Upgrading to Vista: is it worth it?

[Scourge]

[lvlshot]http://www.jwivie.com/vistamem.jpg[/lvlshot]

I haven't really done much as far as tweaking, just turned of some unnecessary services.

[Captain]

[Captain]

The biggest problems seem to lie with Windows Installer. Installing anything from a full-size game to a small patch will pretty much freeze up the entire system for the duration of the install. There is absolutely no way to multitask the smallest little fart when the slow down hits, otherwise it freezes up for what feels like an eternity. Crysis patches that used to take 10 seconds to install with XP now take upwards to 10 unresponsive minutes where that hideous circle icon stares at me mockingly.
But even mounting ISOs with PowerISO and copying large files from my external HDD often causes these same slow down symptoms.

Any ideas what the hell is wrong with this piece of shit OS?

EDIT: After the installation itself is over, the computer stays unresponsive and slow for a few minutes. Feels like I'm running this shit from a P2.

[+JuggerNaut+]

lol, glad you like it.

[Captain]

Performance in the games I've tested so far (Crysis, Gears, CoD4, Assassin's Creed) has been as good as XP. It's the damn OS itself that bugs me.

[+JuggerNaut+]

well that's a plus anyway. still not gone over to vista myself. prolly wait till i put together a new box this fall.

[Captain]

Hey I think I fixed it! First I installed a Windows Installer 4.5 for Vista x64. I don't know if that helped or anything, but after the reboot I popped in the Tomb Raider Anniversary DVD. This time however, I selected "run as administrator" for the setup.exe on the DVD and things seem to be running flawlessly. Game is installing fast while Winamp, FF3, and other stuff is running. No lag, no intense slowdown.

gg?

PS. Mass Effect churns out more frames on XP. It's still very fast on my rig on Vista, but I did notice a slight difference.

[Captain]

Back to XP

Now my hate for Vista is based on experience and not prejudice.

[Plan B]

The resource usage in those taskman-shots really seems ridiculously high.

Scourge, are you idling there? If so, 700+ MB seems a tad much, no?
I can see mazda isn't exactly idling, but has some light weight shit running, but almost 50% mem usage? wtf
Also, 45+ processes?

Guess I'm a bit of a compulsive tweaker, but have my xp gaming rig down to 140MB when idling.

[AmIdYfReAk]

Plan B, Vista is a wee bit ( ok, actually.. alot ) diffrent when it comes to resources..

when i was first talking to Mazduh about Vista, i had winamp ( 1.7 ), Steam, AVG ( 7.5 ), and Xfire open and i was using 1.2gigs of ram.

mind you, i never had a slow down with it.

i'm on my media center currently, and its running 32-bit vista and i'm idling with 1.01gigs used, 48 processes...

[Captain]

The resource usage in those taskman-shots really seems ridiculously high.

Scourge, are you idling there? If so, 700+ MB seems a tad much, no?
I can see mazda isn't exactly idling, but has some light weight shit running, but almost 50% mem usage? wtf
Also, 45+ processes?

Guess I'm a bit of a compulsive tweaker, but have my xp gaming rig down to 140MB when idling.

Yeah, it was pretty damn ridiculous. Yes, Vista is not at all similar to XP in resource management, but that was just way too much considering I was only running FF, Winamp, and maybe Xfire.

Hell, just now I was installing Gears of War on XP while checking in-game configs in Assassin's Creed. FF3, Xfire, and Winamp were on. No slowdown, no freezing. Owned

[Plan B]

Yeah, ok, so vista is a 'wee bit different' in that it gobbles up 5 times more of your ram resources than xp does.
I want to know why anyone would put up with that, except (trivial) DX10 implementation.

[Plan B]

...Hell, just now I was installing Gears of War on XP while checking in-game configs in Assassin's Creed. FF3, Xfire, and Winamp were on. No slowdown, no freezing. Owned

Well, there you go, good on ya.
I mean, I'm not bashing vista out of some principle, but I just can't see the benefits, and MS had enough time to make me change my mind, I think.

[Captain]

I was reluctant to try it out, but my curiosity got the better of me. I thought maybe SP1 had taken care of all those memory and game performance issues I was hearing about. I guess I had to see for myself. I missed XP so much over those couple of days

[Tormentius]

Yeah, ok, so vista is a 'wee bit different' in that it gobbles up 5 times more of your ram resources than xp does.
I want to know why anyone would put up with that, except (trivial) DX10 implementation.

Vista manages its virtual memory completely differently than previous builds so it can't be thought of in the same way you would of XP. Here's some more info on it:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Vista-03 ... 0705.shtml

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html

[Scourge]

I launched avg, ff, IE, google earth, vlc, wmp, and steam and it barely bumped it up any at all. Maybe another 150 mb. In fact each app I launched would push it up temporarily, then it would always go back down quickly to the 150 or so mark above idle. No slow downs either. It really does handle it quite differently.

[Plan B]

...Vista manages its virtual memory completely differently than previous builds so it can't be thought of in the same way you would of XP...

I'm sure it does.
However, I wasnt talking about virtual memory, but physical memory, as shown in the screenshots.

[obsidian]

Windows XP uses virtual memory as a cache, but Vista will use your physical memory as well. That's why if you have 512 MB in Vista, it'll use say, half of that, and if you pop in 2 GB, it'll still gobble half of it.

If you have the memory, it'll try and use as much of it as possible.

[Tormentius]

I'm sure it does.
However, I wasnt talking about virtual memory, but physical memory, as shown in the screenshots.

Read those links I posted and it will make a little more sense.

[^misantropia^]

Windows XP uses virtual memory as a cache, but Vista will use your physical memory as well.

XP uses up your physical memory as well (I/O buffering, to name something). Why waste a perfectly good resource?

[Plan B]

Ah, I see. Thanks.
Was being a bit of a stubborn turd.

[Denz]

I use dual boot, so you can play older games on the XP System and the new games that are coming out that require DX10 Vista works great. So depending what you're going to use it for will determine what you will do I guess.

[SOAPboy]

Babies still crying about vista.

[Scourge]

stick with XP till it becomes obsolete, (june or july?) last i heard, and i fucking despise vista.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/art ... RTUNE5.htm

[SoM]

stick with XP till it becomes obsolete, (june or july?) last i heard, and i fucking despise vista.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/art ... RTUNE5.htm

quote from the article

Still, XP will likely remain a material driver of Microsoft revenue long after it is shelved and at least until 2010, when new operating software is expected.

so XP will be obsolete in 2010, then what happens to vista, since it's been released not too long ago? and new OS ? lol

i just hope they keep updating XP, cause i'm sure they'll fuck up the new OS even more then vista