Which OS - XP or Vista

[Warder45]

I'm setting up a machine to attach to our 52" LCD in the living room. It's primary for web surfing, music storage, and game playing. At the moment I'm not planning on using media center functions like DVR. I have Windows XP SP2 and I also have Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit.

After reading a few reviews about DX9 vs DX10 it looks like you lose very little in visual quality but can lose up to 40% of your FPS if you go with DX10. I have an ATI 4850 for the machine but I want to run games at the native res of 1920x1080 when possible.

The one thing I thought vista did better however was scaling icons and text. Sitting 11ft away from 1920 x 1080 may make the text too small on the screen. Is this true or was this feature cut?

Thanks - John

 

[ViRGE]

Vista. It has better DPI handling (which helps with your text problem) and a better version of Media Center. Never mind the fact that XP is just flat-out old and you won't find a lot of people here recommending installing it on an otherwise new machine.

 

[JPB]

I am still on XP Pro. However there are a lot of things online that says Vista is bad with bugs and things like that. But do not believe it, Vista is actually pretty good now. A lot of users can attest to that.

I think the ones that say Vista is bad is just scared of upgrading their OS.

 

[mpilchfamily]

Sine you can't really get XP anymore your pretty much tied in to getting Vista.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: mpilchfamily
Sine you can't really get XP anymore your pretty much tied in to getting Vista.

Well, you can still order XP Professional OEM 32/64 from Newegg for $140. And XP Media Center Edition for $120. Or XP Home OEM for $87 from MWave.

I believe those options will go away in January. But there's always eBay for Retail Edition or sealed OEM software.

 

[Warder45]

Well, I own legal copies of XP so it's not a big thing.

Someone mentioned that you can tell a game to run in either DX9 or DX10 mode, is that true? If so that would remove some of my performance issues as I'll just run in DX9 if I can't handle DX10.

 

[dguy6789]

For a new machine, Vista is the way to go. In the games that support DX10, you can run it in either DX9 or 10, it's not an issue. For games that don't support DX10(pretty much every game except two or three right now), performance in Vista is every bit as good as XP.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Vista hands down. Much more stable, better driver handling. XP was nice, but is outdated now. I would say try LinuxMCE - unfortunately, it is still picky in my experience.

-Kevin

 

[Blain]

If you own XP now, go with that.
Windows 7 is just around the corner.

 

[JackMDS]

If the computer has 2GB (or more) and the graphic card has 256MB (or more) there is No reason to go with XP.

If you own XP and can Not afford spending more XP is OK too.

If you want the general appearance of XP to look like Vista.

Free and very simple to execute, http://www.askvg.com/vistavg-rtm-theme-for-windows-xp/

 

[Warder45]

Thanks guys, I'll use my copy of Vista then.

 

[DayLaPaul]

Dual boot and see which one you end up using more. To answer your question though, I'm running a quad boot (XP, Vista64, Leopard, Ubuntu) and find myself using Vista the most. Can't go wrong with Vista if your hardware can handle it.