I need to know whether or not you would recommend Vista home 32 bit or XP home 32 bit for my system. It is a brand new build, and I will mainly be using it to edit images with photoshop, and some videos. I want everything to be fast, I don't really care about small differences in file transfer rates, what I really care about is whether or not it will run photoshop fast, and whether or not the move to vista would require me to buy more ram just to be on par with xp with 2gb of ram

My system:
Antec 900
e2180 processor (soon to be upgraded --> e8400)
gigabyte ds3l mobo
2gb corsair ram
2x 250gb seagate barracuda
visiontek 3870 gpu

I highly advise that you get Vista for new and powerful systems - unless you know for a fact you have software that won't work. Vista 64 and 4 or more gigs of RAM is also a great choice. RAM is cheap and 64 has arrived with Vista. If you edit giant images you will appreciate the extra ram. At this time I do not think there is any significant speed advantage for XP on the kind of machine you are looking at and all in all the reverse may be true - Vista may seem snappier in most functions. Superfetch helps. Your mileage may vary and I'm sure you will hear many opinions on this. That's my 2 cent.

I have Vista 64 and 8 gig ram. There is nothing slow about it. Game frame rates have pretty well equalized at least according to this study http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] efault.asp

XP still has an edge in the overall compatibility department, with business apps, older hardware, and older games, and with drivers generally but Vista has come a long way after this past year. DX 10 of course is nice but as of yet there isn't much out there for it yet. But you are buying an OS to last a few years, right? Think ahead.

Businesses are a different story, the issues are complex there, but for the average independent user who does not need older apps or hardware go Vista. Don't buy most of the anti-vista FUD. It's mostly hate fueled. Interesting poll going on at Anandtech. Suggest you read through it. http://forums.anandtech.com/messag [...] erthread=y

Gives you some idea of the recent enthusiast thinking.

Ok, but notherdude, what I'm trying to understand is this: If I get vista 32 bit, would it be just as fast with 2gb of ram as XP 32 bit? Or would I have to get more ram because vista takes more ram to run...........but then I wouldn't be able to get much more ram (only up to 3 gb, right?) unless I got the 64 bit version, right? Yet, supposedly the 64 bit has alot of problems..DANGIT I'M SO LOST

Edit: Yes, I do want to buy my os for the future. On what you said about compatibility, I can tell you right now, there are only 5 programs I want to use on my computer, Ok? I use the same ones over and over again: Photoshop cs2, Sony Vegas 7, Firefox, Microsoft word, Powerpoint, various games (but mostly counterstrike). If you can tell me that these programs work perfectly on Windows Vista 64bit, I'd just get it, and then I don't care how long it takes them to work out all the other bugs.

You should research CS2. CS3 works for me on Vista 64 and Vista 32. There may have been issues with CS2, can't recall. I'll look into it.

2 gig is enough to make Vista work well. That is considered the Geek's minimum. Any speed differences are not likely to be noticeable. XP may win on some items and Vista on others.

Vista 32 and XP 32 will use up to 3.5 gig ram depending usually on how much video RAM is on your card - for complex reasons. You would probably see about 3 gig if you install 4, maybe less, I think your card has 1 gig ram, correct? That's a lot.

XP is not a bad choice. You know stuff will work and you know you won't be ram starved.

You will just have to research your programs individually. Office programs will work, games too, Firefox is fine and dandy on Vista 64 - just check on Vegas and CS 2.

Most everything will work fine under 64 because they simply run in 32 bit mode - 64 bit CPUs have both modes available but there are a few exceptions. 64 has come a long way and is getting more and more support. Most drivers will come in either flavor.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6169373.html
CS 2 may be a problem, Adobe did decide not to support Vista, at least initially - although they say the issues were minor and that it would install and run. That article was from last March. Things may have changed.

Running Vista 64-bit here. No problems at all.

The only things worth commenting on:

I had to switch from AVG antivirus to Avast antivirus (which has an actual 64-bit version and it's free too!).

iTunes required me to install a 64-bit gear driver for CD burning purposes.

'Live icons' don't work the same way as 32-bit Vista. If you don't know what 'Live icons' are, then you won't miss anything.

Macromedia has not added flash support for 64-bit browsers yet, but that doesn't matter because 64-bit Vista comes with both 32-bit and 64-bit IE with 32-bit as the default browser upon install. I still use 32-bit firefox though.

I can't imagine why Microsoft Office apps wouldn't run on 64-bit Vista. In the event you run into a program that doesn't like Vista, there is a 'Compatibility Mode' you can setup for that program which emulates XP.

In the long run Vista64 would be the best way to go.

My graphics card has 512mb gddr4 ram. Ok, I see what you're saying with all this. I had heard that vista alone took 1gb of your ram, so I was wondering if 2gb of ram on vista would be equal to 1gb on XP, if you know what I mean.

Thanks for the article on CS2, they seemed to downplay the problems with cs2, so maybe it won't be so bad. man, i'm still so confused. I mainly want to know the answer to that ram question above, thanks

Vista will fill more RAM for two reasons;

1. It has a somewhat bigger RAM footprint than XP

2. It loads frequently used code into RAM as part of 'superfetch'. This is a good thing. Faster than getting it off the HD. It releases this cache when needed. So don't freak when you see Vista is 'using' a hella lot of RAM. It's superfetch. Right now my Vista 64 is using 2.5 gig of my 8 gig and I'm doing very little. But far from being slow, everything is happening instantly.

Two gig of RAM is a lot, enough to compensate for the bigger footprint of Vista. But RAM is cheap, get 4 gig. You will have about 3 of it to use under 32 bit, which is plenty. Probably better to get 2 2 gig sticks than 4 1 gig.

edit: I see you already have your RAM. Don't worry. 2 gig is plenty.

Well, I eventually want to upgrade to cs3 anyway, so vista 64 might be an option. I already have 2x 1gb sticks, so If I was to get more, maybe I'd just get 2x 2 gb, for a total of 6 (my mobo has 4 ram slots). what would you recommend for the 2x2gb? I have Corsair XMS2 2gb <-- ram.
found here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820145034

Mixing RAM types usually works fine, if you use a little common sense but there is always a little tiny doubt. If there is a problem you can always just use the four.

Your RAM uses 2.1 v and 4,4,4,12 timing. The RAM you add should match these specs as close as possible because you cannot adjust sticks individually in BIOS. . Match the voltage almost exactly and if you end up with new RAM that runs at 5,5,5,15 you can always adjust the timings up on your current Corsair with little or no performance impact:

Here is one possibility that comes pretty close.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820220227

That's great, thanks alot. I have just one more question - I have an unopened dell-issued windows xp disk that I never had to use. Is there any chance this would work on my new build?

I've always heard these branded OEM disks were tied to the brand of PC by the BIOS. But I'm not sure what would happen.

This is what I did to run Vista 32 fast as xp. I downloaded VLITE for free (google it). with vlite you customize the OS the way you want it, meaning you get to remove crap you dont need (Windows games Checkers, Solitaire, Accessibility and many more you dont need), and it end up being a 750mb iso (went from 3gb to 750mb iso), then you burn it and install your new customize windows. Now, my pc boot very quick, and system responds very quick with 1gb. Remember first you need to extract all windows files from cd to a folder before you start customizing.