Bootcamp on Unibody MBP XP vs. Vista for gaming?

[eylee86]

Hi I have a unibody MBP 2.66GHZ/4GB RAM/512MB of 9600M GT GPU Option

I'm thinking about installing a windows primarily for gaming. Basically the question is, should i go with xp pro? or vista? I play FPS games like TF2 and Left for Dead. Some of the other games I wish to play some RTS like Dawn of War2 and The Last Remnant. If the game performance in XP pro is much higher than Vista I would rather go with XP. but if it's more or less the same Id just go with Vista. Does anyone have any first hand experience on his issue? Any help would be great. thanks!!

 

[Aniki]

Stick with vista. It's more recent, has DX10, etc. XP is a 2001 OS. Vista is a 2007 OS. XP is dead, deal with it. If you want you could try windows 7 beta a try.

 

[neilhart]

On the other side of the coin; Vista is bloated and is MS's biggest goof of the last few years. XP Pro SP3 is solid and fairly slim by comparison. IMHO is better suited for use with BootCamp. I would not sink much effort into Window 7 Beta in that it goes away in a few months.

Neil

 

[jons]

Hi I have a unibody MBP 2.66GHZ/4GB RAM/512MB of 9600M GT GPU Option

I'm thinking about installing a windows primarily for gaming. Basically the question is, should i go with xp pro? or vista? I play FPS games like TF2 and Left for Dead. Some of the other games I wish to play some RTS like Dawn of War2 and The Last Remnant. If the game performance in XP pro is much higher than Vista I would rather go with XP. but if it's more or less the same Id just go with Vista. Does anyone have any first hand experience on his issue? Any help would be great. thanks!!

The current iteration of Vista isn't bad at all and should have been what MS came out with in the first place. Windows 7 just goes beyond that, and it's really an awesome OS.

For gaming, I would go with Vista or 7 for the DX10 support.

 

[johnnj]

For gaming, I would go with Vista or 7 for the DX10 support.

I wasn't sure if the 9600M GT supported DX10 hardware-wise, but from the nvidia site, it looks like it does. Interesting...

Although in my opinion, except for the interesting environmental effects (smoke, water, etc), DX10 has been somewhat of a disappointment.

All that stuff barely works on my gaming PC which has a 9800GX2, so I'm not sure how well it'd work on the 9600M. Maybe I'll fire up Bioshock later on and check it out. Now I'm curious...

John

 

[ryannazaretian]

Just a heads up of my experience with Vista on the Unibody MBP... I can't run Vista on my Unibody 15" MBP. It freezes. Not sure why. It will freeze with the default drivers or with updated ones. Apple tells me to call Microsoft. Microsoft tells me to call Apple.

I say stick with XP, but that's just my experience. My older Early 2008 MBP handled Vista fine without any issues really... I would still have it if it didn't crap out 4 times.

 

[AlexisV]

XP works fine with games.

When Vista came out, the drivers weren't matured and you'd lose about 5% of your framerate in games. I assume it's been fixed now though.

On the other hand, Vista is a dog and will be replaced by v7 soon.

If you can get a cheap copy of XP, you'd be better going for that.

 

[Silver472]

for gaming, it's much better to use the windows XP because the vista is not compatible with many games that are compatible with XP. the xp has more compatibility for games, so it's better to use XP. The vista is slow, too, and you don't want to play games on a slow os. it's better to use the xp professional SP3. hope I helped!

 

[sdsvtdriver]

XP, hands down.