How many of you chumps have actually upgraded?

Results:

http://www.ausgamers.com/images/forums/leftbar.gifhttp://www.ausgamers.com/images/forums/rightbar.gif I already have.: 7.6% (10 votes)
http://www.ausgamers.com/images/forums/leftbar.gifhttp://www.ausgamers.com/images/forums/rightbar.gif I will be soon. : 14.5% (19 votes)
http://www.ausgamers.com/images/forums/leftbar.gifhttp://www.ausgamers.com/images/forums/rightbar.gif I have no plans to. : 77.9% (102 votes)

Total votes: 131

Please log in to vote!!

Wouldn't consider it until I got a new PC and there was at least a service pack out for it, even then it also depends how many DRM related issues are still plaguing the OS. I didn't switch to XP for ages after it came out, I think the main reason I ended up going from 98SE to XP in the end was the ability to use NTFS.

Considering upgrading, its just sitting here collecting dust. Really want to have a play with aero :D

How many of you chumps have actually upgraded?

I'm more interested in "why have you upgraded?"

Upgrading has barely crossed my mind as there seem to be more unknowns/downsides than benefits.

I got Vista Ultimate Full Retail off a mate who works at MS ($45!!)

There were reasons why I had to do what I did, but I'd tell anyone now who owns XP - stay put. Forget DRM. Forget anti-MS sentiment.

Simply put, the soundcard issues are a bloody mess right now. Video isn't much better.

Aero might look pretty, but then, so do some of the crazy mods out there for Ubuntu.

If you enjoy Directsound3D (EAX) titles, and have no OpenAL support for your card (which is pretty much everyone bar a handful of Creative cards), stay with XP.

Otherwise...enjoy 2.0 sound in your games.

haha, 4 people voted worng

I upgraded because I got it for free.

Other than my CSR's not working & Microsoft moving everything around so you can no longer find where s*** used to be, it's pretty good.

If I had to pay for it, I'd still be on XP though since I haven't found any amazing feature in Vista that's worth the blingah.

hell naw

"Upgrade"? From OSX to Vista?

Bahahahaha.

I only use 2 speakers when playing games anyway, loaded up my drivers and everything fine, runs as fast if not faster than XP, all my software, games etc run. I like the new interface and it has some neat features and a lot of bug fixes.

Honestly if your tempted to do it , then just do it. I like the feel of it a lot more than XP, but then again I like the new gui.

OK two things already that irk me in this thread:

(1) f***ing smugness of mac users.. do you have to be so smug to avoid thinking about how much you just paid for an intel x86 system with a fancy OS?

(2) Vista benchmarks so far afaik are slower than XP SP2 when using an actual GAME (not synthetic).

(2) Vista benchmarks so far afaik are slower than XP SP2 when using an actual GAME (not synthetic).

Huh? Have you used Vista? I have for several games and none of them have been performing slower than they did on XP.

I have for several games and none of them have been performing slower than they did on XP

Read the following articles for more insight:

For now, gamers that were interested in running off to get a copy of Windows Vista, I'd caution you to take a minute and contemplate. Gaming under Vista is definitely possible and if you're comfortable with some slight performance drops for now while taking advantage of Vista's other new features, then a move to Vista sooner rather than later should be considered. If gaming and gaming performance is your only metric for your PC, then I'd definitely hold out on upgrading until AMD and NVIDIA have their software perfected.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=354&pid=2 (Source of quote)

http://techgage.com/article/windows_vista_gaming_performance_reports
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/page4.html#3d_games

last edited by parabol at 15:53:19 08/Feb/07

Iv noticed no difference in game performance to be honest. They run just as well as they did on XP.

The reason could be is because that benchmark is flawed. As usual, ATI dont have decent f***ing drivers for vista, in fact, they were in beta last I checked but that could have changed. Nvidia has 2 sets of drivers for Vista now, so maybe thats why im not getting any less performance? because I am using the nvidea drivers, not the MS supplied one.

you guys using vista & saying games are no slower... are you running fps tests or just saying it looks similar? coz my mate in i.t. rekns all the cpu-heavy games like doom3, quake4 & oblivion ran slower in vista. on the same machine, previously running xp-sp2 with the latest nvidia drivers. (so he had fps stats to compare to.)

I think you need to add Dual Boot to that poll coz atm thats probably the best option, or at least thats what im doing.

I'll just wait until i buy a new computer and get it then... Probably wait till next christmas...

i'll wait till it's on special.

nVidia released a new driver a day or two after Vista's release and ATI had their driver out on the day. With the default drivers in Vista - it sucked (no surprises) but once I installed the ATI drivers I've seen no problem.

you guys using vista & saying games are no slower... are you running fps tests or just saying it looks similar?

I generally just go on how it looks since well that's all I really care about when playing a game. If it's chunky, laggy and slow then there's a problem. But between the two OS' everything is identical so far for me.

Surely some enterprising person has made an open source Aqua-like interface thing for Windows by now

i'd upgrade if I didn't have to fork over my hard earned coins

just farm some more.

i have no plans to upgrade and dont know if i ever will. going to XP/OSX when i get my macbook and considering all i do on my desktop PC is a few games, web and audio editing i cant see the point. Mostly because my setup is rock solid for recording/editing and i feel no need to put that in jepordy until vista is well established. Oh and depending on the nazi'ness of its DRM.

I generally just go on how it looks since well that's all I really care about when playing a game. If it's chunky, laggy and slow then there's a problem. But between the two OS' everything is identical so far for me.

Is this with Aero Glass theme or Aero basic theme? Coz I have gripes about running 3d games while I'm already in a 3d desktop. Unless dx10 has sorta fixed all that?

I have full Aero featuers running. Gool thing is that if an application needs to pimp it's 3D goodies then Aero gets disabled automatically.

Haven't tried running any 3D apps in a Window though.

With the driver problems with Vista...no.
http://www.nvidiaclassaction.org/

Haven't tried running any 3D apps in a Window though.

Try Google Earth or Celestia.

Ill upgrade when they give me a reason to upgrade.

where's the "I'd rather claw my eyes out like sam neil" option?

You need to add the "Dual Boot XP/Vista" option.

Its nice and all but when something doesn't work its a relief to be able to fall back to an OS that will run whatever without a drama.

Theres no way I'm having Vista as a solo OS install for a good while yet.

/me stands next to rubba-chikin an nods vehemently

Interestingly WoW crashes in XP (ever since TBC) yet no problems in Vista.

I'm going to label vista as the next windows ME

edit: lol
http://www.break.com/index/how_to_properly_load_vista.html

last edited by whoop at 23:52:51 08/Feb/07

I'll use vista on my next machine, gonna have to learn it sooner or later most likely, fastest way to learn to fix problems is to have them happen to you :|

I find it slightly disturbing that the people who hate vista and talk s*** about it, have never even used it, and have seen maybe 1 screen shot of it.

anyway. I ghosted my XP install before loading vista, in case s*** happens. So far no dramas but its only been a week. not a fan boi of it but I am liking it.

In answer to someones question, no , I dont measure it with FPS or benchmark tools, im not that bored. It runs and looks and feels the same as XP did in my games, no lag, no jitters, no crashes, no nasty pixilation (sp).

Also they have fixed the sleep and hibernate functions and it rocks. takes about 2 seconds to load after I lift my laptops lid.

I find it slightly disturbing that the people who hate vista and talk s*** about it, have never even used it

Why would I go out and buy Vista or visit a friend's house just to "try it". I'm not that bored. XP is treating most of us just fine. Everything works, full driver support. If we want eye-candy, there's the Vista Tranformation pack for XP.

There's almost nothing out there right now that needs Vista, so why should we rush out and upgrade ASAP?

I'd rather wait until:

1) There is decent driver support for ALL of my hardware
2) There is an actual need to get Vista (say, DX10 games)
3) The DX10 cards are a bit more affordable

Otherwise it's too much of a waste of time "trying out" something that I don't need. Sounds like you have a bit too much time on your hands?


last edited by parabol at 00:54:11 09/Feb/07

In answer to someones question, no , I dont measure it with FPS or benchmark tools, im not that bored.

It ran cs:s as well as XP on my p4 and that was the beta version of vista so I imagine the release will be about the same.

my friend just went to vista and has had nothing but trouble.. he has a pretty high end system (2 gig ram, x1800 gfx) and his FPS has gone down about 20% in CSS and other games are noticably worse. Not to mention the probs hes had with sound. Said hes formatting tomorrow and putting vista on the shelf for 6 months.. im aiming for a year ^_^

Haha "Vista Tranformation pack for XP" - Mutton dressed as goat.

Seriously though, the FPS drops can be attributed to:

- unoptimized drivers - both NVIDIA and AMD (ATI) admit they aren't 'done' coding drivers for Vista.

- CPU having to eat EAX/Directsound3D calls...instead of your nice hardware-accelerated soundcard's chip.

Try it - if you have a game that is now lower in FPS in Vista, and uses EAX sound - disable the sound engine completely (see if there's a /nosound command line parameter). Witness the boostage.


As for Glass being a FPS killer - not true. You lose bugger all FPS between Aero Basic and Aero Glass. (This is a major difference over the public Beta)

and his FPS has gone down about 20% in CSS and other games are noticably worse

maybe that's a sign that he should stop playing s***house games

^^ lolol ati on vista ^^ I didn't know people still buy ati crap heh, I haven't seen a respectable ati card come though our builds in a very very long time.

If Nvidia are having dramas with drivers I can only imagine ati would be worse.


The hibernation mode was something that I also thought was very cool. I hit my power button to shut the comp off thinking it would just shut down like XP but oh no. All the devices powered off and it actually looked like it was completely off, but obviously the memory was still being fed some juice to hold the data.

Come back a bit later hit the power button and BANG im at the desktop in about 2 seconds... Um woah?! Then I realised it had to be some kind of awesome hibernation mode. If its that fast and power friendly sif ever turn off the PC again!

last edited by rubba-chikin at 08:59:49 09/Feb/07

The only thing that I might look forward to is new Windows Vista Server. Man I hope they fix the problem with shared folders to be able to assign "no move" permission to stop dumb users from "accidentally" drag and drop folders ....

As for desktop vista. meh.

^^ lolol ati on vista ^^ I didn't know people still buy ati crap heh, I haven't seen a respectable ati card come though our builds in a very very long time.

I'm running an X1600 mobility (Inspiron 6400) without any dramas.

The hibernation mode was something that I also thought was very cool. I hit my power button to shut the comp off thinking it would just shut down like XP but oh no. All the devices powered off and it actually looked like it was completely off, but obviously the memory was still being fed some juice to hold the data.

Come back a bit later hit the power button and BANG im at the desktop in about 2 seconds... Um woah?! Then I realised it had to be some kind of awesome hibernation mode. If its that fast and power friendly sif ever turn off the PC again!

Um thats just suspend to ram (STR), its been around for ages. My XP uses STR as opposed to STD (to disk).

Im pretty sure you should be able to change it to use it in your bios > power settings.

Im pretty sure you should be able to change it to use it in your bios > power settings.

More like Control Panel -> Power Options in Windows XP.

Standby = Suspend to RAM
Hibernate = Suspend to Disk


http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~boldajis/images/powerbutton.jpg

last edited by parabol at 12:29:29 09/Feb/07

There you go. Ive never had to change mine so..

Personally, I'll be waiting for SP1.

Sounds like you have a bit too much time on your hands?

Too right, needed to reinstall my machine, have vista, on holidays :)

Im not having a go at you for not using it, im simply asking people to NOT go "lol vista is s*** lol" without knowing anything about it or trying it. There is probably no reason for a lot of people to upgrade, so yeah, why bother. I want to try it out so one day when we move over to it at work, I know its ins and outs :)

last edited by Eds at 23:33:09 09/Feb/07

I want to try it

Good. Carry on.

Guinea pigs are needed prior to SP1 :)

Hey, its my send fault to MS that makes your SP1 :P

im simply asking people to go "lol vista is s*** lol" without knowing anything about it or trying it

lol, well spotted :P

fixed it

While I have no intention of running it as my primary OS for at least 12 months or more, and while I "HATE" the interface I will grudgingly admit it has some decent features.

- Ability to browse hardware attached to machine prior to OS install instead of being forced to use a floppy to install raid drivers
- Games can be associated with a rating (eg ESRB though not limited to that body) which can assist a parent in monitoring their childrens gaming patterns so far as to even prevent a MA registered game being played or installed or alternatively (if I remember accurately enough) report the amount of time the game was actually played! While the concept is good I can also see it being subject to misuse by govt censorship bodies in the event of a worst case scenario

PS Company of Heroes runs fine under Vista Ultimate using a Core 2 6700, 7950 GX2 and an X-Fi Platinum with 2 gig of RAM

Another feature I discovered last night. The ability to play a game on your primary monitor, while having WMP full screen on your secondary. Also when in game it locks you to the primary monitor so you can accidentally scroll out of the game. XP never did this for me and its soooo f***ing awesome.

I only just started using XP last year!

The ability to play a game on your primary monitor, while having WMP full screen on your secondary

XP has always allowed me to do this. Just then I ran FEAR and played a movie simultaneously on different monitors.

it locks you to the primary monitor so you can accidentally scroll out of the game

95% of regular fullscreen games on XP are fine. I only ever lost focus on the very few games that used the regular Windows mouse cursor/calls (e.g Trackmania Track Editor).

Once again another set of "new features" that have actually been in XP the whole time or are a non-issue.

last edited by parabol at 13:11:48 10/Feb/07

I love how memtest kicks-in automatically when needed now.. I wish they could've used another diagnostic for the job though

I don't like how you still have to be using signed drivers for Vista to report your dying soundcard/videocard/etc correctly, but it's getting better

XP has always allowed me to do this. Just then I ran FEAR and played a movie simultaneously on different monitors.

Same, but never full screen on the secondary monitor without it going back to a windowed mode.

95% of regular fullscreen games on XP are fine. I only ever lost focus on the very few games that used the regular Windows mouse cursor/calls (e.g Trackmania Track Editor).

Once again another set of "new features" that have actually been in XP the whole time or are a non-issue.

Majority of games I play, specially WoW, didnt lock it. Maybe a non-issue to you, but your not the only user in the world, remember that.

Same, but never full screen on the secondary monitor without it going back to a windowed mode.

What card/drivers were you using?

Nvidia card, always the latest drivers. Admittidly, I hadnt tried it since about mid jan last year, since I gave up and just used my laptop instead. Only realised it now because I hooked up a second monitor to try out the dual screen stuff in supreme commander.

I just figured it was a vista thing, could be wrong tho. Regardless, I was over the moon when it worked. Its great watching an ep while running in WoW

Hrm new problem in Vista. Playing WoW (no matter what realm) my lag goes to about 20,000ms - under XP it's back to its usual 300-350ms.

new problem in Vista. Playing WoW (no matter what realm) my lag goes to about 20,000ms

How is that a problem? VISTA has just gone up a notch in my book - WoW is s***e

I have a 7yr old PC.

This seems to have become the Vista whinge thread so if anyone can figure this one out... twould be helpful :P

Right here we go. My bro wanted to play with Vista so I throw it on a spare 60gig PATA drive.

For the install I just had that single drive sitting there installing. All installed no worries. Then I threw back in his 200gig and 40gig PATA drives.

His IDE chans are config'ed like so

IDE0 - 60g (OS), 200g
IDE1 - DVD, 40g

Now when it boots into Vista, the 40g drive is not there... shutdown, unplug the 200g, go back in oh hello there mr 40g.

Change to
IDE0 - 60g (OS), 40g
IDE1 - nothing

Both show fine


IDE0 - 60g (OS), 40g
IDE1 - 200g (as master)

40g not there.


What thee fork?!?!??!

All the different combos I tried everything showed up correctly at a BIOS level. I really f***ing hope its not some spastic limitation that Vista will only support 3 PATA devices in total... that would be incredibly lame if so :/

Yeah, that bugged me aswell and I wanted to talk about it to everyone today before we got slawed by work (and subsequent distractions)

One thing I noticed early on

Vista has a very diff way in which it acknowledges multiple drives and their subsequent partitions

It will change your drive order around from what you where used to under XP if you have several drives each of which having partitions

Can't verify IDE conditions howver I can verify that this can occur for example should you have 3x 320 gb SATA drives which all contain partitions,

SATA0 = 2 partitions (under XP named C: & D:)
SATA1 = 4 partitions (under XP named E: & F: & G:)
SATA2 = 2 partitions (under XP named H: & I:)

The primary partitions on each drive aquired drive names above extended's
These drives then became (in order using original drive designations) C,E,H, D, F....

last edited by HERMITech at 01:49:01 11/Feb/07

I'm not worried bout the changes to mine but here they are.

In XP:
200GB PATA - C: (xp) D: (software) E: (files)
320GB SATA - Y: (vista) Z: (backup)

In Vista:
320GB SATA - C: (vista)
200GB PATA - D: (xp) E: (software) F: (files)
320GB SATA - G: (backup)

It basically makes its partition C: and pushes them all up a letter it seems.

At least you guys can see all your bloody drives!

Why the hell is 1 HDD not even showing up for me on my bro's machine?! It isn't even in device manager or disk management. It is as if the HDD is not even plugged in - but its there in BIOS... :/

BTW the board is an A8N-SLI SE if anyone cares.


I have 3 SATA drives in my system and I get the same deal as you guys, but I can still see them all!


One other annoying thing, he runs an SBLive 5.1 DE soundcard which only gets the generic vista creative driver. So that means you can only have stereo sound, his rear and center speakers just don't work. Theres not even a way to just say throw the stereo sound though the rears... There is a surround option but its greyed out.

I personally find that pretty f***en crap, surely it wouldn't have been too hard to just do mirrored stereo surround for these kinds of old 5.1 cards.


Even though there are some semi-cool features in Vista, the cons are stacking up fast for me.

SBLive drivers for vista wtf? Vista doesnt like my SB.

SBLive drivers for vista wtf? Vista doesnt like my SB.

i dont like no vista

when it gets aroudn to supporing XP sblive users, ill get around to supporting it

That's really odd because windows 2k and xp (didn't try it with vista) can detect my hard drives even if they're disabled in the BIOS. Don't ask me how but if I disabled a drive in the BIOS, 2k/xp would see it and still be able to make use of it.

SBLives are supported to the most basic extent possible. The driver will get installed if you do windows updates.

So you get sound, however like I said earlier you get 2.0 stereo and thats it.

..|., to you Creative, how hard is it to add some decent support.

MS rebuilt the sound stack for vista rubba, they broke the hardware acceleration features for every soundcard currently on the market, as well as all the 5.1 etc features. Creative have been working hard trying to write drivers that work without accessing the old hardware/kernel calls, but they're focusing on newer cards.

I'm hoping someone releases a motherboard with onboard sound that is fully compatible with Vista, preferably in the next few months. Probably upgrade to a new machine at that stage. If I'm lucky the video drivers will be better optimised by then as well.

But yeah, I've got an X-mystique myself and i'd have no driver support at all for my card if I moved to vista on my current PC.

Pretty funny how so many people are experts on how bad vista is, without actually even using it.

Unfortunatley for users of SB lives... I have some bad news. They're not the s*** any more. Are you using an 8 year old (after checking wikipedia) 9 year old video card too?

I mean, I'm not saying that people should have to upgrade their soundcard just because they upgrade windows... But you dont! It still works...

last edited by mongie at 11:10:55 12/Feb/07

Pretty funny how so many people are experts on how bad vista is, without actually even using it.

Yeah its got its problems, but I find Vista much smoother in operation than XP. My XP (recently reformatted as well) lags a lot (such as opening the start menu - dont know how that could be a strenous task...) whereas vista doesn't. The hardware accelerated desktop seems to get rid of a lot of problems imo.

last edited by 3dee at 12:44:40 12/Feb/07

Pretty funny how so many people are experts on how bad vista is, without actually even using it.

You don't have to stick your hand into fire to know it's going to hurt you.

Yeah I can see what you are getting at Ice, but surely it couldn't be that difficult to just mirror the front speakers for now. Sure its not true surround, but at least the other 3 speakers might work then...

The reason I use an SBLive is cause it was free, and its better than my onboard ac97 :P
I run 2 speaker stacks off an amp through RCA leads for my sound anyway so It works lovely for me.