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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.
 
2GB or 4 GB?

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!!!
 
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*
 
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?)
 
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?
 
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
 
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!
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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)
 
XP and Warhammer MBP

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.
 
OK... I have to step into this

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