Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi,

From all the research I have done, it has been determined that WoW is more CPU intensive than GPU intensive.

If I move to Vista(32bit), would I get better performance or should I rather wait for Windows 7? Another question is, moving to any other 32bit OS, would it make a bigger difference that XP?

Thanks in advance.
G~D

I wouldn't bother moving to 32bit Vista and keeping the same hardware. If you have 2GB or less of RAM, then it will probably run worse, if you have more, then get 64bit Vista.

If you don't have a 64bit CPU, then buy a new one rather than spending money on an OS.

_________________
Formerly eZ`

Follow me on twitter: @theg00seberry and find me on Steam

:) thanks

But if WoW is a 32bit game, how will the 64bit OS help?

as far as i know wow supports 64bit by now, shouldn't make any problems at least, but i don't know if it brings any substantial performance difference ... leave to say you should have at least 4gb ram to make it count ^^

edit: look here! (might have to scroll down a bit for further details, but it says since patch 1.8.0 wow fully supports natively)

:) thanks

But if WoW is a 32bit game, how will the 64bit OS help?

More RAM pretty much. If you have at least 4GB it'll be completely worth it.

WoW doesn't have a 64bit version yet, but supposedly it has multi-threading support, although through my experience it doesn't really work very well. (I haven't played it for 3 months or so now, so I can't speak for any recent patches).

_________________
Formerly eZ`

Follow me on twitter: @theg00seberry and find me on Steam

As far as I know, it will run on a 64bit OS but it will run in 32bit compatibility mode which doesn't really help.

However a 32bit OS can use a max of about 3.5GB (minus space for your gpu ram etc- I have only 2.6GB of my 4GB available to use by XP) whereas a 64bit OS can use all that you can stick in your mobo. That is why if you are moving from XP there is no reason at all to go 32bit; 64bit vista can run any app that is 32bit in compatability mode with no performance hit, it can run any (of the very few) 64bit apps and it uses every GB of your RAM.

However switching from XP to Vista 32bit or Win7 32bit will see a performance drop in most games. XP is still faster almost every time. If you have 4GB+ of memory you might see a tiny increase in frame rate in 64bit Vista or Win7 but not enough to be worth it.

I dunno what your rig is but spend your money on hardware (new cpu, better cooling and OC it, more RAM if you only have 1GB, a new mobo/cpu, new GPU, hell even a new mouse!) before you update your OS... not worth it for gaming.

_________________
Dipping bags at Mach1.9

So the answer then is to stick with XP. It's interesting what you say cause other people I have spoken to say that going vista is the way to go as after SP1, the performance has improved drastically. Also, not only for WoW, using DX10 is better. Is this statement accurate?

Not IME:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1390&page=3
Conclusion
# On the whole, applying SP1 to Vista makes little difference to most games.
# Seven out of ten of the games tested produced frame rate averages which were lower under Vista than XP SP2.
# However, a closer look at the numbers shows that when Vista is slower than XP SP2, the actual frame rate differences are only in the single digits.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2304031,00.asp
Results very very similar.

IME Vista SP1 = XP SP3 +/- 5% in most games. Not worth an upgrade. Admitedly I have no experience of WoW but AFAIK it doesn't run in DX10 anyway

_________________
Dipping bags at Mach1.9

Thanks Mach, :)

Very informative answers there. I do appreciate your time and efforts in helping me decide.