What OS to choose?

[Tim Sargent]

Here's my spec, thats arriving tomorrow.

Core 2 Quad 6600 2.4ghz
4GB RAM
2 x 500 GB SATA

After reading various things about the memory issues with 4gb and XP, should I install XP (my preffered choice)?

Is there a benefit to using XP 64-bit? If so, will my programs work on it, like After Effects and Sony Vegas?

If its to be Vista, im a newbie. What version should I go for, and again 32 or 64 bit

Your comments/advice much appreciated.

[Edward Troxel]

If you want to use the full 4Gig of ram, you really need to go Vista. Vegas 8 supports Vista.

If you want to go to the 64 bit version of Vegas Pro 8 (not yet released but announced to be released soon), you'll need the 64bit version of Vista.

Having said that, if you feel more comfortable with XP, it's still a viable option.

Of course, there's also the option of using BOTH in a dual-boot configuration.

[Jamie Hellmich]

I'm using the same processor, memory and multiple drives as well. I built the machine from the gound up, and installed Vista 32 bit. Vista does recognize 4gig of RAM, and the machine screams compared to my P4 3600.

It loads and runs V8 very well, with no issues. I don't see any huge advantages (nor any disadvantages) over XP, other than it is a newer OS and has some options I like.

SATA II in Raid 0 500 gig (250gig X 2) for OS/programs/storage is very fast, and with 2 other SATA II 500's for capture/storage/backup/rendering works nicely for me.

Jamie

[Paul Kellett]

I also run vista 32bit with vegas pro 8, no problems whatsoever.
People say vista is slow compared to xp, but that's because vista has a lot of crap running which isn't needed.
Just google "speed up vista" and there's plenty of tips, my pc ran loads faster after following the tips.
One thing i really like about vista is installing drivers, or should i say the not needing to install drivers, almost everything i've added to my pc vista installs automatically. When i first got this vista pc i couldn't find the driver for my canon pixma ip300, whcih is about 4 years old, so i just plugged it in, and vista said "installing drivers", then it was done,in seconds. Same with my sxs card reader, i've never installed the driver.
I wouldn't go back to XP now.

Paul.

[Jamie Hellmich]

I agree Paul. There were some things running that I didn't want or need. It is fairly simple to customize Vista to eliminate alerts/warnings etc...

And yes, the driver installation is a breeze, true "plug and play".

Jamie

[Jeff Harper]

Remember when considering Vista, the OS uses 1.5 GB of RAM out of the box. Even when you significantly shut of non-essential services, it uses close to that anyway, which negates any benefit of it's seeing a tad bit more ram than XP. If you consider Vista 64 bit version, be certain that Certified drivers are available for your hardware. Non-certified hardware drivers will not work, and there is no workaround for it. I had to replace a printer for this reason. I ended up choosing to abandon 64 bit after that because the drivers for my adaptec e-sata card were not certified. There are non-certified drivers available for some hardware, but they will not work with SP1 of Vista, period. They supposedly did work with the earliest versions of Vista.

Drivers for my adaptec card should be available soon, as well as the 64 bit version of Vegas. Until then, I'm back to XP. I dislike Vista's thrashing of my hard drives, and other things, and there are no benchmarks that I recall that gives Vista any edge whatsover over XP. I have 8GB of memory, and while the OS responded fairly well with Vista, all other applications ran the same or slower if anything, since they are all 32 bit. I had to replace two software applications with newer versions as well, since some software programs will not run on Vista 64 bit.

After all I invested into Vista, I abandoned it. I am actually happier with XP than ever. If it's any indication of the suitability of Vista, Microsoft has fired much of the team responsible for it. Nuff said. It works, but for the $300 dollars I paid for Ultimate, I had hoped for more. I read posts similar to mine all over the net and didn't listen. Of course, I do have the experience and will be familiar with it when Vegas 64 bit comes out. And truth be told, if it doesn't render much faster, I likely will go back to XP again anyway. So far, Vista has been a total waste of time and money. But then I'm a performance junkie. If absolute top performance of your workstation doesn't matter, Vista will work fine. Just don't be under any illusion that it will outperform Vista. Google Vista vs XP benchmarks, etc and you'll see.

To quote from Tom's hardware: "Overall, applications performed as expected, or executed slightly slower than under Windows XP. The synthetic benchmarks such as Everest, PCMark05 or Sandra 2007 show that differences are non-existent on a component level. We also found some programs that refused to work, and others that seem to cause problems at first but eventually ran properly." You can read the article here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...a,1531-11.html

[Kim Olsson]

Just want to tell that the test from Tom's Hardware, is from Januari 29, 2007....

Alot of things have changed since then...

ServicePack 1 is also availible for Vista 86/64 architect...

[Jeff Harper]

SP1 is virtually no better than the original. Microsoft themselves rated XP as faster on many test. Read about it here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,14...1/article.html

[Kim Olsson]

Well, I must say, I have used Vista since February 2007, I have meet a lot of problems during this period... ALL of them where actually fixed in SP1 for Vista... The only "unstable" thing I have noticed is that when sometime copying/moving files, the currently copying/moving window feezes until it has copying/moving finished...

I Must say Vista x64 on My Intel Core 2 Duo 2.67GHz, 4GB RAM, is stable like a horse....
Even Sony Vegas 8 Pro which not even support x64 bit architect, yet...

On other hand Windows XP have been very unstable, where problems have walked to another problem... Users experience are different worldwide...

My words are coming from experience, and not others opinions. It's sometime good to have others referens, but you have to make your own conclusion about things, and not complete trust what you read/hear...

Windows XP x64 support up to 128GB of RAM
Windows Vista Home Basic x64 support 8GB of RAM
Windows Vista Home Premium x64 support 16GB of RAM
Windows Vista Business, Enterprise or Ultimate x64 support 128GB+ of RAM

The x86 or 32-bit architecture support maximum 4GB of RAM... Actually only 3GB, only windows itself can adress the leftover GB for itself...

When you asking for advice witch OS you should buy, it is up to your pockets...
The prices for the different OS is various...

When it comes to Vista, some people talk about it like it came out yesterday, actually Vista is growing and have been released almost 2 years ago...

I Promise, Bill Gates wont work more on XP to make it overkill... consider WinXP as Win2000 now...

The new OperationSystem which is planning its release in late 2009, is out, this is only a early beta... the codename is Windows 7 (Microsoft Windows 7 Build 6519 M1)

[Jeff Harper]

Thanks for the information Kim. Glad you're happy.

[Harold Brown]

I have had Vista Ultimate 32 since April and I like it. A few issues here an there but I worked through them.

[John Miller]

I've been using Vista almost exclusively since November 2006. I estimate I have put in at least 2000 hours on it. I have found it to be exceptionally stable. One BSOD in the first week thanks to a very old soundcard which was duly removed. Once you get used to the different interface compared to XP, it is more productive - in my experience.

I use it for software development so it takes a pounding. The software I develop is video related and puts demands on DV devices, external hard drives, CPUs etc.

At first, I had 1GB RAM. Running my development suite, virtual machines and other day-to-day stuff needed about 1.1GB (!) so I now have 2GB. No need for >2GB at this point.

My platform isn't particularly fancy (because I want to make sure the software I develop works well on non-cutting edge systems) - Pentium D 2.8GHz, 2GB RAM, nVidia GS7600.

I recently migrated my software development to Vista 64 on the same hardware. I only go into Vista 32 or XP to verify my code works on those platforms.

Most tales of woe come from those who either haven't given it enough time to get used to the new GUI or have flaky hardware (including overclocked).

I have had a very good experience of Vegas 8.0 on Vista 32. I have to contact Sony to get my verification code to put it on Vista 64 since I have installed it on a couple of laptops (per the license, of course!)

Oh, and installing SP1 on Vista 32 was painless though I haven't detected any obvious changes. This isn't surprising, though, since the greatest gains relate to Office 2007. I use Office 2003.

[Jeff Harper]

Personally, I found Vista stable, just annoying. My "Vista Experience" rating was 5.9 and I still wasn't impressed. Maybe when 64 bit Vegas comes out it will make it worthwhile.

[Tim Sargent]

Thanks guys for all the comments

Been very helpful

I'll go with Vista, prob 64-bit.

Regards