Convince me: XP or Vista in boot camp

[XianPalin]

Anything 4GB or more is ideal for running Vista in my opinion. 2GB minimum and not ideal, but 4GB+ recommended.

 

[zap2]

Anything 4GB or more is ideal for running Vista in my opinion. 2GB minimum and not ideal, but 4GB+ recommended.

RAM is over suggested a lot.....runing Vista with only firefox, thunderbird and maybe iTunes, and 1GB is fine.


RAM amounts are based on what users are doing,(with in a certain amount, clearly Vista on 256Mbs is going be a pain regardless of what you do)

 

[Wolfpup]

Still though, I noticed a performance increase going from 1 to 2GB in XP, which surprised me a bit.

Of course I'm a power user, so...

And then too, Vista tries to keep all your RAM in use for something.

 

[jbrenn]

OK but what about 4 gigs of ram!?

if you have 4 gb ram you need 64 bit windows or it will only use 2.75 or so. i have a al macbook and have to run vista 64 because of the drivers. i would rather run xp. but no drivers for 64 bit xp the white books had xp 64 drivers 32 bit vista sp1 will show all 4gb but it will not use it all.

 

[Wolfpup]

Ooookay, most systems running a 32-bit OS have 3-3.5GB usable.

Because 64-bit OSes eat up more RAM, it's pretty much a wash which gives you more RAM if you have 4GB. You're not gaining anything with a 64-bit OS really.

And 64-bit XP was never something most people should use. It was mostly a testbed for future OSes. If you want to use 64-bit, you want Vista (and if you're buying an OS new, I'd get Vista regardless, though not necessarily the 64-bit version).

 

[cg165]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

Ooookay, most systems running a 32-bit OS have 3-3.5GB usable.

Because 64-bit OSes eat up more RAM, it's pretty much a wash which gives you more RAM if you have 4GB. You're not gaining anything with a 64-bit OS really.

And 64-bit XP was never something most people should use. It was mostly a testbed for future OSes. If you want to use 64-bit, you want Vista (and if you're buying an OS new, I'd get Vista regardless, though not necessarily the 64-bit version).

If the app was written in 64 bit you gain speed (from what I've read). 64 bit isn't just about memory, and it is the way everything is going so if you have 4gb ram or more I recommend vista 64 bit. Xp is 8 years old also and if you have to buy an os, get vista 64 bit.

 

[Wolfpup]

If the app was written in 64 bit you gain speed (from what I've read). 64 bit isn't just about memory, and it is the way everything is going so if you have 4gb ram or more I recommend vista 64 bit. Xp is 8 years old also and if you have to buy an os, get vista 64 bit.

The speed thing can depend. AMD made some other changes to the architecture besides just giving it 64-bit support, like doubling the externally accessible registers (though why they didn't quadruple them I don't know...). That kind of thing doesn't really have anything to do with the chip being 64-bit, but only works in 64-bit mode.

And you wouldn't want 64-bit XP as it was never really a "ready for prime time" operating system.