Vista 32 vs. Vista 64 shootout – PC Gaming

Conclusion

It’s disappointing if you expected to see more games that take advantage of 64-bit so as to run faster. However, we did see that there is at least one new game where 64-bit has a definite advantage over 32-bit and we expect devs to optimize for 64-bit more and more as newer games are released. We can see that 64-bit will become much more important for gaming in future – but there is no current need to migrate to a 64-bit operating system just for PC gaming.

We are definitely going to recommend Vista 64 over Vista 32 today if you want the very most out of your PC – for other than PC gaming and will invest in more than 4GB system RAM. We shall continue to use Vista 64 for all of our future testing in this Shootout Series. Our very next article is “Diamond HD 4890-xOC Review, Part 2” and it carries on where “Diamond HD 4890-xOC Preview, Part 1” left off.

As we move on to the HD4890-xOC review, we will also upgrade to the next set of drivers from each vendor: Catalyst 9-3 and GeForce 182.50 so you can see the drivers progress and compare their performance directly from one driver set to the next.  We will again update the drivers for the article after that, examining architectural differences between 4890 and 4870 which will also feature CrossFireX – pairing “FrankenFire” 4890 and 4870 against “true” 4890 CrossFire.  And we have a new “Big GPU shootout – revisited” – with many more video cards and game benchmarks than the original – in the works for you!

Our “Shoot-out Series” has been a steady progression examining Intel’s Penryn platform and we have been upgrading it as necessary, to maximize our PC’s gaming performance and to chart those improvements for you. Part IV, The Summary, showed this by comparing drivers all the way back to August 2008 when we first began benchmarking, focusing on the progress the vendors have made since then until now.

In our installment of Part III, Big GPU Shootout, PCIe 1.0 vs. PCIe 2.0, we especially focused on the motherboard’s effects on video card performance, using the extremes – P35 PCIe 1.0 vs. X48 PCIe 2.0. We saw how limiting the older motherboard’s PCIe bandwidth can be in certain situations and so we upgraded to X48.

Part II – The Big GPU Shoot-Out – Setting New Benches – demonstrated the need for overclocking our E8600 CPU from its stock 3.33 Ghz to 4.0 Ghz to take full advantage of our new video cards.

Part I, The Big GPU Shootout: Upgrade Now or Wait? we examined the performance of five video cards. We realized that the last generation’s video cards are not sufficient for today’s DX10 maxed-out gaming. We even started by comparing Core 2 Duo E4300 to E8600 at the same 3.33 GHz and found the older CPU rather lacking and continued on for the rest of our series with E8600. With our last review article, we now use Core 2 Quad Q9550S and recommend it highly! We also started to bench with CrossFireX-3 in Part I which ran on fairly immature Catalyst 8-8 drivers at the time and we have continued to chart its progress until now.

Stay tuned. We think we will have some very interesting articles for you to read as you plan your own coming upgrades. Well, we are done with our benches and this part of our “Shootout” Series and we are already working on our next article on 4890-xOC for you. In the meantime, feel free to comment below, ask questions or have a detailed discussion in our ABT forums. We also want to let you know we will again run a brand new promotion with nice prizes and a contest shortly in our forums.  Always look for these announcements on the main ABT page and in our forum. We want you eventually to join us and Live in Our World. It is expanding and we think you will like what you progressively discover here.

Mark Poppin

ABT editor

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