Vista Ready?

[sw001]

Did a quick search, and it seems people weren't terribly fond of Vista in May (most recent pro/con Vista thread I saw). Has anything changed? I'm thinking about freshening Windows (reinstalling to speed it up, remove crap, etc.) and wondering about Vista. A couple questions:

1) DirectX 10 is still only Vista? Any games actually worth using DirectX 10 now, or this fall?

2) Is Vista really 5-10% slower still?

3) Any pros/cons? For example, is the Games for Windows integration with XBox Live decent?

It seems from another recent thread, that 64 bit, or at least the Ultimate package is the way to go, if I go Vista.

[JPR]

1) Yes, and it should remain so. No.

2) Eh. 5%? Who cares. I don't know.

3) Yes, there are. Doesn't exist yet, and when it does it's going to work on XP also.

Only downside to 64 bit that I've found is that the Cisco VPN client doesn't work. That's the case with 64 bit XP also, though. I have been a fan of Vista since the first time installed it. I haven't experienced any real problems with it, and it looks nice. It has a few things going for it that XP doesn't, and for me doesn't have any real downside (I have MSDN, so it's free).

[stusser]

1) Yes it is. Bioshock has ever so slightly better graphics in DX10. Crysis and hellgate:london supposedly look much better in DX10.

2) Yes.

3) GFW is garbage and nobody supports it. Who cares?

Vista is fine. It's nothing particularly special, but if you're reinstalling anyway (and you have 2GB RAM) you might as well upgrade. You can buy home premium 32-bit for like $100. There's no reason to go with 64bit right now.

[sw001]

Thanks.

Crysis and hellgate:london supposedly look much better in DX10.

I hadn't read anything about Hellgate that said this. That could be reason enough if Hellgate is even close to as good as Diablo was.

[JPR]

There was a demo video a while back (like a year agoish) that demoed the stuff DX10 let them do they couldn't do before. Volumetric smoke is the main thing that is noticeable, but at the time it made the frame rate drop to single digits in their demo. World In Conflict does this too, and it's pretty hard on my machine, too, so I don't know how practical it's going to be at release.

Like I said, though, I don't think there's any real downside to Vista at this point.

[Igor Muravyev]

My friend bought some RAM that was Vista ready the other day. Its always a scary experience when inserting the old pre-Vista sticks into the DIMM slots and hoping it will pan out well in the end.

[Case]

My friend bought some RAM that was Vista ready the other day. Its always a scary experience when inserting the old pre-Vista sticks into the DIMM slots and hoping it will pan out well in the end.

WTF is "Vista ready RAM?" Is it actually different from other RAM? That sounds a bit... silly to me.

[grahamiam]

Ram is ram, can't be anything special for vista. Only special memory for Vista is when the finally start making hybrid hard drives so we can use the ReadyDrive feature. imho, if you are going with Vista, go with 64 bit so you can have more than 2GB of RAM in your system. You may want 4GB in a year or 2 and it would stink to have to have an additional cost of upgrading your OS.

[RickH]

You may want 4GB in a year or 2 and it would stink to have to have an additional cost of upgrading your OS.

Isn't the additional cost ~$10?

[unbongwah]

1) List of DX10 games: Bioshock, Company of Heroes, Call of Juarez, and Lost Planet support it now; several others will support it by the end of the year. You'd have to check some screenshots and read some reviews to decide if it's worth it. [E.g., CoH looks better in DX10, but takes a huge frame rate hit.]

2) In the past, games have run ~10% slower on Vista than WinXP, presumably due to immature drivers. But I haven't seen any benchmarks with the latest nVidia beta drivers to see if they've improved performance (apart from Bioshock).

3) I am seriously underwhelmed by GfW Live and it is only used by a few games (e.g., Halo 2, Shadowrun). If you've already got an XBL subscription, there's no reason not to add it, but I certainly don't see it as a selling point.

Vista and DX10 are The Future(tm), but they've still got some problems which need ironing out. I decided to go with a WinXP / Vista dual-boot: I think I accidentally borked my Vista install and will have to redo it, but it works out well otherwise.

[Igor Muravyev]

Don't bother, I heard from a good source that there's going to be DX10 dynarec to DX9 coming out anytime now..

[Dean]

Okay, so work gives me Vista Business for free to install on my home computer.

Should I?

Home computer =
AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual Core 3800+
2GB of RAM
2 Nvidia 7600 GT in SLI

I don't really feel the need to go Vista, but it's free...

[Coca Cola Zero]

Somewhat on topic, so I'll vent here.. my perfectly legitimate store-bought copy of Vista Home Premium decided to stop validating today, after 8 or so months of perfect operation, throwing my computer into disarray and making me unable to do lots of things with it.


Fuck you, Microsoft!! You FUCKS!

[Chris Nahr]

Microsoft's validation service appears to be down. I just tried to get the latest DX9 version in preparation for Bioshock and the MS website refused the download.

[ydejin]

Somewhat on topic, so I'll vent here.. my perfectly legitimate store-bought copy of Vista Home Premium decided to stop validating today, after 8 or so months of perfect operation, throwing my computer into disarray and making me unable to do lots of things with it.

I thought XP validation gives you a week or two to revalidate after making hardware changes. Did they change that for Vista?

[bago]

Vista allows per process volume controls.

[Shiroko]

Okay, so work gives me Vista Business for free to install on my home computer.

Should I?

Home computer =
AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual Core 3800+
2GB of RAM
2 Nvidia 7600 GT in SLI

I don't really feel the need to go Vista, but it's free...

I've got a similar machine as my desktop and it runs fine with 1GB. I have to point that my laptop with 2GB runs faster (Meaning you can happily alt-tab full screen games, something you don't get to do with 1GB)

I like it quite a lot, and the pros (Easier to find you look for, looks nicer, more protective, update system seems more efficient) outweigh the cons (5%-10% slowdown, drivers - if you have bad luck I haven't had bad luck on 4 computers aside for a wireless driver I had to download manually).

[Kalle]

If you are planning on installing Vista, I'd advise you to wait until next week.

[rei]

Or, as it is the trend with DRM-infested games, you can take advantage of your legal ownership to just crack it to have fewer hassles.