Vista > Xp. Gaming Improvement?

[Mamong]

Ok, I have this laptop I'm currently using and I enjoy gaming on it.

 

 

 

Specs

 

Pentium Dual Core 1.6ghz

 

2gb RAM

 

Nvidia Geforce GO 7300 128mb dedicated

 

 

 

Question: Will XP provide a gaming improvement over Vista?

 

 

 

My dad has an old copy of XP he isn't using and I was considering dual booting it with Vista, making XP a bare bones OS just for games.

 

 

 

By doing this, am I going to see an FPS improvement? Or is it not going to be worth the time to set it up. Thanks :)

[eggzs]

Benchmarks say XP performs better than Vista but Vista is quickly/already closing the gap with better/upgraded drivers. Unless you are going for DX10 (which doesnt seem likely) or upgrading to >4gb of RAM, you could just stick with XP.

[rwinner16]

You might see a small improvement just because Xp uses less RAM just to operate, but if you already have more than 2 gig the difference will probably be miniscule.

 

 

 

It is always worth having dual-boot if you can.

[ClareJonsson]

Playing Quake 4 and Doom 3 on Vista is not s smooth as on XP, the frame rate was noticeably slower on Vista. This is why I keep XP boot for games.

[dorcus1]

Depends on the game you're playing. If you don't have performance problems (a.k.a. lag) on Vista, there's no need to install XP. The difference in performance isn't really noticeable unless you're pushing the computer to the limit.

 

 

 

Personally, I insisted on windows XP for my laptop's performance, even though it wasn't really necessary and even though XP was more expensive than Vista(!) As a bonus, it's easier to install pirated games on XP! :lol:

[OldJoe]

With those specs, yes.

 

Crysis (Warhead also) i get better fps on XP than Vista.

 

 

 

As a bonus, it's easier to install pirated games on XP!

 

And something that you don't need to mention.

[henman888]

Xp will give you a slight performance boost.

[Sbrideau]

With a Pentium D and that amount of RAM, Yes, you should use XP for games.

 

 

 

 

 

To add a bit of off topic here:

 

If you get a better computer in a near future though, you could stick to Vista on that new one. Mine, for example, runs much better on Vista than XP as Vista is a lot faster, and I also get better framerate than when I'm on XP.

[dorcus1]

 

As a bonus, it's easier to install pirated games on XP!

 

And something that you don't need to mention.

 

 

 

Fair enough, that observation was in bad taste. But the point I wanted to make is that Vista takes copy-protection and digital-rights-management to new levels. When I buy a music CD, I'd like to be able to copy the songs to my harddrive.

 

The continuous genuine-software-check processing may be why Vista is slightly slower than XP.

 

 

 

These annoyances are serious enough that I'd take Windows XP over Vista. But if my laptop was handed to me with preinstalled Vista, I wouldn't bother with the effort of installing XP.

[pulli23]

+you provide a lot less of headaches for programmers! (really, did you ever try to get a game you made yourself working on vista?)

 

 

 

However if you disable all that visual crap on VISTA, and a game uses a FULL SCREEN directX window VISTA has 1 advantage: it is able to "shutdown" itself partly so that more resources can go to the game itself.

 

 

 

That being said: VISTA uses a lot of RAM just for being there.. (why the hell does it need 1gb?). So I doubt it will really pass XP performance wise even though it has some good ideas in it!