XP PRO vs Vista Ultimate for plaing AHII..??

[Buzz03]

Hi All,

Just got a laptop I'll be using to play, it's a Lenovo T61p 2.4ghz T7700 CPU 500GB HDD with 4gig Ram.

Just wanting to ask, which OS should i go with - Vista Ultimate or XP pro? I know a few years ago Vista was causing all manner of issues for AH gamers...   but have times moved on?

Let me know with your reasons please.

Thanks 

[Skuzzy]

No, Vista was the worst OS Microsoft ever shipped.  On laptops it was really bad.  That will never change.

[Ghastly]

Yeah, Times have changed. MS finally gave up shoving Vista down everyone's throat even though it was almost as bad as ME, and got Win 7 to market as fast as they possibly could. The last thing you want to do is move to Vista.  

A very clean XP system is still (marginally) faster than the same system running a very clean Windows 7 when it comes to gaming - or so I'm told.  If you have to buy the OS, go with Win 7.  If you have XP and are confident that you can get all the drivers you'd need from the Lenovo web site, use that.   Windows 7 will install MUCH easier as most of the support for your laptop is on the DVD, whereas with XP will require a significantly greater amount of hoof work to get all the drivers.

Before doing any of that, look into what video card the T61P has, and make sure that that's going to play. I'm fairly sure the Lenovo's we have in the office are all Intel Integrated Graphics, which hoover brown pond water for game play.
 
All IMO.

<S>

[Buzz03]

Hi All - thanks for the replies so far...

The graphics card my Thinkpad T61p is using is the Nvidia Quadro FX 570M with the following spec:

Codename G64GLM
Pipelines 32 - unified
Core Speed * 475 MHz
Shader Speed * 950 MHz
Memory Speed * 700 MHz
Memory Bus Width 128 Bit
Memory Type GDDR3
Max. Amount of Memory 256 MB
Shared Memory no
 
DirectX DirectX 10, Shader 4.0
Current Consumption 35 Watt
Transistors 289 Million
technology 80 nm
Notebook Size medium sized
Date of Announcement 01.06.2007
Information Powermizer 7.0, CG Shading language, 32 bit floating point precision, 12 bit subpixel precision, 128 bit graphic pipeline, vertex and pixelshader programmability, PureVideo HD, PCI-E interface, FSAA with turned grid, nView multidisplay support, high-precision dynamic-range (HPDR) technology, hardware 3D clipping, full image antialiasing

So Win 7 or XP..? Does 7 use a lot more CPU & memory than XP?
 

[Skuzzy]

Yes.  Windows 7 requires 1GB of system RAM just for itself.  2GB is considered meeting the bottom of the line for running anything.

[Buzz03]

Skuzzy - just so i understand your last message to me, you are saying that Win 7 is heavy on it's CPU/Memory requirements compared to XP or not?

Which one do you prefer and why?

[Skuzzy]

This post [clicky] probably is the best answer I have to that question.

[Buzz03]

Thanks Skuzzy appreciate that very much. Really helpful.

 

[Buzz03]

Does it make any useable difference upgrading from 32 to 64 bit XP on the game?

[Tigger29]

Does it make any useable difference upgrading from 32 to 64 bit XP on the game?

Not really.. the only real reason anyone would want to upgrade to 64bit XP is to utilize more than 4GB of ram, but the poor availability of drivers for it and other incompatibility issues negate any benefits this would potentially offer.

In other words, don't spend any money on XP64bit.  If you truly want a 64 bit operating system, purchase Windows 7... otherwise just stick with 32 bit XP.

I should also add that the Quadro graphics line was not designed with gaming in mind.. rather for more commercial applications such as graphics design, and autocad.. that sort of stuff.  However, it's still going to be better than the onboard intel graphics a lot of laptops use.. just don't expect to be able to max out your graphics settings.

[Masherbrum]

I went from 32 bit XP Pro to Vista Ultimate 64.   I don't regret it, but I have a PC that can efficiently run it.

[Buzz03]

Cheers chaps - appreciate the info! 

[bcadoo]

No, Vista was the worst OS Microsoft ever shipped.  On laptops it was really bad.  That will never change.

I think ME was worse than Vista...

[Tigger29]

I think ME was worse than Vista...

I beg to differ.. I had ME way back in the day and didn't have one bit of a problem with it.  Then again, I saw trouble before hand and turned off all of the stupid restore junk on it.  I think the biggest problem with ME is when people would load Win98 drivers into it.  Many hardware vendors never bothered writing ME drivers for things (choosing to support Win2K instead), and because of this ME was only compatible with a limited amount of hardware.  This forced a lot of people to revert to Win98 drivers which would work, but weren't quite full compatible.

But still.. this isn't exactly on subject with this thread, and is probably better discussed (and argued) at another place and time. . .