So now that we’ve established the PC is the best gaming platform available, we’ve got to decide what operating system to put on it. Anything non-Windows is obviously out of the question for gaming, so it’s between XP and Vista. I’ve had extensive experience with both (and spent a good amount of time tweaking them for maximum performance), and when Vista Service Pack 1 came out last week and did not magically make everything run better and faster, I decided to go back to XP. And in fact when I started writing this blog post it was from within XP.
I had decided to go back to XP because I had stripped Vista down to the point where I was using the Windows Classic theme and I figured without Aero what does Vista really offer. Well, after using XP for a couple days I have to say Vista does have more to offer than a new interface. It feels more stable overall, the OS is almost always responsive even when programs are crashing or consuming 100% of the CPU. Programs launch faster, resource management is smarter. A lot of the control panel stuff is better, the search bar in the start menu is handy (although I prefer to use other launching programs because they are slightly faster and/or have more features).
So I decided to give Vista one more chance. I gave it another pass of tweaking, this time using Autoruns to disable a bunch of stuff that was automatically starting with my computer (tip: use the Hide Microsoft Entries to more easily see what you can probably safely disable) and I used Blackviper’s service guide to disable unnecessary services. At first I had Aero completely disabled (including the Themes and DWM services), but I later found that that was not causing any significant slowdowns after all. So now my games (and applications) perform at least as well as they did on XP, but I also have all the benefits of Vista.
Which makes choosing between them rather easy. If you’re willing to work for it, Vista can be better all around.
And if you are willing to do that, check out the Vista Annoyances Resolved article at TweakGuides.com. Aside from his stance on UAC which I disagree with (I still say it’s worth the convenience of disabling it altogether with the small theoretical added security risk), it’s an excellent article explaining why Vista does not suck.