XP or Vista for my new build?
Archives Forums/Win32 Discussion/XP or Vista for my new build?
| ||
| I'm upgrading to a new PC in a month or so. I'll be developing games in Blitz, C++ and building websites as the main activities. That and the odd high-end 3D game. I'm thinking of this build so far: Intel Q6600 Quad core CPU 4 GB RAM 2x1TB Sata-2 Drives running in RAID-0 ATI 4850 512mb PCI-E Card I know I'll only get 3.5GB RAM if I stick to 32bit Windows XP, but I want as much compatibility as possible and a very responsive system with a low boot time. I'll also have a 1TB external NAS backup drive. Would Vista 64bit run everything I want (including new games). |
| ||
| I know I'll only get 3.5GB RAM if I stick to 32bit Windows XP, but I want as much compatibility as possible and a very responsive system with a low boot time No, you'll have less than that. More realistically you'll get 3.25 GB or 3 GB, maybe even slightly less -- thanks to the 512MB video card. under 32 bit the system can only address 4 billion unique addresses. Your video card will take up 512MB, so there is 3.5 billion left. However, that won't all be available to be used by your RAM: There are also address mappings for your BIOS, harddrive controllers, USB controllers, PCI bus, and every other hardware component under the sun in your PC. My own computer has 4GB RAM installed, and states so during POST. Yet XP (and Linux) can only see 3GB total. I only have a 256MB video card myself -- The other 768 MB is presumably gone thanks to the miscellaneous other hardware addres mappings. Would Vista 64bit run everything I want (including new games). Probably not -- While support is slowly getting better and better, there are still a lot of older programs that you can forget about running. No 16 bit programs at all, for starters. (Sure, they're a dieing breed, but if you happen to have some older windows 95-98 era games around that you still play, there is a chance that they're 16-bit. Ditto for a bunch of those little freeware tools and such that you don't really give much thought until they no longer work. :-?) There will also be poorly programmed 32-bit programs that won't run -- e.g. by making a stupid assumptions about hard-coded paths that were changed in Vista, or that have installers that can't complete because Vista won't allow it to put files in certain locations anymore. Many/most programs will work under 64-bit, but it is very likely that you'll run into some that won't. I'm considering the switch to 64 bit Vista myself, but more than likely I'll set it up as a dual boot so I have the choice to fall back on 32 bit for those incompatible apps... (And from a developer point of view, it may not be bad to have easy access to both Vista and XP for testing purposes -- they do treat applications differently, after all. Also, one more thing to keep in mind: Make sure that *all* your drivers for *all* your devices in your new computer have *signed* vista64 drivers. I'm sure you remember all those fun warnings under XP telling you that the driver is not signed and if you were sure that you wanted to install it? Under Vista 64, not having a signed driver means that the device won't be activated, unless you hammer F8 on startup and disable the driver verification process. Every single time you boot up. There's a couple of hacks that may force it to do so automatically, but your mileage may vary. :-? As far as boot time is concerned: Regardless of whether you run XP or Vista, you can significantly cut down on that simply by using hibernation instead of an actual shutdown. In hibernation it will write the contents of memory to a temp file on disk before powering off. Restoring the memory contents from file is significantly faster than a 'proper' fresh bootup. Personally I always hibernate my machine for that reason. |
| ||
| Oh -- some programs that I've ran into myself that wouldn't work under Vista: - Older versions of Quickbooks - Nero 7 - WS_FTP Pro 7 |
   |