Ever since the launch of Microsoft’s latest operating system, Window’s Vista, confusion has reigned on the Web. Since it’s mostly gamers who are early adopters of the latest hardware and OS upgrades, it’s no surprise that windows vista is on every gamer’s mind. “Should I switch, or should I ditch the idea?” seems to be the question. And the answers are not hard to come by. Quite the reverse actually; there are just too many answers at this point in time, and all of them contradicting the other in some way or the other.
It’s obvious that no previous operating system from the Microsoft stables has created so much buzz-whether it’s apple fans crying foul fr alleged “copying” of Mac OS X’s prettiness, or Windows fanatics raving about Aero, to confused PC gamers standing in the corner shaking their heads at all the commotion while console gamers happily ignore everyone and everything as they rejoice with their PS3s! and Xbox 360s!
Respected geek sites-Extreme Tech. Tom’s Hardware and the likes have done every Vista review possible, including benchmarking the performance differences between a clean Vista install vs. an upgrade from Windows XP. Incidently, an upgrade from Windows XP seems to be better for gaming than a clean install of Vista, according to benchmarks.
Facts remain facts, however, and currently, Windows XP is slightly ahead in terms of performance for most games. This may be because those games were built for windows XP, or just the fact that Windows XP has lower hardware requirements, but the message is clear; if you want the best performance you can eke out of your hardware for current generation games, stick to Windows XP!
So that’s it? Am I telling gamers not to upgrade to Windows Vista? Keeping up the confusion that reigns, I’ll say yes and no! For some of you the answer is yes, don’t upgrade; for a smaller number it’s no, upgrade immediately, and for the majority… well… I just don’t know, and you’ll have to make up your own minds.
Here in India when it comes to gaming Hardware demographics are a little more of a complicated affair. The majority of computer owners have aging hardware that has no right to be running even Windows XP, very obvious that if those users upgrade to windows Vista, they’ll have to deal with really slow PCs. Those with better hardware are seldom gamers. Now we come to PC gamers segment, which again is broken into two segments: the first and larger segment comprises of computers that have pretty decent configurations- an equivalent of an Athlon 64 or Pentium D, 1 GB of DDR RAM, and a good DirectX 9 graphics card with 256 MB of RAM. The second and the smallest section of the public is the hardcore gamers with on top of the line hardware- Core 2 Duo/AM2, 2 gigabytes of RAM, and the latest DirectX 10 capable cards.
For the first gamer segment, switching to Vista right now may be a problem and kind of pointless. The reason being: Vista brings to table DirectX 10 compatability, which the next generation games will run on. If you’re going to be running DirectX 9, it’s perhaps best you do it on the operating system it was designed for.
For the top-of-the-line-or-nothing-else gamer Vista is probably what you should be looking for future-proofing. That said before switching to Vista, make sure your hardware your hardware manufacturers are making Vista drivers-this is for al your hardware.
The majority of Indian PC gamers will probably play it smart with the wait and watch game, which isn’t such a bad idea – atleast until some good DirectX 10 games come out and alland all the initial teething problems for Vista are solved. For now, just watch the Vista news flashes on various sites, all the benchmarks, and chuckle contentedly.
