18 réponses à ce sujet

[apricat]

Hi everyone.  Have a new mac pro with souped up graphics card.  Going to set up a bootcamp partition to play ME2 - and I'm wondering if someone with expertise can advise me which windows version to use?  Through my university I have access to all (win xp, vista, and windows 7 32- and 64-bit).

Just want the most stable environment, that will support good sound and graphics - Looking at the specs for the game, I assume that this game wouldn't really take advantage of a 64 bit OS anyway - is that correct?  If so, is it better to just install XP since it's a lighter-weight OS than 7 and has good stable graphics/sound drivers for use with bootcamp?

Any advice would be appreciated.  Mac haters, please refrain.  I don't have the option of getting a PC gaming rig - this is the system I'm "stuck" with for gaming.

Thanks! 

[Miths]

There are people who still swear by XP and refuse to upgrade to Vista or 7. For me Vista x64 Home Premium has been solid as a rock and very fast for work and gaming on my current ~8 months old PC (quad core Intel, 8 GB RAM, Geforce GTX260), and I had very few problems with Vista 32-bit on my old dual core laptop bought in mid 2008 (the laptop did have one infrequent, on average every three weeks, but annoying Blue Screen of Death issue - the source of which I never managed to track down).



There's probably no reason to go for Vista now though. While I personally won't bother updating until my next PC - considering how great Vista is running - Windows 7 is by most accounts an improvement in most areas.

[Merchant2006]

Well, I could be old fashioned but I can say that I really do love XP, yet Vista has started to grow on me. Win 7.. nuh uh, I am not touching that thing until around next year when it's a damn more stable and sorted than it is now. I'd go with XP for the sake of having a good reliable system but in this day and with games and other stuff constantly advancing, yeah sure, you can use XP but I purchased a new PC last year that came with Vista64bit and I love it. Its perfect for my gaming and other needs and with my specs I am very satisfied with the OS I have. I have no intention of changing it. My older PC has XP and that works perfectly well too.

And I don't know much about Macs other than they are pretty darn good to use, but I know next to nothing about them so I won't bash at all ^^. So yeah, my opinion, XP or Vista64bit but my personal choice would be Vista64. Then again you don't have to go with my opinion

Modifié par Merchant2006, 18 janvier 2010 - 03:52 .

[PingoBlack]

I suggest Windows 7, go 64 bit if you have over 3Gb of RAM.



XP is not really lighter weight, that's an urban legend. It won't necessarily mean you will have your life easier and your games faster. If you have a modern PC go for modern OS.

[apricat]

 Made a poll about it, in case anyone wants to vote 

Thanks pingo for the thoughtful input - I understand it's a good idea to go with a newer OS - I was also trying to get at, if anyone knows, would ME2 even take advantage of a 64-bit OS?  I thought (but don't know much about it) that most games don't actually.

Also, I hear you that XP's not "light-weight" - but  I think XP is a bit more stable running on Bootcamp, and Apple doesn't even officially support Win7 on bootcamp yet, and it's a bit of a hack to get it all working properly.  Just trying to decide if it's worth it, or if I should just stick with XP for now.

Modifié par apricat, 18 janvier 2010 - 03:57 .

[seven9st surfer]

well i dont know about people saying win7 isnt stable. Ive been running it since the very first beta was available, and I'm still running RC1 right now. and ive NEVER had a single problem with stability (crashes, bsod, etc). Win7 is everything vista should have been, i love it.



So win7 if you have no problem adopting new (awesome) technology, XP if you're old school, and want a guarantee that it'll be rock solid

[Fredvdp]

The game doesn't use DX10 so XP is good enough. I never had much problems with Vista but Windows 7 is certainly an improvement.

[EnergizerBunny211]

For years I used XP Professional and never had any problems until the last 3 years of use.  Then I switched to VISTA and for the 6 months I used it, I had nothing BUT problems.  In December just past (2009) I upgraded my computer that was using XP/Vista from a Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz (E4500 series ) on an Asus P5B -VM series motherboard with a Radeon 1950 and 3 gigs of DDR2 667s, to a Intel Quadcore 9550 with 8 Gigs of DDR2 1066 on an Asus P5 E Deluxe Gaming Motherboard, and a Nvidia BFG Tech. GTX285 OC.   I also have installed 64-bit Windows 7 and hands-down, it is by far the best OS I have ever run.  And all my hardware upgrades are far superior to what I had, making my now current system much more stable.

If you're sitting on the fence, I would humbly yet strongly suggest Windows 7 (64 bit if you can manage it). If not, the 32 bit is just as nice.


EnergizerBunny211

[Racan]

Get Windows 7 64bit and don't look back. A lot more stable, ME1 frequently crashed on me with WinXP SP3 so far with Win7 64 it has been rock solid.

[chaosapiant]

I'd go with Win 7 personally. It's a bit of a gutted version of Windows Vista, and has better game performance overall. Do not go 64 bit unless you're 100% that all your games/apps can run on it. 64 bit is still incompatible with many applications, and games don't use more than 2 gigs of ram while running at most.

[Grog415]

Windows 7 64 bit. The 64 bit architecture has more memory addressing capabilities and will support more memory in RAM and VRAM. It also has better support for cache memory in the CPU. I run Windows 7 64 bit (Ultimate) and have been pleasantly surprised by it's performance running all my games and applications.

I use two ATI 4850 video cards hooked into a Crossfire configuration. Each card has 1 gig of DDR3 VRAM.

[Doofus42]

apricat wrote...

 

Also, I hear you that XP's not "light-weight" - but  I think XP is a bit more stable running on Bootcamp, and Apple doesn't even officially support Win7 on bootcamp yet, and it's a bit of a hack to get it all working properly.  Just trying to decide if it's worth it, or if I should just stick with XP for now.

I think that this is the answer to your question.  The bootcamp software limitations are what will dictate what you should install.

[spyderroque]

Miths wrote...

There are people who still swear by XP and refuse to upgrade to Vista or 7. For me Vista x64 Home Premium has been solid as a rock and very fast for work and gaming on my current ~8 months old PC (quad core Intel, 8 GB RAM, Geforce GTX260), and I had very few problems with Vista 32-bit on my old dual core laptop bought in mid 2008 (the laptop did have one infrequent, on average every three weeks, but annoying Blue Screen of Death issue - the source of which I never managed to track down).

There's probably no reason to go for Vista now though. While I personally won't bother updating until my next PC - considering how great Vista is running - Windows 7 is by most accounts an improvement in most areas.

I got a system similar to yours. I thought I was happy with Vista till I tried 7. But regarding games there is not much of a difference between the two OS.

[apricat]

Thanks again everyone for the great advice - It seems pretty clear that Win7 is a better option than Vista - but it's still a bit unclear as to whether a game like mass effect really benefits from the 64-bit-ness of Win7 compared to XP. In my case, XP works better on bootcamp, so if there's no true advantage of Win7 in terms of memory use/performance (some say the game won't use the "extra" ram made available by the 64-bit OS) - then I should stick with XP. Anyone have some informed advice on this issue? Thanks, and please excuse my ignorance!

Modifié par apricat, 18 janvier 2010 - 04:13 .

[Hathur]

I bought Win 7 (had vista too) and frankly, while it was pretty nice overall, I felt and noticed a small performance drop in several of my games compared to when I was using XP (I only have 2gb ram though).

When I switched back to XP SP3, my games ran smoother and I had fewer problems all around. XP sp3 is pretty stable and still an excellent OS today.

I have no intention to switch to Win 7 until I get a new computer in 1-2 years. If you're still running XP, my advice is to save your money and stick with it.. it's a solid OS for gaming (not necessarily better than Win7 or Vista... but certainly no worse).

Modifié par Hathur, 18 janvier 2010 - 04:16 .

[merak43]

if not xbox then win 7 all the way baby (64bit)

[Miths]

chaosapiant wrote...

I'd go with Win 7 personally. It's a bit of a gutted version of Windows Vista, and has better game performance overall. Do not go 64 bit unless you're 100% that all your games/apps can run on it. 64 bit is still incompatible with many applications, and games don't use more than 2 gigs of ram while running at most.

I haven't come across anything yet that wouldn't run in Vista x64 - and I've got a fairly wide range of applications, assorted utilities and around 15 games (dating back to around three years for the oldest) installed.
It's certainly true that most are 32-bit programs, but that doesn't mean they won't run flawlessly on a 64-bit OS - just that they won't benefit from more memory allocation (2 GB max per application for 32-bit applications as you mentioned) and whatever other benefits 64-bit programming might provide.

[spyderroque]

Hathur wrote...

I bought Win 7 (had vista too) and frankly, while it was pretty nice overall, I felt and noticed a small performance drop in several of my games compared to when I was using XP (I only have 2gb ram though).

When I switched back to XP SP3, my games ran smoother and I had fewer problems all around. XP sp3 is pretty stable and still an excellent OS today.

I have no intention to switch to Win 7 until I get a new computer in 1-2 years. If you're still running XP, my advice is to save your money and stick with it.. it's a solid OS for gaming (not necessarily better than Win7 or Vista... but certainly no worse).

Win 7 32bit is rather useless. At least I remember, that both 7s require approx. the same amount of Ram and I definetly know that my Win7 needs about 1.5GB at times. If you got less or exactly 4GB of RAM I wouldn't buy Win7 and rather stick with XP.

[epoch_]

PingoBlack wrote...

I suggest Windows 7, go 64 bit if you have over 3Gb of RAM.