I have built myself a modest gaming rig and am running 32 bit xp now. Im wondering if it will be worth it to upgrade to a 64bit vista? I have 4gb of ram, and i would be nice if i could use all of it. DX10 looks kinda sweet too. Anyway heres a short list of my specs:
Im currently playing through Crysis, and it runs well on medium settings at 1680x1050px, no AA, though at my monitors native resolution i dont get many jaggies. I often play COD4 and plan on getting Far Cry now that i see how awesome Crysis is.
Should i keep doing what im doing, or will i notice a difference if i switch OS?
Hi, my best advice would be to use XP Pro x64.
you'll be able to use all your ram, and dual core support.
If you upgrade to vista you will suffer from a 10-15 frame per second drop, depending on the game. XP x64 will not dissapoint you.
I have vista64 and xp64, xp64 is insanley faster. you should try them both to see what you like better.
xp64 barely has any driver support. stick to xp or vista 32. you can tweak vista32 to see all 4gigs of ram.
xp has the advantage of gaming, even if it maxes out at 3.5gigs of ram. the only thing holding back your system is the 8600GT. it's designed for light gaming. the 9600GT 512 would be a good choice if you plan to game.
xp32= fast plus driver suport.
xp64= superfast little driver suport.
vista= looks, - 10-15 fps.
if you use your computer mainly for gaming -xp64
if u use your computer for more than that and you depend on it everyday -xp32 or if you want it to look nice but subtract 10-15 fps then go with vista32,64
