Buying a new PC with Vista on it. Should I downgrade?

KING LITERATE

Well.. Should I?

Dr Snofeld

Depends. Why do you think you should?

Because if it's a case of "the Internet said Vista's horrible" then that's not a good reason.

The Internet is wrong in this case, anyway.

I've been using Vista for at least six months now and I've had no problems whatsoever. It just works.

kuhlmeye

I've been using Vista since it came out(thanks Engineering Department!), and I've had no problems that were not caused by me. I just recently installed Fallout 3 and its running excellently.

I completely agree with Snofeld that the Internet's opinion of Vista is very wrong.

Ramen Noodle

Honestly, Vista is pretty fucking awesome. I like it more than XP. If you get it and hate it then you might as well downgrade though.

Rohan

I had some problems early on that turned me off Vista for a few months, but after SP1 was released I came back. I've been using it since and apart from a few minor annoyances, I love it. As has already been said, it just works.

ainuvas

I've been using Vista for a while now, and love it. I've found that it slows down over time (however XP did the same thing), but that's my only complaint so far. If I got a new PC with Vista I wouldn't downgrade.

Aldo

I never have any problems with Vista. The UAC can be turned off, if you don't like being treated like a moron.

PolloDiablo

Yeah, don't believe the Vista hate train. It's pretty good.

vonPoonBurGer

You can stick with Vista, just make sure you install SP1 and check to ensure you have up to date video and audio drivers. SP1 fixed a bunch of performance issues, and a lot of early Vista performance problems were caused by crappy drivers. As with any new OS, it wasn't even worth considering in the first year unless you liked dealing with bleeding-edge early adopter teething problems, but now that it's been out for over a year, you should be Ok.

Unknown

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Crashtard

Rohan wrote: »

I had some problems early on that turned me off Vista for a few months, but after SP1 was released I came back. I've been using it since and apart from a few minor annoyances, I love it. As has already been said, it just works.

Same here. I didn't like it till SP1. After that it became awesome to use. I'm running a XP desktop and Vista laptop side by side and the difference in usability is actually on Vista's side. It does a lot of things that I wish XP did.

FyreWulff

New computer? Yeah.. XP will be horrible. Vista is awesome.

I actually hate booting up XP now on other computers.

Daemonion

You yourself used the term "downgrade."

This is exactly where the Vista vs. XP debate stands - Vista is slick as fuck, and runs great. I recently switched to Vista Home Premium 64bit (and am an avid gamer) and love the shit out of it.

Doc

Vista is fine. It has the same issues as XP does. Namely, trying to do everything for you and fucking up anyway.

mugginns

If I were to buy a new pc today that came with software, I'd still go with XP.

Inquisitor77

The answer to your question is no.

Shark_MegaByte

I'm using Vista 64-bit Ultimate on a system that's about 2 years old. I game, and 4gb of ram is very nice to have. There's no reason to stay with XP on a new system unless you have an unusual motive to hold onto a piece of old hardware for the next few years.

acidlacedpenguin

get 64bit vista if your computer has more than 1 gig of RAM.

VeritasVR

acidlacedpenguin wrote: »

get 64bit vista if your computer has more than THREE (3) gig of decent RAM, which is cheap as fuck right now.

Fixed for correctness.

Ruckus

Ya, I agree with the RAM thing, go big or go home.

That being said, I use Vista SP1 on my notebook for day to day stuff, but my Gaming rig is Windows XP Pro SP3, strictly to squeeze the max amount of performance out of it.

embrik

Hell, I'm running Vista Business x32 on a Motion Computing Le1600 with an extra 512MB RAM (for a total of 1GB), and after bootup, the thing runs slick, plus all the new stuff for tablets that Vista has, it's well worth it. Take a look at the specs I linked. It runs well on that.

SkyGheNe

Rohan wrote: »

I had some problems early on that turned me off Vista for a few months, but after SP1 was released I came back. I've been using it since and apart from a few minor annoyances, I love it. As has already been said, it just works.

Fantasma

Hi,

If you are a normal user, that is to say, you do not perform any video and/or CPU intensive tasks in your machine, you do not need to downgrade. But, if you do a lot of video & audio encoding/editing, and play massive games such as Unreal tournament, Crysis, etc, you will be better served downgrading to Windows XP Pro.

If you want to have a better idea how Windows Vista actually works in terms of speed and power consumption, take a look at this article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xp-vs-vista,1531.html

I hope this helps.

Aldo

Fantasma wrote: »

Hi,

If you are a normal user, that is to say, you do not perform any video and/or CPU intensive tasks in your machine, you do not need to downgrade. But, if you do a lot of video & audio encoding/editing, and play massive games such as Unreal tournament, Crysis, etc, you will be better served downgrading to Windows XP Pro.

If you want to have a better idea how Windows Vista actually works in terms of speed and power consumption, take a look at this article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xp-vs-vista,1531.html

I hope this helps.

that article is from January 2007. That's almost 2 years ago.

Daedalus

And how is running Crysis on a system without DX10 supposed to be better?

MagicPrime

My rule of thumb on this and the advice I've been giving people who ask. If you have an XP machine and its working fine for you, don't upgrade. If you are buying/building a brand new computer - go for Vista.

A lot of peoples "problems" stem from the upgrades and not upgrading all the drivers, or trying to run programs installed under XP.

MagicPrime

Daedalus wrote: »

And how is running Crysis on a system without DX10 supposed to be better?

Well, in his defense Crysis is a false DX10 game. You can hack the config files to runn the DX10 settings on DX9/XP and the difference in visual quality is barely anything at all.

Fantasma

Aldo wrote: »

Fantasma wrote: »

Hi,

If you are a normal user, that is to say, you do not perform any video and/or CPU intensive tasks in your machine, you do not need to downgrade. But, if you do a lot of video & audio encoding/editing, and play massive games such as Unreal tournament, Crysis, etc, you will be better served downgrading to Windows XP Pro.

If you want to have a better idea how Windows Vista actually works in terms of speed and power consumption, take a look at this article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xp-vs-vista,1531.html

I hope this helps.

that article is from January 2007. That's almost 2 years ago.

Yes, it is from 2007, Windows Vista is not going to magically beat Windows XP in terms of speed, performance and power compsumtion is 2 years.

Topweasel

Fantasma wrote: »

Aldo wrote: »

Fantasma wrote: »

Hi,

If you are a normal user, that is to say, you do not perform any video and/or CPU intensive tasks in your machine, you do not need to downgrade. But, if you do a lot of video & audio encoding/editing, and play massive games such as Unreal tournament, Crysis, etc, you will be better served downgrading to Windows XP Pro.

If you want to have a better idea how Windows Vista actually works in terms of speed and power consumption, take a look at this article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xp-vs-vista,1531.html

I hope this helps.

that article is from January 2007. That's almost 2 years ago.

Yes, it is from 2007, Windows Vista is not going to magically beat Windows XP in terms of speed, performance and power compsumtion is 2 years.

Sure it would.... Or are you still running Windows 2000 because its supposedly faster then XP. Vista is faster once the kinks are worked out. Its only problems is memory footprint and HDD foot print but the prices on both memory and HDDs make this a non-factor.

MagicPrime

in 2007 4gigs of ram and 1TB HDD space was not as common. Now I have that in my desktop, along with another 250GB HDD just for Windows

(1 500GB - Storage, 1 500GB (2x 250GB partition for Programs and Music), 1 250GB OS Drive.

Also, patches and service packs are out for Vista now - and a lot of the performance issues are now non-issues.

I built this computer in January of this year. It will probably be due for an upgrade around this time in 2010.

vonPoonBurGer

MagicPrime wrote: »

Also, patches and service packs are out for Vista now - and a lot of the performance issues are now non-issues.

These are all true, but the primary reason game performance under Vista doesn't suck anymore has little to do with Microsoft: 3rd party drivers. The first few rounds of 3rd party hardware drivers for Vista were pretty crap. It wasn't until early this year that the average hardware driver for Vista caught up to XP driver quality.

Fantasma wrote:

Yes, it is from 2007, Windows Vista is not going to magically beat Windows XP in terms of speed, performance and power compsumtion is 2 years.

Your linked info is seriously out of date man. Windows Vista does in fact beat Windows XP on a number of benchmarks as of May 2008. Since its release, Vista has received one service pack, numerous security patches, and countless 3rd party driver revisions. It's not magic, it's an accumulation of many software optimizations plus an increase in the amount of RAM and CPU horsepower the average PC is packing. I find it strange that you think an OS's performance wouldn't change over such a long timeline.

Fantasma

The article you post is extremely tailored, only two games, TWO games are benchmarked, and not even one intensive CPU task is compared. Maybe the author didn't do it on purpose, but these tests look highly suspicious.

I am glad that that most people here using Vista are not having problems or don't even notice speed bottlenecks, that's good.

The formula is pretty clear:

Normal user = Windows Vista
Power user = Windows XP

Unknown

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MagicPrime

Pitbulls = Windows Vista
Soccer Moms = Windows XP

Back to the OP's question and my defining answer:

No, you should not back-track to Windows XP. It will cause much more trouble than its worth and the current state of Windows Vista far supersedes the stories and opinions of 2 years ago. If you really really feel it necissary to downgrade back to XP then you will need to format EVERYTHING and start from scratch, not just the OS - which can be a headace in and of itself. I would not suggest it.

Keep with Vista.

RandomEngy

Let's look at some more recent benchmarks:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1390&page=2
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2302495,00.asp

Vista is at worst barely slower than XP in terms of GPU and CPU performance.

Unknown

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acidlacedpenguin

VeritasVR wrote: »

acidlacedpenguin wrote: »

get 64bit vista if your computer has more than THREE (3) gig of decent RAM, which is cheap as fuck right now.

Fixed for correctness.

hey hey, I said that out of personal experience with systems with 1 gig, 2 gigs, and 4 gigs. Vista fails at 1 gig or lower, performs pretty much exactly the same at 2 gigs, and obviously, is the only windows that "works" with 3 or more.

also, why the hell are people going with 3 gigs of ram anyway? Doesn't that mean no more dual channel, or was that something that was oldschool like, DDR1 stuff?

anyway yeah, RAM is so cheap you may as well buy 4 gigs or more.

mellestad

We have about 150 PC's, probably 30 of them are Vista. Vista is very solid, expecially with SP1. The people whining about it tend to be pimply linux geeks who think Bill Gates is some kind of monster because he made a lot of money, or bitter old men who complain when anything changes.

The interface is slick, it crashes very rarely and the security is better so you don't get as much malware crap.

I also run Vista on my home machine for gaming, and it works just fine. It needs more RAM than XP, and dual core processors help out a lot. If you just bought a new PC, I assume those things are taken care of though. (If you do have an older machine, stick with XP unless you have a compelling reason to switch)

Good luck!

Blake T

The only real problem with Vista is the Vista capable stickers.

These let you run Vista horribly.

If you buy a decent gaming computer now days (preferably with 64bit) it will run it great.

Daemonion

Fantasma wrote: »

The formula is pretty clear:

Normal user = Windows Vista
Power user = Windows XP

I don't know about that, man.


- I am constantly encoding over 7,500 songs and over 500gb of movies, and counting

- Recording my own music with Cubase and have several synth devices, guitars, a drumset, MIDI keyboard, etc, plugged into my dedicated sound card

- 360 using a network bridge through my PC, using media sharing with my PC and Zune Software, and using SPDI-F to upmix 360 audio through my external sound card

- Play very old to very new games

- Manage, edit, and share photo collections taken from various cameras

- Have a 2.66ghz Intel quad core, Radeon 4870, 4gb DDR2 RAM


Let me tell you, every single one of my devices has worked with Vista 64 flawlessly so far, I haven't had one crash, and everything is slick as fuck. At this point, I would never go back to XP. Hell, my sound card even took care of the 64bit driver installs automatically. I just sat back and clicked OK on the dialog boxes for 10 minutes.

I'd Fuck Chuck Lidell Up

I've never understood why people should downgrade to xp if they aren't normal users as opposed to are.

technically it should be the other way around since vista can support more memory (up to like 126 gigs of ram which is well beyond hardware capabilities.)

I've had vista for a long time now and I've run Age of Conan and WAR Online both puling almost maxed performance getting around 100 fps.

if you are buying a comp with less than 2 gigs of memory I'd say you may wanna go for xp. 2 and up vista is by far the best option