OS of choice for gamers

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Hi guys, I'm just curious as to which operating system most gamers go for. I used Vista for a while, but after some serious issues, switched back to XP (which is fine!)

Which OS do you use?

kaimera

x64 Vista.

Not a bother really. Few teething gpu probs but it's always a bit awkward with mobile gpus.

Prolly be a bit better in a desktop.

L31mr0d

Vista 64 myself, but its more from a PC builders perspective as it allows my to install as much RAM as my motherboard allows without Vista complaining.

For gaming there probably is very little performance difference between a 64bit and 32bit OS. In fact, apart from Crysis I can't think of any other games that support 64bit.

I've always wondered though why MS don't come out with a profile for Vista that is just for gaming. Much like the MCE interface but optimized for gaming, with all uneeded services disabled.

Tyrant^

The only issue I had with vista was installing it. Seems to be problems having 8gb of memory in the machine while its installing. Had to take out 3 of the 4 sticks to install it ... but now it works super !

User45701

I use 32 bit vita with 4 gb or ram and the 3 gig enabler for games like sup com.
but to be honest vista prevents me from installing allot of games. im going to get a XP laptop and use that for my older games.

I mean so few good games are comming out the last few years im still playing old ones

i_am_dogboy

For games, or any other use of my computer, I will never move to vista, it's a pile of poo and it should never have been released in such a state, I'd sooner move to purely playing games on consolest, than actually use vista. I'm on xp32, and I will be for the foreseeable future.

Redrocket

windows 2000, been playing solitare for years now on it with no problems

5uspect

Currently on XP 32. I'll probably be moving to Vista Ultimate 64 soon.
But I do more than gaming.

thelordofcheese

Xp32.
Because vista is made of fail and aids. And cholera.

Matt Simis

i_am_dogboy wrote: »

For games, or any other use of my computer, I will never move to vista, it's a pile of poo and it should never have been released in such a state, I'd sooner move to purely playing games on consolest, than actually use vista. I'm on xp32, and I will be for the foreseeable future.

Vista is a annoying and clunky, but for games you have to use it. No DX10 and certain titles (more and more) for you otherwise. You dont have a choice.
Saying that, I have Vista x64 here and its fast, supports Stereo3D (XP doesnt anymore) and relatively clean. Its also stable. The biggest boost to Vista usability and performance was getting 2x WD 640GB (3 platter) drives in RAID0, it made it that much better. Better than CPU, GPU and RAM upgrades (got 4GB). Otherwise it choked and wheezed along.

humanji

I had a few issues with Vista when I first installed it, but once I figured out what I was doing wrong, it's worked like a dream. It actually pisses me off having to use XP in work because of all the little limitations it has. I can never see myself going back to using XP for gaming.

Also I also use a Mac at home so Vista is handy because it nicks a load of useful things from the Mac OS and apps, and flicking between the two doesn't confuse me as much anymore.

That said, I think the next Windows OS is on it's way, so if you don't like Vista you can hold off for a couple of years. Granted, the new OS is Vista with added bells and whistles so you can't really win.

Stephen

I Vista. Yes, Windows 7 is on the way but they're currently saying late 2009 is the earliest it'll see a release. I'd add another year to that.

L31mr0d

what I find hilarious is how cyclical this mistrust of MS OS's is. I remember it was a good while after XP got released before people where willing to let go of their Windows 2000 security blanket. Back then everyone was giving out about "its bloated interface", it's "resource hogging"... etc. All the gripes you are now hearing again from all those XP owner about Vista.

Give a year and all those people will have moved to Vista and be singing its praises getting ready with their "Down with this sort of thing" banners for the next release from MS.

Compared to the state XP was in this soon after its release, Vista is frankly amazing. Most of the time people who give out about Vista are those that believe the hype or are suffering from PEBKAC errors.

Most older applications that Vista doesn't support can be run in XP compatibility mode anyway.

5uspect

I can't understand why so many people are putting their faith in Microsoft to make Windows 7 so much better than Vista. If they said they were waiting for a new Mac OS or some uber Linux distro fine, but its just going to be another Microsoft product!

Burga Galti

Been using vista 64 ultimate for some time now. Not a problem with it. In fact, I've found it a dream to work with. Yes, it's a little different than XP, but once you get used to the differences it's a great at what it does.

Creamy Goodness

never a prob with vista 64 ultimate.

Actually I lie it ran bollocks slow when I ran it for 44 days without a restart.

Tyrant^

Cremo wrote: »

never a prob with vista 64 ultimate.

Actually I lie it ran bollocks slow when I ran it for 44 days without a restart.

Id like to see a windows OS that doesn't

TinCool

Been sitting on Vist Ultimate 32bit for some time now. I think I'll go ahead and update it to the 64bit edition. Have 4 gigs in the machine anyway so worth a shot.

TC

Creamy Goodness

Tyrant^ wrote: »

Id like to see a windows OS that doesn't

tbh i'm pretty impressive with that figure of 44 days.

doesn't hold a candle to my unix box i had in work.

booted on the 4th of feb (when i started work) didn't turn off until the 25th of july (when i left) :P

would have still went strong but anyways that's off topic :pac:

magick

custom pc did a test on this and found that in all cases but one XP was faster than vista for games (the one game that was faster was stalker).

Personally i use xp32, its been around for ages, great support, and still most drivers are designed around it, now i know times are changing but still though f for the future id still go with xp32, theirs no real motivation to switch to vista unless u like eye candy and then thats overshadowed by the frustrations will u find.

Ciaran500

magick wrote: »

custom pc did a test on this and found that in all cases but one XP was faster than vista for games (the one game that was faster was stalker).

Wasn't that pre SP1.

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Well, like I said, I used Vista with my new PC at first, but it gave me serious problems. All games were freezing up with looping sound, forcing a hard reset. Sometimes, the desktop itself would freeze (while not in game). It seemed that the harder the GPU was working, the quicker the system would cease up.

After trying virtually everything under the sun, I eventually downgraded to XP, and I haven't had a single problem with my games since!

I actually liked all the improvements MS made with Vista, and as soon as I find a solution to my problem, I'll switch back.

My spec:

Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 Q6600
4GB Corsair XMS2 PC6400 RAM (though my system can't use all of it)
Windows XP SP2
XFX nVidia 8800GT 512mb
XFX nVidia 680i LT motherboard
650w Hiper PSU (good brand )

humanji

did you try the SP1 foir Vista? That fixed pretty much all the problems the majority had with it (well that and a load of other patches, but they didn't get fancy names, only serial numbers). But sure if Vista works for you, why would you want to upgrade. Eventually people will have no choice, but until then, go with what works for you, I say.

OK-Cancel-Apply

Ohhhh yeah. Tried SP1...and virtually every update available! Tried different gfx drivers...everything. Nothing worked. I may try again when SP2 comes out.

humanji

Have you tried fire? The great purifier solves most problems.

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humanji wrote: »

Have you tried fire? The great purifier solves most problems.

Although last on the list, it IS ON the list :pac:

Shiminay

XP 64 for me. Some problems with drivers on occasion. Mostly issues with older titles that can't be worked around with compatibility mode, but smooth sailing with any recent and new titles.

Slutmonkey57b

Reportedly 60-70% of Vista crashes were caused by 3rd party graphics drivers - I think Nvidia on its own accounted for 40%.

Personally, I will never use Vista, but that's because its start menu and explorer are a pile of ****.

magick

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Reportedly 60-70% of Vista crashes were caused by 3rd party graphics drivers - I think Nvidia on its own accounted for 40%.

Personally, I will never use Vista, but that's because its start menu and explorer are a pile of ****.

pile of ****, yup this i agree with, its slower to find stuff. Now i dont gererally hop on a bandwagon but in vista's case..............

its a pile of ****

yoyo

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Reportedly 60-70% of Vista crashes were caused by 3rd party graphics drivers - I think Nvidia on its own accounted for 40%.

Personally, I will never use Vista, but that's because its start menu and explorer are a pile of ****.

:eek: Actually the Vista start menu & explorer are far far better than that in XP, the search to open a application is brilliant (And it annoys me in XP now having to trawl thru the menu to locate a program, which could be in 3 or 4 sub folders in some cases :rolleyes: ), I also like the way Vista indexes your files so that the integrated search in explorer finds what your looking for quickly. If anything those two items in my opinion are a major step up from the others

pile of ****, yup this i agree with, its slower to find stuff. Now i dont gererally hop on a bandwagon but in vista's case..............

its a pile of ****

Have you used Vista? Since SP1 its been perfect, granted I have the spec for it, but it runs as smooth if not smoother than XP for me...

Nick

magick

yoyo wrote: »

:eek: Actually the Vista start menu & explorer are far far better than that in XP, the search to open a application is brilliant (And it annoys me in XP now having to trawl thru the menu to locate a program, which could be in 3 or 4 sub folders in some cases :rolleyes: ), I also like the way Vista indexes your files so that the integrated search in explorer finds what your looking for quickly. If anything those two items in my opinion are a major step up from the others

Have you used Vista? Since SP1 its been perfect, granted I have the spec for it, but it runs as smooth if not smoother than XP for me...

Nick

yup i have a vista laptop, but still think the menu needs to be reworked

Slutmonkey57b

yoyo wrote: »

:eek: Actually the Vista start menu & explorer are far far better than that in XP, the search to open a application is brilliant

The problem is, if you attempt to use something *other* than the integrated search, it's a massive pain in the arse. And the search function is a massive resource hog, because it creates an index by scanning your system, as opposed to what it should do, namely add files to the index as part of the file creation/copy API.

The search to open an app is not the "start menu" or the "explorer".

Vista's problem is that the whole thing is arranged to suit OEM's - Everything revolves around single "areas" - like pictures, music, video, documents, all of which are part of the user profile directory on a single partition. If you don't want to use those "areas", or god forbid you have more than one hard drive, vista's explorer is a pile of absolute toss.

Provided you always do what it tells you and stick pictures in the pictures folder, video in the video folder, you'll be all right. Attempt to put your files where you want to, however and it'll do its damndest to stop you, or to irritate you into doing it another way. I don't want animated sliders to switch between folder views. I want a list of my partitions, a folder tree, and an explorer that calculates folder sizes. Vista doesn't want to show me that. It wants to do a little dance for me while I attempt to force it to let me get at my stuff.

Use any other OS's file explorer and I guarantee you it isn't as useful, intuitive, helpful, or clear as XP's. Linux ones are particularly awful.

i_am_dogboy

Matt Simis wrote: »

Vista is a annoying and clunky, but for games you have to use it. No DX10 and certain titles (more and more) for you otherwise. You dont have a choice.

No I don't, I'll just live without them

I'm not motivated enough to upgrade just for the newest super duper first person shooters, and the games I'm really into-world of goo and the likes, will run grand on my current machine under xp.

Ciaran500

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Vista's problem is that the whole thing is arranged to suit OEM's - Everything revolves around single "areas" - like pictures, music, video, documents, all of which are part of the user profile directory on a single partition. If you don't want to use those "areas", or god forbid you have more than one hard drive, vista's explorer is a pile of absolute toss.

Provided you always do what it tells you and stick pictures in the pictures folder, video in the video folder, you'll be all right. Attempt to put your files where you want to, however and it'll do its damndest to stop you, or to irritate you into doing it another way. I don't want animated sliders to switch between folder views. I want a list of my partitions, a folder tree, and an explorer that calculates folder sizes. Vista doesn't want to show me that. It wants to do a little dance for me while I attempt to force it to let me get at my stuff.

Never came up to any of these problems. I have two hard drive with 5 partitions and pictures, videos and music scattered across all of them and it just leaves me alone to do what I want with them. Biggest annoyance I've come across is the multiple confirmation dialogs to edit anything in Program files. But thats easily disabled.

yoyo

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

The problem is, if you attempt to use something *other* than the integrated search, it's a massive pain in the arse. And the search function is a massive resource hog, because it creates an index by scanning your system, as opposed to what it should do, namely add files to the index as part of the file creation/copy API.

Sure it takes a couple hours to create the index first time but I wouldnt call it a resource hog, well, if it is, it doesnt effect my pc or others I know with vista much

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

The search to open an app is not the "start menu" or the "explorer".

I don't know what you mean about that, but my Vista start menu & explorer has the quick search:
http://i38.tinypic.com/w8ug6w.jpg

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Vista's problem is that the whole thing is arranged to suit OEM's - Everything revolves around single "areas" - like pictures, music, video, documents, all of which are part of the user profile directory on a single partition. If you don't want to use those "areas", or god forbid you have more than one hard drive, vista's explorer is a pile of absolute toss.

I have 6 hard drives totalling 2.6TB and I can find stuff fine with vista search, navigate easily, actually because of the search its easier

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Provided you always do what it tells you and stick pictures in the pictures folder, video in the video folder, you'll be all right. Attempt to put your files where you want to, however and it'll do its damndest to stop you, or to irritate you into doing it another way. I don't want animated sliders to switch between folder views. I want a list of my partitions, a folder tree, and an explorer that calculates folder sizes. Vista doesn't want to show me that. It wants to do a little dance for me while I attempt to force it to let me get at my stuff.

I have downloads folders everywhere, with docs, txt files, images etc... Vistas search still finds them, So I dont understand this point

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Use any other OS's file explorer and I guarantee you it isn't as useful, intuitive, helpful, or clear as XP's. Linux ones are particularly awful.

Xp has a awful explorer version which microsoft didnt change since 95 much, vistas is much more straight forward, what I dont understand is how XPs explorer is better? The search engine is hopeless, the tasks side bar isnt useful and all the features of it are in vista anyway and mostly improved upon (The un-needed file menu can be re-activated using a reg trick afaik but it is un needed!).

Nick

Slutmonkey57b

To summarise:

yoyo wrote: »

My point: Explorer is crap.
Your response: Search is great!
My point: Search isn't Explorer. The explorer is crap and the search is engineered backwards.
Your retort: Search is great!

I think you're missing my point here. I'm not talking about Vista's search feature.
I'm talking about its explorer implementation, which is all bells and whistles, and no information.

And yes, if it takes a few hours to create the index the first time, it *is* a resource hog. If it was designed the right way round, it wouldn't have to do that in the first place.

L31mr0d

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Vista's problem is that the whole thing is arranged to suit OEM's - Everything revolves around single "areas" - like pictures, music, video, documents, all of which are part of the user profile directory on a single partition. If you don't want to use those "areas", or god forbid you have more than one hard drive, vista's explorer is a pile of absolute toss.

Can you elaborate on this? Are you talking about search indexing? or are you talking about the right hand side of the start menu? You know you can change the location of your pictures, music, videos, documents links. Just right click and hit properties. I have my music and media on another drive so I just changed where the start menu was pointing to. This also had the nice added result of changing where the links in my profile folder pointed to also.

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

And yes, if it takes a few hours to create the index the first time, it *is* a resource hog. If it was designed the right way round, it wouldn't have to do that in the first place.

I have indexing turned off but I still find searching grand. Although I will agree that it is odd that there is no option for folder sizes, even if they didn't like how much resources it ate up at least they could of provided it as an option you could enable.

MooseJam

I use Vista64, never had any issues with it, as for the XP people who say vista is rubbish well vista IS XP just with a couple more years developement, it's not like its a whole new OS, the starting point of vista was XP

ntlbell

L31mr0d wrote: »

what I find hilarious is how cyclical this mistrust of MS OS's is. I remember it was a good while after XP got released before people where willing to let go of their Windows 2000 security blanket. Back then everyone was giving out about "its bloated interface", it's "resource hogging"... etc. All the gripes you are now hearing again from all those XP owner about Vista.

Give a year and all those people will have moved to Vista and be singing its praises getting ready with their "Down with this sort of thing" banners for the next release from MS.

Compared to the state XP was in this soon after its release, Vista is frankly amazing. Most of the time people who give out about Vista are those that believe the hype or are suffering from PEBKAC errors.

Most older applications that Vista doesn't support can be run in XP compatibility mode anyway.

The main reason people are happy with XP now is after 3 service packs just about every line of code has been re-written at this stage

if they installed Windows XP as it was when it was released it would still be a big pile of ****e.

not to mention they more than likley didn't have the power they have today so XP doesn't _feel_ as bloated as it did when they tried to install it on there k6 500mhz 128mb ram

95 took till 95b

98 till se

nt4 till sp 4-6

2k sp4

xp sp2 wasn't bad

so i don't see why it should be any different.

but for the most part without ripping off people and pulling support for older os's there was no real need for vista it doesn't add anything that couldn't of been simply rolled to xp in a sp

but that's going to bring in the bucks

there's a reason only about 6% of companies upgraded to vista in the uk....

and it's not every CTO/Sys admin is a moron.

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MooseJam wrote: »

I use Vista64, never had any issues with it, as for the XP people who say vista is rubbish well vista IS XP just with a couple more years developement, it's not like its a whole new OS, the starting point of vista was XP

I don't think that's the case TBH - it's a whole different beast. There's something about it that's causing all my games to freeze and force a hard reset, whereas XP gives me no problems whatsoever!

yoyo

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

To summarise:



I think you're missing my point here. I'm not talking about Vista's search feature.
I'm talking about its explorer implementation, which is all bells and whistles, and no information.

And I responded saying it is easier to use than XP's one, has all the features you mentioned, and a decent search to boot, I have created a image to illustrate this:
http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/8181/vistafolderdx7.jpg.

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

And yes, if it takes a few hours to create the index the first time, it *is* a resource hog. If it was designed the right way round, it wouldn't have to do that in the first place.

No, its the way the system was designed, don't like it it can be turned off... And how could a any decent search engine operate without creating a index database? Not only would it be slow and a "resource hog", but it possibly wouldnt include searching file data or contents as it would take too long, the search on my laptops XP is disasterous and slow, and thats only on a 80gig hard drive!, I dont mind a clean install of a os take give or take two hours to index the pc, and without causing interuptions, updating this index periodicly,

Nick

Cuddlesworth

ntlbell wrote: »

but for the most part without ripping off people and pulling support for older os's there was no real need for vista it doesn't add anything that couldn't of been simply rolled to xp in a sp

but that's going to bring in the bucks

there's a reason only about 6% of companies upgraded to vista in the uk....

and it's not every CTO/Sys admin is a moron.

Vista is inheriantly different as a OS to XP.

The way it handles process's, thread queing, multi-core apps, ram prefetching coupled with the indexing system and the new explorer, sandboxing parts of the OS, improvements in networking and filetransfer, the list goes on.

There are only a few things that xp could have handled, most of them are the things the Vista Campain is trying to sell as a reason to change, eg;Areo.

As for company's, they have always been slow to adopt anything new. I know plently that still use 2k. If its works then there is no reason for them to upgrade the OS, hardware, servers, custom written applications etc. The ones with the money, eg mine and a few big others I know are already testing our Vista corperate image, fine tuning, testing and rolling it out slowly.

5uspect

I have to agree there are some retarded things about Vista's Explorer that just annoy me. The replacement of the up directory button with the bread crumb trail has annoyed me no end. I was happy to browse up n directories without having to know the folder name, now I find myself being frustrated having to stop and do a double take to ensure I don't click the wrong folder in the trail. Why not give us a choice?

It just seems that in an attempt to make explorer more readily usable to general users they've taken out fundamental features or clumped them into a single menu just like the crap fest that is Office 2007.

I've learned to live the silly bits with explorer in Vista (alt+up and all that) but I'm not happy to have had to make such compromises with a new "better" OS.

5uspect

yoyo wrote: »

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

And yes, if it takes a few hours to create the index the first time, it *is* a resource hog. If it was designed the right way round, it wouldn't have to do that in the first place.

No, its the way the system was designed, don't like it it can be turned off... And how could a any decent search engine operate without creating a index database?

I think the point is that a clean install shouldn't need to create an index. It should come pre-indexed to some extent.

Dyr

So how do gamers feel about vistas limited number of reinstalls?

Personally i find vista was a nightmare for games on its release, it might improve as games are released that are designed with vista in mind but tbh ive disabled so many of the new features in Vista just to get my games working that i might as well be using XP.

ntlbell

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Vista is inheriantly different as a OS to XP.

The way it handles process's, thread queing, multi-core apps, ram prefetching coupled with the indexing system and the new explorer, sandboxing parts of the OS, improvements in networking and filetransfer, the list goes on.

There are only a few things that xp could have handled, most of them are the things the Vista Campain is trying to sell as a reason to change, eg;Areo.

As for company's, they have always been slow to adopt anything new. I know plently that still use 2k. If its works then there is no reason for them to upgrade the OS, hardware, servers, custom written applications etc. The ones with the money, eg mine and a few big others I know are already testing our Vista corperate image, fine tuning, testing and rolling it out slowly.

you do realise over the 3 sp's that nearly the whole kernel has been re-written?

if your changing huge chunks of kernel code there's no reason to be not be able to add in enhancemnets

for me these are not even enhancments they are fixes..

XP handled memory pretty badly early on...

OS's that you can download for free have been doing sandboxing for decades.

A stable secure high performing network stack should be a given when your forking out a few hundred euro for what's suppose to be an enterprise networking operating system.

Looking at companies.

If you look at the adoption from nt 3.5 to 4 4 to 2k 2k to XP

compared to XP to vista is redic

Some companies don't upgrade as there's no need some are still on windows 3.1 but these stats are in there os after os

a vast majority do.

We have about 20,000 desktops and had XP tested for the move from 2k long before XP was on the shelves companies are not upgrading because they know it takes MS about 2-3 service packs now (because of expirience) to get something right, so they may aswell hold fire.

Your basically paying MS to be a beta tester so they can learn to do things other OS's have been doing for years and do it for no cost.

yoyo

Bambi wrote: »

So how do gamers feel about vistas limited number of reinstalls?

XP is the same, product activation is used in all versions of XP bar the vlk editions....

Bambi wrote: »

Personally i find vista was a nightmare for games on its release, it might improve as games are released that are designed with vista in mind but tbh ive disabled so many of the new features in Vista just to get my games working that i might as well be using XP.

I havn't needed to disable anything to play games on vista, had a couple of driver problems (Courtesy of Nvidia) however even XP was effected by this (Driver crashes). As a whole games play fine, smooth and without issiue for me, completed brothers in arms hells highway this weekend, no crashes, freezes etc...

Nick

kaimera

Bambi wrote: »

So how do gamers feel about vistas limited number of reinstalls?

Personally i find vista was a nightmare for games on its release, it might improve as games are released that are designed with vista in mind but tbh ive disabled so many of the new features in Vista just to get my games working that i might as well be using XP.

havent had to reinstall

and what sort of features?

Aside from a few tweaks to speed up vista I didnt need to disable anything to play my games.

Dyr

yoyo wrote: »

XP is the same, product activation is used in all versions of XP bar the vlk editions....

"Microsoft allows you to reinstall and reactivate windows vista on the same computer once" Thats from "configuring windows vista client", pretty sure XP didnt do that.

Stephen

I've reinstalled Vista 3 times now (due to changing from 32-bit to 64-bit and then changing motherboards) and haven't had any problems with it.

yoyo

Stephen wrote: »

"Microsoft allows you to reinstall and reactivate windows vista on the same computer once" Thats from "configuring windows vista client", pretty sure XP didnt do that.

I re-installed & activated Vista HP OEM around 4 times before upgrading to 64bit Ultimate, I did have to ring up microsoft to activate it after 2 activations but that was the same with my OEM XP license, Also from the Vista activation FAQ:

Windows can be activated any number of times, but your re-activation experience will vary based on the way you acquired Windows.

*

If you acquired Windows Vista via retail purchase (boxed product), you may activate via the Internet the first five times. Subsequent activations are allowed but must be completed via telephone.
*

If you acquire Windows Vista pre-installed on a computer, re-installation would not require additional activation steps unless significant hardware changes were made.

Nick