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Vista vs. XP Bootcamp Performance on the new MBPs

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pyromaniaque

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 16, 2008
267
0
Well..Ask your mother.
I'm planning on buying someone's MBP 2.53Ghz. But I'm wondering on which would operate faster. Some people say XP, considering its current stability and the fact that Vista is a resource hog, but many other people have started to also say Vista, due to some of the newer updates that have come out.

Gah! To make a long story short, which performs better as of late?
 
I would stick to XP. Sure some people don't have problems with Vista and you have to take into consideration what they're doing in Vista. XP seems to be the lesser of two evils :)p) and it's a very stable OS so I think you'll be better off with it.
 
Right now I would say XP. One its cheaper. And two its the proven system. I am running XP on my Mac and it runs great. I love it. I have Vista on another dedicated Sony and it runs okay. Thats a Duo Core 2.4 machine with 4 gigs ram. Its just not a great OS yet. It will be eventually but go with XP as it is proven.
 
If the computer has the RAM, and if you'd rather use Vista, go with Vista.
I just put XP onto my new MBP and it works great.
However, on my desktop, I've been using Vista for a couple years and it works great also.
If you have both XP and Vista, try em both out and see how they both work.
Hell, put both on there.
Do a Boot Camp install of Vista onto its own partition, then use Parallels or VMWare Fusion and run XP from inside OS X, since XP doesn't eat near the resources that Vista does.
Just a suggestion...
 
XP. Definitely.

Vista is a resource hog and runs noticeably slower on all the configurations I've tried it on. Windows 7 (even in Beta) is a vast improvement on the performance front.
 
pyromaniaque said:
Hmm.. has anyone actually ran both on the same machine (at different times of course)?
Click to expand...

Not yet. I just got my MBP a little over a week ago, and I only have OS X and XP on here right now.
I am a Vista fan, though. It's worked like a charm for my desktop, which has basically the same specs as this laptop, except that my desktop is a quad-core, not dual-core... but, the laptop has DDR3 RAM, the desktop has DDR2.
I can't imagine why it would run so terribly on a MacBook Pro if you have 4gb of DDR3 RAM.

Try it out for yourself and see how it runs. Don't listen to the haters.
I hear people complain about Vista all day long, and I laugh at their complaints, because I've been using it for a while with NO problems at all.

It's obvious and well-known that XP requires less resources, but a dual-core 2.53 intel processor, 4 gb of DDR3 RAM is a pretty nice setup... just try it out. If you'd prefer Vista over XP, you should at least give it a shot.
 
pyromaniaque said:
I don't really want to have to partition my hdd, every time I want to test the difference.
Click to expand...

If you're dead set on running Windows virtually from inside of OS X, then I'd certainly suggest going with XP, because of the fact of how much lighter of a load it is on the hardware.

If you're planning to do 3D gaming, I would recommend using Boot Camp to install it to a dedicated partition, so you can boot directly into Windows and not have to simultaneously allocate resources to OS X also.
 
Like I said before, if you have a reason to choose Vista over XP (if you like it better), then just Boot Camp Vista onto its own partition.
If it seems to not run well, then just dump Vista and install XP where Vista was.

I went with XP mainly because I want to run some intense gaming, and I wanted to save as much resource power as I could... hence going with XP instead of Vista.
However, if I didn't plan on doing any gaming on this laptop, I would have went with Vista.
Blah blah blah..... good luck.
 
pyromaniaque said:
But isn't Vista supposed to be better for gaming because of DirectX 10?
Click to expand...

Like iLog said, games still look great in XP.
Yes, DX10 is nice, for games that actually utilize its capabilties... such as Crysis, for example... but not all games do.

DX10 won't make a game that looks crappy to begin with look great... but it IS a very nice touch for those games that do support it...and if you're into having the latest and greatest looking video game experience possible.
 
I have XP for just two simple reasons, one I own a disc, but the main one is that I only use windows for certain programs that I can't run on my macbook pro (epanet, hec-ras, others) so XP is well suited for my needs, and in the event when I do game, XP can handle it.
 
I'm using XP because the only reason I use windows at all is for games and some homework assignments that runs on windows only software (or requires something in windows and what not). I would use vista but everytime i need to boot up the partition via VMWare Fusion, it would take forever.
 
ayeying said:
I would use vista but everytime i need to boot up the partition via VMWare Fusion, it would take forever.
Click to expand...

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but does Windows even boot when you use Fusion or Parallels?
My understanding was that they basically install Windows to an image file, then just mount it... which should be pretty fast, right? or wrong?
My desktop PC has XP and Vista on separate partitions... and Vista actually seems to boot faster than XP for me. Then again, I only use XP about 5% of the time...so I could be mistaken... but Vista doesn't boot slowly by any means...for me, at least.
 
NickM said:
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but does Windows even boot when you use Fusion or Parallels?
My understanding was that they basically install Windows to an image file, then just mount it... which should be pretty fast, right? or wrong?
My desktop PC has XP and Vista on separate partitions... and Vista actually seems to boot faster than XP for me. Then again, I only use XP about 5% of the time...so I could be mistaken... but Vista doesn't boot slowly by any means...for me, at least.
Click to expand...

I'm using VMWare Fusion to access my BootCamp Partition. Therefore, I have the ability of using one windows install as both a virtual machine or a native boot.

There is a bug in Apple's drivers where KBDMgr.exe causes the system to stall during boot, but it doesn't crash, just makes it slower.

And yes, Parallels has this feature also.
 
ayeying said:
I'm using VMWare Fusion to access my BootCamp Partition. Therefore, I have the ability of using one windows install as both a virtual machine or a native boot.

There is a bug in Apple's drivers where KBDMgr.exe causes the system to stall during boot, but it doesn't crash, just makes it slower.

And yes, Parallels has this feature also.
Click to expand...

Ahhh, I misread your post.
That is cool, though...I didn't know that you could use Parallels/Fusion to boot into an already-installed OS on another partition. I was under the impression that you had to do a new OS install when you installed Parallels/Fusion.
Don't be surprised... I'm pretty new to Macs.
 
kastenbrust said:
Why are we even discussing Vista vs XP? Just use Windows 7 :rolleyes: Faster than XP, more secure and functional than Vista, problem solved.
Click to expand...

Why?
Look at the title of this thread.
In Vista's defense, I've been using it constantly for quite a while now, and I've had NO security or functionality problems whatsoever.
 
NickM said:
Why?
Look at the title of this thread.
In Vista's defense, I've been using it constantly for quite a while now, and I've had NO security or functionality problems whatsoever.
Click to expand...

Use Windows 7 and you wont be physically able to use Vista ever again. Its called evolution...
 
kastenbrust said:
Use Windows 7 and you wont be physically able to use Vista ever again. Its called evolution...
Click to expand...

I have no reason to leave Vista behind. I've seen and used Windows 7 and I've yet to see anything that different that made me want to switch. It looks like the same OS.
Once it's out of Beta, I will most likely...because I like to evolve. Hopefully it will actually contain things that will really make the evolution substantial.
I'm going to sleep. Stop derailing this guy's thread ;)
 
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