Gaming on Vista vs. XP???

[Crunch]

Alright, now that I have my T7600 installed, my T60p is screaming fast. Ultimate boots in seconds. I'm very happy with it.

That said, XP will boot even faster, as it is such a lighter OS. I want to install some of the high-end games, and I am wondering if I should install XP in a dual-boot configuration for this, and any other purposes that you guys think may be a good idea!? I have not run, or even have installed XP for several months now. So would I see an increase in performance for gaming if I installed them under XP vs. Vista??? Are there any other reasons that I might benefit from installing XP again?

Thanks all...

[Marin85]

Hey mate,
I´m not sure if you´ll be able to run some of the current high-end games smoothly (because of the graphic card ) but at least you can try to and then post your experience here
Now, seriously, speaking from own experience I would game under Vista (unless there are compatibilty issues). From time to time I play Warcraft III (mainly DotA for experts ) and I can tell you for sure that you won´t be very happy when trying to run it in max resolution under XP It´s still playable, but it´s not what it should be. Other than that, this game runs under Vista in max resolution lika a charm I don´t know if the same applies to oshte games but I tend to believe so since the drivers for ATI FireGL 5200 under Vista are different

Viel Spaß in gaming

Marin

[Crunch]

Oh that's interesting. And GOOD answer LOL...Because I really do not want to go back to XP for anything.

Do you use Steam? I have several games that work great, including very graphic-intensive games from as recently as last year. There was only ONE game where Steam came back and said "Difficult to run due to low CPU power". I thought it was cool that it actually said which part was not strong enough. lol...Well, that was with my old T2600. So now that one will probably work, too.

As for the graphics card. I have a Vista score of 4.6 for gaming, which is pretty high, and at 256MB dedicated RAM, you think it'll be problematic? I'll be installing Vista x64 this afternoon ...knowing me, that'll be more fun to tweak that baby than the games lol...I can't wait. I suppose games will not run on the 64-bit platform.

[Marin85]

Man, I have no idea what Steam is but now, as you mention it, I think I´ll google a bit for it From what you are telling me it seems that I have underestimated my ATI FireGL 5200
As for Vista, I don´t believe Vista score has much to say, but maybe it´s still some kind of reference too. I remember I ran 3DMark 06 game under XP and it was just unplayable but under Vista it feels and looks very nice I guess the FireGL 5200 drivers for Vista have better gaming performance than before (and I recall now there was a thread about the FireGL performance under Vista http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=56452 ). As for the hardware part, 256 MB VRAM is not bad, but 512 MB is even better , I really don´t know if this would be problematic for the games you want to play. Oh believe me, games WILL run under Vista x64 even slightly better than with the 32bit platform, unless you want to play some DOS games I´m curious if there are any 64bit games yet! That would be really cool (for those who have the resources to play them )

Grüße

Marin