Does vista or xp effect gaming

[Gumm]

hi, this is a bit of a dumb question but i was wondering is there a difference between playing a game on windows xp or vista for example if i used vista would i need to upgrade my RAAM or my graphics card, does games play better on vista or xp or does it not efect anything at all and it doesnt matter if you play a game on xp or vista (by the way the game is world of warcraft).

thanks

 

[nes83]

vista supposedly from what i hear uses a lot of ram for background applications and i have heard that xp is overall a more stable gaming platform. but if you really want to go with vista just use 32 bit and hook it up with lots of ram and you should be fine (non 32 bit can only use like 3.5 gig ram 32 bit can use more than any mobo can currently hold)

 

[Dr. Vader]

vista supposedly from what i hear uses a lot of ram for background applications and i have heard that xp is overall a more stable gaming platform. but if you really want to go with vista just use 32 bit and hook it up with lots of ram and you should be fine (non 32 bit can only use like 3.5 gig ram 32 bit can use more than any mobo can currently hold)

I think you mean 64 bit. And no, Vista doesn't consume much memory in the background. I was using 2GB and everything ran fine, but I felt that I could get better with 4GB, so I bought the extra pair of DDR2 and I got a great boost in performance. More RAM = Better, not necessarily needed though. It really depends on preferences in my opinion. Vista is pretty reliable, and quite a bit easier to get around in. Vista also has DX10 and whatnot, allowing for even higher end games to be played. I like Vista better, I would never switch back to XP.

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

Windows vista genearlly LOWERS fps, not only is it a more taxing OS, but also supports DX10 features, which will be harder on your graphics card compared to a DX9 version of the same scene.

Vista is know to take about one gigabyte of RAM for background applications, while XP SP2/3 takes less than half that much (if my memory is right, if its wrong just know it takes significantly less RAM), so you will also get a performance boost from that, though not necassarily in your FPS, RAM doesn't always participate in graphics rendering.

32 bit OS's can only handel 4 gigs, and its generally accepted that if you have 4 gigs, you will only have the power to use about 3.5 gigabytes, but with DDR2 RAM so cheap, its probably worth it to buy 4 gigabytes.


I am not sure if WOW uses DX10 graphics, but your performance will almost certainly be higher on XP, BTW xp - 64 sux, vista 64 sux but not really worse than vista 32 .