Which OS to install?

[Praxis]

Alright, so after much deliberation I decided to commit the ultimate sin- I'm building a Hackintosh. Ordered a bunch of parts for a really nice PC setup. It'll be quite an upgrade from my 2.5 GHz Pentium 4. Core 2 Quad, 4 GB of RAM and all.

Since I don't want to deal with messy partitioning setups and I'd rather my OS X drive use a GUID instead of MBR, I'm just buying two hard drives, one for OS X and one for Windows.

But the question popped into my head. What version of Windows should I install?

Windows XP 32-bit? Windows XP 64-bit? Windows Vista 32-bit? Or Windows Vista 64-bit?

I will probably install all of these in a Virtual Machine at some point, but which one should I install directly on to the hard drive? I'll be booting in to it for gaming.

If anyone's curious, here's the parts I ordered:
http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/wis ... r=11307887

I seem to recall XP 64-bit having all sorts of driver problems. But that might be old info. I'm considering Vista because for some reason the back of my head tells me it has better 64-bit support and because I've yet to really use Vista much and I know some day I'm going to have to deal with supporting it (my company is still XP-only at this point though). But I can always install it on a VM.

Or should I even bother with 64-bit, since I'm only using 4 GB of RAM?

[Executor32]

32-bit Windows won't be able to see the entire 4GB of RAM, IIRC the max it'll detect out of that is 3.12GB. The detected amount is also inversely related to the amount of memory on the video card(s), so you might only see 2-2.5GB.

I chose 64-bit Vista, since I went with 4GB myself (though unfortunately I need to RMA one pair of sticks, one stick is dead and the other might as well be). The only real problem I've had driver-wise is finding drivers for my Belkin wireless card, but with a look at the card itself and bit of Googling I managed to find 64-bit drivers from Atheros, the manufacturer of its chipset.

[atg]

IIRC x64 Vista requires signed drivers, so make sure you can get signed drivers for your hardware if you go that route.

If you have 4GB RAM installed, then 32-bit Vista/XP will see 3.19-3.5GB RAM most commonly depending on your hardware - my 32-bit XP currently sees 3.25GB.

[Praxis]

Of course, that extra 0.5 GB will probably be taken up by Vista's RAM requirements.

Which OS is preferable for gaming at the moment? Vista/x64 or XP/32? That's what I'd use the partition for, I'd just install the other in a VM for toying.

[atg]

I currently use XP 32-bit for my gaming OS.
I don't see much benefit going to 64-bit for games right now as all but a very few games are 32-bit only and hence wont make use of the extra RAM anyway. Unless you want Vista for DX10 then there is no reason to use it over XP for gaming.

[Ace Pace]

I'd go for 64-bit Vista. For gaming.
Problems of 32-bit gaming, Part 2, Part 3.

Long and short of it, we're right on top of the 2GB virtual address issue and theres no reason to get XP when Vista works just as well. Sure, the game alone might not use 2GB, but add Vram and other things...

But as mentioned, check drivers and all that.

[Xon]

Any 32bit Vista driver should automatically have 64bit drivers if they are go via Microsoft's driver signing program.

Basicly, if it has Vista drivers you should be good.

[Resinence]

I don't see a motherboard in that parts list? (Get a BadAxe2 if you can, a lot hackintosh have been built with them so there is good support, well, basically any p35 or 965 board is good, but you might have trouble getting network stuff working.)

As for the question, Vista 64, it's a modern machine so generally you won't have any issues at all with Vista, and it's not worth all of the extra crap to get XP secure and up to date. XP 64bit is a bad idea, it's nowhere near as good as vista64. And frankly, building a new machine now and then forcing a 32bit OS on it should be a crime.

edit: make sure your mac drive isn't the first in the boot order when you install vista or you can wave goodbye to the bootloader.

[Praxis]

They sold out of the motherboard the evening after I bought it. Hopefully mine'll still get delivered. That's why it's removed from the parts list.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131025

That's the mobo. P5W.

edit: make sure your mac drive isn't the first in the boot order when you install vista or you can wave goodbye to the bootloader.

I was planning to use this:
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=4749

I installed OS X on a separate hard drive. I used the bootloader built into Windows.

Copied the chain0 file from

/usr/standalone/i386/chain0

to

C:\chain0

Then added

C:\chain0="Mac OS X"

To my Windows bootloader. It works flawlessly. When I turn the computer on, I get a menu for

Windows
Mac OS X

I can choose either, and once I select and press enter, it automatically boots into the desired OS. No other settings required.

Is there a better way?

[Resinence]

Well, that way won't work in Vista anyway, you need to use BCDEdit.

Guide

Just ignore everything else and look at the boot setup part, it works fine for all versions not just 10.4. You can't load the mac boot loader first because the chainloading breaks and you will never get windows to boot. Personally, I just unplugged my mac HD when I installed vista and use the boot up boot disk selector to change OS, far easier, less fucking around.

Also, if your going to get a p5w, this badly formatted but useful wiki page will come in handy P5W

And (just because this issue hardly gets mentioned), if your going to install leopard, you will have to use the nvidia kext from http://scottdangel.com/blog/?p=21 (it's just a standard mac installer, not fuss, no worry's)

The others will just give you a black screen at boot.

Installing it the first time can be a pain in the ass, but it works wonderfully once it's all up and running.

[Praxis]

So is that the way you would do it, or is there another bootloader that'll work best?

I'll have a Windows OS (probably Vista it sounds like) on the 160 GB drive and Leopard on the 500 GB drive.

And I've seen NVInject, I'll definitely use it.

Thanks!

[Resinence]

If you know how grub works, you could use that, it's just a matter of using chainloader +0 on both installs if I recall. (and "active" on the windows one)

[Crayz9000]

Besides, splitting off ~10 GB for Linux provides a nice failsafe, particularly when NTFS-3G provides (finally) reliable R/W support. I tend to use my Ubuntu install to help when something goes south on one of my Windows installs.

At home, for email, web surfing, and other relatively mundane tasks (and some not so mundane ones) Linux rocks. Fast, stable, and you never have to worry about viruses. If I want to play a particular shooter game, reboot and off you go (this helps too, since the Windows install is always clean and fast, no rot affecting it.)

[Praxis]

Besides, splitting off ~10 GB for Linux provides a nice failsafe, particularly when NTFS-3G provides (finally) reliable R/W support. I tend to use my Ubuntu install to help when something goes south on one of my Windows installs.

At home, for email, web surfing, and other relatively mundane tasks (and some not so mundane ones) Linux rocks. Fast, stable, and you never have to worry about viruses. If I want to play a particular shooter game, reboot and off you go (this helps too, since the Windows install is always clean and fast, no rot affecting it.)

That's what I intend to use the OS X partition for. The chances of both OS X *and* Windows going south at the same time on separate drives isn't too high. And I'll always have my Knoppix disk. I'll definitely have different Linux distros running in VMs though.

[Praxis]

Wow, OS X is so incredibly snappy on a quad core. Vista on the other hand...this is my first REAL usage, and I detest it even more than I thought I would. The actual technology perhaps is not horrible, but the UI designers must be retarded. I'm rather stunned by some of the horrendous dialogs, inconsistent menus, and odd button places. It feels like I'm using some terrible Windows theme or Linux GUI. The overdone animations make everything feel so slow. And 64-bit handling seems terribly done- there's separate Program Files and Program Files (x86) folders? But Crysis plays fine so I'll stick with Vista for that.

OS X on the other hand feels great. And Windows XP runs perfectly smooth in a VM, as does Ubuntu Linux and Windows Server 2003.

[Resinence]

OS-X is snappy in general I have found, I'm not sure if it's because OpenGL/quartz is so much lighter than DX or if vista just has really god damn slow animations. I prefer mac's memory management though, it just leaves everything in ram until it needs the space, then moves it onto disk. But only loads it on request. So it actually gets faster the longer it's running

[Praxis]

Some time ago I ripped a lot of my software into ISOs on my external firewire drive, so this load has been really simple Double click an ISO to mount, install, unmount, go to the next one. Some stuff like Parallels I can redownload and just enter my serial number. So far I've installed a ton of software, set up three VMs, Office, iLife, Eclipse IDE, etc...completely diskless. It feels so...modern

Next I'll be transferring my iTunes library over the network. I'm rather stunned to realize I can't actually do anything to bog this machine down yet. Nothing I do can get it below 70% idle, even with three VM's with three seperate OS's running or multiple 1080p videos playing. Maybe I'll try both at the same time. I'll have to start video editing

Forgive my raving about it, but this is such a gigantic upgrade from my 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 that stutters on 720p video and I'm HAPPY.

[Crayz9000]

I prefer mac's memory management though, it just leaves everything in ram until it needs the space, then moves it onto disk. But only loads it on request.

Windows and Linux do the same thing. Vista is slightly different that in addition to this, if you have unused RAM and aren't doing anything else, it tries to load something from the disk into it ahead of time that it thinks you will want, but the core of it still works the same way.

I suppose the only difference is that for some reason, while OS X and Linux's kernel memory managers do what they're supposed to in the background without you really being able to notice them at work, Vista's memory manager seems to have latency issues that MAKE you notice it working, like when it takes several seconds to free up memory so you can work...

[MJ12 Commando]

Wow, OS X is so incredibly snappy on a quad core. Vista on the other hand...this is my first REAL usage, and I detest it even more than I thought I would. The actual technology perhaps is not horrible, but the UI designers must be retarded. I'm rather stunned by some of the horrendous dialogs, inconsistent menus, and odd button places. It feels like I'm using some terrible Windows theme or Linux GUI. The overdone animations make everything feel so slow. And 64-bit handling seems terribly done- there's separate Program Files and Program Files (x86) folders? But Crysis plays fine so I'll stick with Vista for that.

OS X on the other hand feels great. And Windows XP runs perfectly smooth in a VM, as does Ubuntu Linux and Windows Server 2003.

Did you change Vista to use the classic look? You can turn off Aero and whatnot, and it makes it perform pretty well. It also looks like Win 2000, pretty much, with the right settings. I don't quite recall where the classic-Vista settings were (probably in "customize your display") but it helps a hell of a lot, even if it doesn't look as shiny.

[Resinence]

Actually, since he has a graphics card rather than crappy integrated, leaving aero enabled and disabling the animations would be a lot faster than GDI, GDI is really starting to show it's age, and it's not as tightly integrated into vista iirc.

Not that I'm calling GDI "slow", but compositing has many advantages that saving maybe 20mb of memory isn't worth it. I think disabling animations in aero requires tweaking with a tool or registry though, I haven't really looked into it.

edit: After looking for 10seconds, you can indeed disable the animations in advanced - performance in system properties.