[8IronBob]

It's been almost a year now since Vista's been launched. Having said that, I've still been thinking of dual-booting my rig with Win XP Pro x32, and Vista x64, since I already have XP Pro installed. However, do you think that the driver support has improved that much between launch and one year later in the 64-bit version of Home Premium, or should I just go with the 32-bit version of Vista? I mean, 64-bit would be futureproofing myself, I realize, but would that come as an improvement with my dual gaming/HTPC rig? Do you think that Hauppauge, Creative, and nVidia have done anything for 64-bit support?

 

[brianley]



Quote:
Originally Posted by 8IronBob /forum/post/12906808


It's been almost a year now since Vista's been launched. Having said that, I've still been thinking of dual-booting my rig with Win XP Pro x32, and Vista x64, since I already have XP Pro installed. However, do you think that the driver support has improved that much between launch and one year later in the 64-bit version of Home Premium, or should I just go with the 32-bit version of Vista? I mean, 64-bit would be futureproofing myself, I realize, but would that come as an improvement with my dual gaming/HTPC rig? Do you think that Hauppauge, Creative, and nVidia have done anything for 64-bit support?

I have absolutely no problems with Nvidia or Creative hardware in my x64 Vista system. I don't have a hauppauge card so I can't speak to that, but every other (newer) device I have from printers to cameras have 64 bit drivers support.

 

[l2e]

For me, I went back to Vista x86 b/c CoreAVC doesn't work right with x64 and most of my content is .mkv. I installed Vista Codec pack but ffdshow looks far worse (to me) than CoreAVC. Once CoreAVC works with x64, then I will go back.

 

[8IronBob]

Ehh, well, for a dual-boot system, my XP drive will handle most x86/32-bit solutions, and I'm probably looking into x64 on the Vista side, for dual-compatibility. I was wanting to split things up between XP/32-bit and Vista/64-bit, hoping that they'd both work in parallel.

 

[jhoff80]



Quote:
Originally Posted by l2e /forum/post/12907464


For me, I went back to Vista x86 b/c CoreAVC doesn't work right with x64 and most of my content is .mkv. I installed Vista Codec pack but ffdshow looks far worse (to me) than CoreAVC. Once CoreAVC works with x64, then I will go back.

CoreAVC is actually worse quality than ffdshow, why do you think its so much faster, it skips some steps in the decoding.


I would personally say, if you get 8GB of ram, x64 is fine enough, there's still some issues, but not many. In any other case, stick to 32bit. Also, if you have a Hauppauge tuner card, don't go with x64 either (many of their cards work in x64 but only with less than 4 GB ram, which defeats the purpose.)

 

[8IronBob]

Yeah, you're probably right... I may wait until the successor to Vista for x64, since by then Microsoft will probably go exclusively to 64-bit in 2009. Wouldn't surprise me.


EDIT: Now that I think about it, since I'm dual-booting between a 32-bit in Win XP Pro, and a potential 64-bit in Vista Home Premium, I'd like to think that 3GB DDR2 is probably the "sweet spot" as far as the best amount of RAM between the two. At least there you will have performance that will make both OSes happy, possibly...