improvements in performance. It depends on what sort of a system you're trying to build, but realistically 2GB's is pretty standard, now.

I'm looking at a rig with 4 gig RAM with Dual COre processors and a 1 TB HD. Expensive but I've worked my ass off this year and deserve it. I take it that with something like that I should not have any issues then? That's a real sense of relief.

If you're going to run 32-bit Vista, then it won't see all of the 4GB RAM.
Don't panic though, as that's normal for any 32 bit Windows OS.

Link

Summary:
If you are running 32-bit Windows, you must live with it. You will not ever see all 4GB of RAM you've paid for.

If you are running 64-bit Windows, you may have to live with it. Depending on your motherboard's chipset, your system may support memory remapping. If so, you will be able to use all 4GB of RAM.

Detailed:
Due to an architectural decision made long ago, if you have 4GB of physical RAM installed, Windows is only able to report a portion of the physical 4GB of RAM (ranges from ~2.75GB to 3.5GB depending on the devices installed, motherboard's chipset & BIOS).

This behavior is due to "memory mapped IO reservations". Those reservations overlay the physical address space and mask out those physical addresses so that they cannot be used for working memory. This is independent of the OS running on the machine.

Don't panic though, as that's normal for any 32 bit OS.

fixed

Stark wrote:I finally got home and tried this, but no dice. I remember once having some Installshield version conflict, and having to do something similar before (on an older game), so what's up with Installshield and version conflicts?

This is going completely from memory so it might be utterly wrong, but I think the issue is that, if it gets into a conflict do to the old information, will try to use the settings from that installation instead of then ones defined in the current product you're installing. Unfortunately, it looks like that wasn't the case.