XP vs. Vista w/ Bootcamp

[jasperap]

Can anyone please give me pros/cons and suggestions as to which windows OS I should install on my iMac? I've got the new 20" with the ATI 2600 256mb vid card in it. I'm planning on upgrading the RAM to 4gigs in the near future.

I'm also planning on checking out Warhammer Online.

[Huntn]

I'm currently running Vista on a MBP. However from what I think I know, XP is going to be around for a long while and should give you better performance when PC Gaming on your Mac.

[CarlosG]

I have run both XP and Vista on my Mac Pro, and I can honestly say that there is very little difference in terms of performance.

I think that Vista has had some tweaks to make it quicker in SP1.

Anyway, get which ever you fancy. Just ensure that the software will work with the OS that you pick. I have a few things that don't work in Vista properly yet. But XP will be retired sooner.

To be honest, I quite like Vista.:eek: A big improvement on 98!!!

[chocopiefever]

Maybe it's because I'm tired of XP so I really like how things look on Vista (all the different colors to chose from). vista also gives this little side bar with the clock, calendars, games, etc. But there are a few tweeks (nothing crazy). Using Microsoft word is a bit confusing at first but you get used to it.

for gaming... well it depends on what kind of games? Some of my friends have issues with vista but personally I haven't found much difference in gaming experience (sometimes I do think it goes faster than when I play with my xp comupter. But I have heard that since XP is pretty old so most of the old/not so recent games work best with xp

Overall, not much of a difference to blow you away :confused:

[smwatson]

Vista Ultimate worth the extra moneys, or is Basic enough?

[Chone]

Vista Ultimate worth the extra moneys, or is Basic enough?

Well if you are only going to be using it for games on your mac then I say Basic is enough but Basic is very stripped of features, ideally you'd want Vista Home Premium at the very least but like I said, if it's only for games on bootcamp, basic will do the trick.

[SHADO]

I have run both XP Pro and Vista Ultimate on my Macbook 2.4GHz 2GB, and there are some pros and cons of XP. Here they are:
Pros:
-I have found that gaming is generally better with XP (like Halo and AOE III)
-Most people know how to use XP, so itll prolly be easier, as Vista takes some getting used to
Cons:
-u cant play any game that was made for Vista unless you dont want to play online. I love to play online, so that was the biggest problem for me.

Vista:
Pros:
-The appearance is so much better and sleeker than XP
-U can play games for Vista online
Cons:
-Some games (like Halo) require a bit of tweaking to get them to work properly in Vista, which is kind of annoying
-The framerate for games has been reduced in Vista

I guess it really depends on what type of games you want to play. If they werent made for Vista, I would say go w/XP Pro. Good Luck

[kahine]

I run Vista but only Vista 64 , I don't see any point in Vista 32 over XP -

So if you have 4GB of RAM or better I would go with Vista64 - if not then XP

In your case in particular if is the Imac with the 2600 I'd suggest XP for Warhammer Online gaming , the 2600 isn't terrible by any means but is going to be the weak point for the game an XP is going to be slightly faster than Vista ,

Squeezing any framerate help you can is what you are going to want to do and XP is going to run WAR faster than Vista with that video card -

[vagarach]

If you have the choice, go with XP, although because vista graphics drivers are much more mature now, the difference is slight, and not a case of "if you choose vista, this game will not run fast enough to be playable".

Pretty much the only benefit of vista is DX10 (marginally useful), and along with that, XP is much less demanding on hard drive space. I made a 15GB partition for vista, and it ate 10GB *just* installing it and running windows update.

[Stridder44]

Vista 64, hands down. Don't let the "Vista is teh suxorz!! XP 4 lyfe" crowd get to you. I used to think Vista sucked too, but I gave it a try after SP1 came out (in February) and was pleasantly surprised. Plus, being able to actually use 4+ GB of RAM is nice :) (none of that 3-3.5 crap).

And when people say XP is "slightly" faster than Vista, the difference is by like 1 fps, if that.

[Dagless]

And when people say XP is "slightly" faster than Vista, the difference is by like 1 fps, if that.

See, no. I tried Vista when my HL2 games wouldn't play, I had to turn off HDR and Bloom to get the same FPS I would get under XP. I tried Vista SP2 on an indentical spec iMac (same model entirely) and didn't get this gaming performance boost all the Vista were hyping.

I like to use the newest OS's, I always run out to the shops when they release new OSX versions and did so for previous Windows versions. I just don't like what they did to gaming. It's also a bit pants if you use Bootcamp since boot times are longer and you're forced into making your Windows boot drive NTFS.

[Zortrium]

I'm running Vista 64 on my new iMac and haven't had any problems in gaming - HL2 runs with all settings maxed no problem, etc.

[Stridder44]

See, no. I tried Vista when my HL2 games wouldn't play, I had to turn off HDR and Bloom to get the same FPS I would get under XP. I tried Vista SP2 on an indentical spec iMac (same model entirely) and didn't get this gaming performance boost all the Vista were hyping.

I like to use the newest OS's, I always run out to the shops when they release new OSX versions and did so for previous Windows versions. I just don't like what they did to gaming. It's also a bit pants if you use Bootcamp since boot times are longer and you're forced into making your Windows boot drive NTFS.

On what kind of computer did you try Vista with HL2? This may be surprising to you, but old hardware doesn't run new software very well. And running Vista on a virtual machine (i.e., parallels) is fine unless you're doing anything graphic intensive. And based on your last statement, you are not a fan of Boot Camp, which means you don't run Windows native. So does that mean you were running HL2 on Vista on a virtual machine?

And Boot Camp takes longer to boot into Windows? That's BS and you know it. Also, NTFS is the best format to go with, unless you're still living in 1998 using FAT32.

[Dagless]

On what kind of computer did you try Vista with HL2? This may be surprising to you, but old hardware doesn't run new software very well. And running Vista on a virtual machine (i.e., parallels) is fine unless you're doing anything graphic intensive. And based on your last statement, you are not a fan of Boot Camp, which means you don't run Windows native. So does that mean you were running HL2 on Vista on a virtual machine? And you were surprised by the bad results you got?

Nope. No emulation, no VMWare, nothing. Just pure Vista Home Premium. I never said I was using emulation... ?

And Boot Camp takes longer to boot into Windows? That's BS and you know it. Also, NTFS is the best format to go with, unless you're still living in 1998 using FAT32.

Nope again, I like Bootcamp, the reason why I upgraded.
Eh? I never said Bootcamp takes longer to boot. Vista takes longer than XP to boot (if you dual boot the fastest booting OS's are usually the most useful). On paper NTFS is the best to go with, unfortunately OSX doesn't read it. So rather than be stuck with 2 systems that can't talk to each other - I bought MacDrive and stick with Fat32 support for my Windows boot drive (though my external Windows storage drive is NTFS).

Don't try and put words in my mouth :)

Fact is - on the same spec machine with the same O/C tools XP is a better system for gaming. The difference isn't 1fps by any stretch of the imagination. The difference was so great that I had to remove many effects, that previously worked fine and fast under XP (which was native res, everything maxed out).

[kahine]

Nope. No emulation, no VMWare, nothing. Just pure Vista Home Premium. I never said I was using emulation... ?



Nope again, I like Bootcamp, the reason why I upgraded.
Eh? I never said Bootcamp takes longer to boot. Vista takes longer than XP to boot (if you dual boot the fastest booting OS's are usually the most useful). On paper NTFS is the best to go with, unfortunately OSX doesn't read it. So rather than be stuck with 2 systems that can't talk to each other - I bought MacDrive and stick with Fat32 support for my Windows boot drive (though my external Windows storage drive is NTFS).

Don't try and put words in my mouth :)

Fact is - on the same spec machine with the same O/C tools XP is a better system for gaming. The difference isn't 1fps by any stretch of the imagination. The difference was so great that I had to remove many effects, that previously worked fine and fast under XP (which was native res, everything maxed out).


You never answered his question about what were you running it on - I run Warhammer Online , AoC , TF2 fine in Vista 64 - boot camp and native PC's , on high end machines with lots of RAM Vista will run as well as XP

Also , might want to research before you rattle things off - OS X reads NTFS fine and can copy files from it all day long

[Dagless]

No, OSX doesn't copy files to NTFS (odd that you think I'd want to files to NTFS only? What use would that be?). Please will people stop trying to put words into my mouth :) thanks.

And I'm running XP 32bit, 64bit when needed and (used to) run Vista Home Premium 64bit. Though I'm only using 3gb ram so I don't need to use the 64bit version.

[jeffuwee]

hi, im new to macs in general and im planning on getting a macbookpro after the alleged upgrade in september/october. and i was planning to use the mac OS 10.5 to do school work and stuff and bootcamp to play games. the only games that i would be playing however are most likely fast pace fps such as cs:s and cod4 and when sc2 comes out probably that too. i was wondering if vista64 or xp prof. would better serve my purposes. i am no means an extensive gamer. just a little clarification would help. thanks in advance all!

[kahine]

No, OSX doesn't copy files to NTFS (odd that you think I'd want to files to NTFS only? What use would that be?). Please will people stop trying to put words into my mouth :) thanks.

And I'm running XP 32bit, 64bit when needed and (used to) run Vista Home Premium 64bit. Though I'm only using 3gb ram so I don't need to use the 64bit version.

I didnt put words in your mouth -

Get a clue - you specifically said OS X does not read NTFS files -

There's a difference between reading and writing files FYI and it's quite frequent to use read only in lots of environments - if you have files on your boot camp you can easily copy them straight to your OS X from inside OS X if you need them - you said it didnt read NTFS -

I pointed out you were wrong with your OWN words - it does read files - maybe you need to learn the difference and not spout off -

YOUR own words

"On paper NTFS is the best to go with, unfortunately OSX doesn't read it"

Seems like a pretty clear incorrect statement to me

[kahine]

hi, im new to macs in general and im planning on getting a macbookpro after the alleged upgrade in september/october. and i was planning to use the mac OS 10.5 to do school work and stuff and bootcamp to play games. the only games that i would be playing however are most likely fast pace fps such as cs:s and cod4 and when sc2 comes out probably that too. i was wondering if vista64 or xp prof. would better serve my purposes. i am no means an extensive gamer. just a little clarification would help. thanks in advance all!


Depends on RAM you will have - if you have 4GB or more , I'd suggest Vista64 , if not then XP32

[jeffuwee]

what if i had 2gb of ram? does the 32 bit and 64 bit really make that much of a difference?

[Trip.Tucker]

See, no. I tried Vista when my HL2 games wouldn't play, I had to turn off HDR and Bloom to get the same FPS I would get under XP. I tried Vista SP2 on an indentical spec iMac (same model entirely) and didn't get this gaming performance boost all the Vista were hyping.

I like to use the newest OS's, I always run out to the shops when they release new OSX versions and did so for previous Windows versions. I just don't like what they did to gaming. It's also a bit pants if you use Bootcamp since boot times are longer and you're forced into making your Windows boot drive NTFS.


LOL @ pants! <-- I love that term ;)

I have to agree on Vista vs XP for pretty much most of the games out there. Most of our forum posts (gamers site) lean toward XP being a better setup, yielding better frame rates, much more than 1fps, and allowing for easier troubleshooting.

[kahine]

what if i had 2gb of ram? does the 32 bit and 64 bit really make that much of a difference?

2GB I'd stick with XP - wouldn't bother with Vista unless was the 64 version -

[Trip.Tucker]

You never answered his question about what were you running it on - I run Warhammer Online , AoC , TF2 fine in Vista 64 - boot camp and native PC's , on high end machines with lots of RAM Vista will run as well as XP

Also , might want to research before you rattle things off - OS X reads NTFS fine and can copy files from it all day long


I think raggedjimi meant to say OS X cannot write to NTFS, which is as important as reading from NTFS.

[Trip.Tucker]

hi, im new to macs in general and im planning on getting a macbookpro after the alleged upgrade in september/october. and i was planning to use the mac OS 10.5 to do school work and stuff and bootcamp to play games. the only games that i would be playing however are most likely fast pace fps such as cs:s and cod4 and when sc2 comes out probably that too. i was wondering if vista64 or xp prof. would better serve my purposes. i am no means an extensive gamer. just a little clarification would help. thanks in advance all!

The simplest approach so you can enjoy your Mac experience: Go ahead and get the MacBook Pro, setup a BootCamp partition using the Leopard DVD and then install Windows XP (it's cheap and has ongoing support from Microsoft as it was recently extended) and you will have no issues with drivers as they are all on the Leopard DVD, and readily available online. I play COD2, COD4, Crysis and DOD:S on my BootCamp Windows XP partition day in and day out with no issues.

Don't worry about 64 bit versions of Windows XP or Vista as most games do not make use of it.

[Faslane66]

I'd run XP with SP3 on the MBP for gaming. Vista will hog a few more resources and you'll have to turn the game texturing and some graphics options of to get it to work perfectly with no lag etc. I have a MBP 2.4GHz with 4GB Ram and a 256MB Nvidia and I can run everything to Maximum in the game and play online just fine! :-) It Rules...when I had Vista on the sam config, I had to turn the game options down a bit.

[Faslane66]

hi, im new to macs in general and im planning on getting a macbookpro after the alleged upgrade in september/october. and i was planning to use the mac OS 10.5 to do school work and stuff and bootcamp to play games. the only games that i would be playing however are most likely fast pace fps such as cs:s and cod4 and when sc2 comes out probably that too. i was wondering if vista64 or xp prof. would better serve my purposes. i am no means an extensive gamer. just a little clarification would help. thanks in advance all!


Do the XP thing, It hogs less resources and allows you to crank up more options in game, I play COD 4 in Boot Camp XP Mulitplayerand It's maxxed under options and it rocks, online too!!! Vista bogged down and I had to throttle graphics and textures down a bit to get it stable.

[Faslane66]

That is the Question, if you have 4GB Ram I'd run Vista, you could most un-noticeably run Vista and play COD4 lets say, without a hiccup, Vista is Pretty, easy to use and blah blhah blah....XP will certainly do the trick especially if you only have lets say 2GB Ram. Vista Rules in My opinion, I use it and play COD4 and it's perfect, I had to tweak a few minor things like antistrophic(?) filtering and textures, but not enough to notice a difference in gameplay visually, it just runs a bit better. So If you have a new lets say, 2.2GHz or so OR higher (like a 2.4 MBP), go for Vista, it's pretty like your OS X and you'll dig doing other things in it such as apps etc, rather than running XP which runs good too, but doesn't look as pretty and whatnot. Vista has come along way in the last year, I Love it with Boot Camp, and I can use everything my MBP offers right in Vista, WebCam, BT, XpressCard Reader, CD Burner, recognizes ALL my Ram, etc. XP is limited on the ram part, i think max of 3GB or something like that.

Anyway, this is what works for me and It rules, good luck!!!

[Stridder44]

Do the XP thing, It hogs less resources and allows you to crank up more options in game, I play COD 4 in Boot Camp XP Mulitplayerand It's maxxed under options and it rocks, online too!!! Vista bogged down and I had to throttle graphics and textures down a bit to get it stable.

What kind of computer are you guys running Vista on!? "Bogging" down the graphics? What? I've ran both XP (SP3) and Vista 64 on my MBP (with 4 GB of RAM) and there is nothing slow about Vista. But this is a Mac forum, so sure. M$ sucks. Windows sucks. Apple is God. *rolls eyes*

[jeffuwee]

lol this is all so confusing. but yeah. im now plannign to get the new mbp that might be coming out in a few weeks or so pending the update (sept 6?) but i'll probably install 4gb of ram in it so i can run multiple things w/o lagging so yeah. the choices for me are. vista ultimate 64bit/32bit or xp professional (32bit only?)

[darkice686]

I don't think anyone has really answered definitively whether bootcamping XP or Vista 64 is better for 4GB of RAM. I too am curious to see a definitive study or benchmark comparison.

I plan on playing Warhammer Online soon on my MBP but I'm hesitant to get either XP or Vista after reading many forum posts on this subject. I'm also not to familiar with Windows OS and don't understand the SP things and what the difference is between the different packages. A specific link to new egg or the equivalent retail site where I could buy a new OS would be much appreciated!

I have the:
17" MBP 2.5GHz Core Duo with 4GB of Ram and GeForce 8600M GT 512MB 1680 x 1050

Can someone help us?

[kahine]

XP 32 cannot use 4GB RAM , DarkIce , that's why most are saying go 64bit Vista if you have newer machine with 4GB or more - on newer rigs if you know what you are doing (turning off UAC and other annoying junk) Vista is going to get within a fps or two so there's no reason to not go Vista if you have 4 GB RAM and new CPU and so on

You need XP service pack 2 integrated into the OS jeff , any new OS cd's for windows will have it integrated , for Vista might as well get SP1 integrated to avoid having to install it afterwards - SP2 for XP is required though to be able to even load it

[Faslane66]

I don't think anyone has really answered definitively whether bootcamping XP or Vista 64 is better for 4GB of RAM. I too am curious to see a definitive study or benchmark comparison.

I plan on playing Warhammer Online soon on my MBP but I'm hesitant to get either XP or Vista after reading many forum posts on this subject. I'm also not to familiar with Windows OS and don't understand the SP things and what the difference is between the different packages. A specific link to new egg or the equivalent retail site where I could buy a new OS would be much appreciated!

I have the:
17" MBP 2.5GHz Core Duo with 4GB of Ram and GeForce 8600M GT 512MB 1680 x 1050

Can someone help us?





Go for the Vista sertup!! You have enough Ram and horsepower and I run the Vista 32-bit version and play COD4 through my MBP and it runs awesome, so a 64-bit version should do well. The games won't take advantage of 64-bit but the OS will. Vista is a bit easier to use, more Mac like and user friendly in my opinion. Service packs are just M$'s versions of Software Updates for the Mac. If you have a legit copy of Vista, you can allow it to auto-check for updates like the Mac does and it'll let you know every so often about any updates or service packs for the Vista OS.

Hope this helps. You have more than enough machine to do this, especially with 512 Memory for gaming!!!! Do IT!! it's work AWESOME!

[chewietobbacca]

I run Vista 64 on my PC and I will never go back to XP. If your gaming is bogging down on Vista, it's likely because your CPU or RAM is deficient (sorry but software moves on, and hardware does as well) or your video card was barely cutting it in the first place, and the slight hit just brings it down.

Numerous sites have done reviews and analysis, and Vista being slower than XP in gaming is rarely noticeable at all. DX10 vs. DX9, yes the difference is there (though not anymore really, since games are now optimized for both) but that was a year ago. The difference now is downright negligible.

[darkice686]

Just bought Vista 64 Bit, Im stoked for WAR Online!

[GSMiller]

I have not had any luck with XP on my Mac. My Boot Camp partition has become corrupt three times and the only way to remedy the situation is to delete the partition and reinstall Windows. I've not had any experience with Vista.

[jeffuwee]

mmm this makes it much clearer thanks guys. i think i'll just but vista ultimate 64bit and buy 4 gb for my macbookpro online somewhere where its cheap haha.

[Stridder44]

mmm this makes it much clearer thanks guys. i think i'll just but vista ultimate 64bit and buy 4 gb for my macbookpro online somewhere where its cheap haha.

I'm tellin you guy, Vista 64 is not nearly as bad as people on this forum make it out to be. They either tried it when Vista first came out (which, at the time, it did suck) or they only tried it for 5 minutes with their mind already made up that they would hate it. Vista 64 + 4 GB of RAM = awesome.

[vagarach]

mmm this makes it much clearer thanks guys. i think i'll just but vista ultimate 64bit and buy 4 gb for my macbookpro online somewhere where its cheap haha.

Yup, 4GB is very cheap now, CAD $100 for patriot PC6400 ram (2x 2GB).

(I did some research, and santa rosa platform can only use PC5300, only the CPU to northbridge bus is the advertised 800Mhz, everything else is stuck at 667Mhz. Jeez, intel marketing buggers at it again)

[kant]

I'm running WAR open beta in an XP sp3 boot camp partition. 15" MBP, 2.5ghz Penryn, 512mb video, 4 gigs of ram, 250gb 5400rpm. the bootcamp partition is 30gb. game runs just fine on the default settings.

wanted to run it in parallels VM but the game won't load with the parallels video driver. :( :( not happy about that.

The only complaint I have about the bootcamp XP is that I have a 20" external monitor. the game will only run on the primary monitor and XP won't let me make the external monitor primary. running the game in windowed mode, I can only run it at 1440x990. since the 20" is the monitor straight in front of my, with the laptop at an angle to the left, I move the windowed game onto it. my choices is run the monitor at 1650x1080 and have screen space around my window, which makes my eyes hurt, or run at 1440x990 and fill the space. but I'd much rather run full screen at max resolution.

*shrug*

As far as the XP vs Vista war: no dog in that fight. I have a valid XP pro license and not going to spend money on Vista just to play a game.

[vampyr]

I've had the same questions and concern... Visa or XP? 64 or 32 bit?
I wanted to use Windows bootcamp for games, and OSX for everything else.

I have a new Imac 2.8GHz, 4gb RAM, 1TB drive I bought in dec. 07.

Here's my exeperience with ALL versions...

First off... I went with Vista 32... I had problems with sound... horrible crackily sound in games. I tried updating drivers and everything, but it wouldn't go away. So I took off Vista Ultimate. (This was earlier this spring... so it's possible that the audio drivers have been updated since then)

Next... I put in Windows XP 32bit. So far everything works great... even went with an updated ATI driver and no sound issues. No... It's not as pretty as Vista... but it plays my games.

Finally... Vista 64. I have it installed on my HP laptop, and it requires a lot of hunting for 64bit drivers. For instance... If you run the Internet Explorer 64bit version and you want to print... you MUST print to a 64bit printer driver.
Basically... you need to duplicate drivers for 32bit and 64bit (at least for printers). Also, games did not run faster in 64bit. I have 4gb of Ram on my HP Laptop and it doesn't make any difference. About the only thing that is improved on the 64bit Vista is the boot up time along with being able to open a few more things at once.

So in summary... going 64bit is not a make or break reason unless you have specific 64bit applications that take use of 4GB of memory. Keep in mind that you CAN install a 32bit game on Windows Vista 64... but it is still a 32bit game using 32bit limitations.
So stick with 32bit for now... even if you have 4GB of ram.
As for choosing between Vista and XP. If you ONLY want to play games, and could care less about the OS... than go with XP. However, there ARE some games that actually require Vista... and if you are going to play any of the newest games that have come out in the latter part of this year, then go with Vista.

Just as a background... the games that I play on my iMac under bootcamp are:
CIV IV, NWN2, WOW, Flight Sim X, AOE III, along with some FPS games.

Go with XP, and you won't go wrong if all you are doing is playing PC games.

[Keleko]

If you get Crossover Games, you can play Civ IV from OSX. That's how I play Civ IV, anyway....