Hard Drive Questions

[5PointOh]

I have 2 hard drives, a 500GB, and 250 GB (The 250 is partioned 240/10).  I was wondering if I could install XP on the 250 and just use it mainly for AH?  Would AH run better on the 250 with XP than the 500GB with Vista?  Any help or suggestions would be great!

[Ruler2]

Need the specs on the hard drives or at least the models to give you any help, the 250GB could be much faster than the 500GB, or the other way around.

[Fulmar]

Need the specs on the hard drives or at least the models to give you any help, the 250GB could be much faster than the 500GB, or the other way around.

+1

[5PointOh]

They are both 7200rpm with 16mb cache...

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Hard drive speed is really a non-issue with playing AH. Either one will do just fine.

The only important things are CPU speed, having enough RAM and a fast enough GPU.

[1701E]

Since they are identical HDD's (aside from size) and are in the same system, it would be best to have AH on XP.  I don't think Skuzzy could deal with helping another Vista/AH set-up should something go screwy.

[5PointOh]

AH runs good on Vista, I can use everything but self shadow, but sometimes in heavy fighting its a little laggy. I know vista take a lot of resourses to run, just thought maybe I could get a little more performance out of my system.

[Ghastly]

About the only real improvement would likely be that if you dual-booted Vista and XP and used the XP just for games, you could keep it very trim and mean compared to an OS that you use for everything.  There are tools that will shut down everything not needed before gaming - iobits makes a good one - but the fact is the more stuff you install under any Windows OS the more crudiffied it becomes.   The other good reason to dual boot is that it gives you a good OS to use when something happens to the other installation to fix it, if you're not comfortable doing so with a Linux live CD.

Other than that - excluding the fact that Vista is crudware (*IMO, based on my experiences, YMMV, and I'm sorry if I offend anyone who has had a good experience with it against all odds) there's not a lot to argue for not just running either as your only OS. (again, IMO).

<S>

[Hungry]

About the only real improvement would likely be that if you dual-booted Vista and XP and used the XP just for games, you could keep it very trim and mean compared to an OS that you use for everything.  There are tools that will shut down everything not needed before gaming - iobits makes a good one - but the fact is the more stuff you install under any Windows OS the more crudiffied it becomes.   The other good reason to dual boot is that it gives you a good OS to use when something happens to the other installation to fix it, if you're not comfortable doing so with a Linux live CD.

I second everything here, Ive had dual boots of several varitys for years, one for the every day stuff and one just for gaming stripped down and clean.  Has allways seemed to work well.  Right now its two XP installs.


I think this is more important than people realize

"The other good reason to dual boot is that it gives you a good OS to use when something happens to the other installation to fix it"

[Denholm]

Use the second hard-drive and Windows XP to run Aces High.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Just to be clear AH2 runs as well if not better on Vista/Windows 7. The changes in sound architecture apparently have removed the sound stuttering problem that plague many XP users. I prefer to fly AH with Win7 instead of XP because of this.

[OOZ662]

Just to be clear AH2 runs as well if not better on Vista/Windows 7.

I would believe the Win7 claim, but the sheer number of horror stories that come pouring out of the Vista community in many games makes me doubt the first claim.

[MadHatter]

I've ran AH on VIsta and 7. I prefer 7 (Ultimate 64) just for the sheer ease of use. Vista had it's issues, enough that Microsoft tends to look away from it, and 7 does too. It runs the game beautifully, tho it's issues lie mainly in the way it handles the network side of things. I would go with the dual-boot XP and Vista (do your research first, there's a particular order in the installation, I believe it's XP then Vista, but I can't remember) then go to http://www.overclock.net/windows/9836-xp-definitive-performance-tweaking-guide.html to streamline the XP install (I've done this many times, never had a problem except once when I bought a new printer)

[MrRiplEy[H]]

tho it's issues lie mainly in the way it handles the network side of things.

These can be largely solved by removing everything except ipv4 from network adapter options. The optimizing functions, QoS (only causes needless overhead if qos is not properly configured in your router) and ipv6 cause problems in online games.

[MadHatter]

These can be largely solved by removing everything except ipv4 from network adapter options. The optimizing functions, QoS (only causes needless overhead if qos is not properly configured in your router) and ipv6 cause problems in online games.

Yea, I just haven't gotten off my lazy *** to do it yet.    7 is my game machine and been a lil busy gettin shot down.