Howdy,

 

I searched a little on this topic but don't have anything I can hang my hat on yet as to why I should purchase Win 7 64 versus keep and reinstall Vista 64 on my next build. Anything solid to make the purchase worth the $$? Affect on performance, smoothness, other? To be honest, I've really had no troubles on Vista 64. I guess one reason might be just to have an OS that will be supported longer perhaps.

 

I have a copy of Win 7 64 on a MacBookPro but if I'm not mistaken it can't be used as well on a new desktop, yes?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Noel

Noel

If you are happy with Vista - you may not need to upgrade to Win 7 which in the early days of its release was euphemistically called Vista SP3. At present it would cost me be around $150 - $220 to upgrade to Win 7 (depending on edition, Home, Pro, Ult) but only $40 to upgrade to windows 8 Pro (I am not recommending that, but it does seem crazy that it costs more to upgrade to an older version of Windows than it does to the current one.

Win 7 does improve on Vista it utilses certain hardware and software functions better including graphics. But I don't think that you would notice much difference with FSX. I have run Vista 64 since SP1 and I have never had an issue (stability or performance) and likewise with my Windows 7 machines. I guess that it will come down to choice in the long run. I saw no difference in FSX performance when upgrading to Win 7, but it may vary from PC to User.

Regards

pH

Thank you--your review seems objective. I really am basing this decision on whether or not I would notice much difference [in FSX performance], and it sounds like not so much from your comments. Do the improvements in graphics management not translate to FSX then? To other modern PC games maybe?

Noel

wrt graphics what I was implying is that Win7 handles graphics more efficiently than say Vista (and supposedly Win 8 more than Win 7) but that may not translate into performance or quality in real life. The big advance in graphics came from nvidia and ATI themselves, but that GTX 280 is still a good card IMHO. If you are running an addon weather program or some complex planes/scenery with their own exe/dll files an extra 4GB of RAM can help if your mobo is capable of handling it.

But as I say if you are happy with Vista, you may not see a huge gain in "upgrading" to Win 7/8 wrt FSX.

If it were me I would wait until the dust settles on Win 8 and we get a better idea on how it is performing game wise and if it is good upgrade to that for about $70 or then make a decision to stay with Vista or upgrade to win 7.

Choices, choices!

pH

Noel

wrt graphics what I was implying is that Win7 handles graphics more efficiently than say Vista (and supposedly Win 8 more than Win 7) but that may not translate into performance or quality in real life. The big advance in graphics came from nvidia and ATI themselves, but that GTX 280 is still a good card IMHO. If you are running an addon weather program or some complex planes/scenery with their own exe/dll files an extra 4GB of RAM can help if your mobo is capable of handling it.

But as I say if you are happy with Vista, you may not see a huge gain in "upgrading" to Win 7/8 wrt FSX.

If it were me I would wait until the dust settles on Win 8 and we get a better idea on how it is performing game wise and if it is good upgrade to that for about $70 or then make a decision to stay with Vista or upgrade to win 7.

Choices, choices!

pH

 

Thanks again. I'm committed--barring a system meltdown necessitating an earlier upgrade--to waiting to see what Haswell will offer. I do agree, the old GTX 280 is a decent video card and I assume it is in part from its 512-bit bandwidth. I will be upgrading to 8Gb of fast memory and a new video card, and I'm hoping that will be good 'nuf for P3D. Maybe P3D will be at version 2.0 which I have read may bring in some serious coding improvements--maybe to native 64-bit, better multicore support, better GPU support and so forth. In fact, if Haswell looks promising but P3D V2 is close but not yet released, I will wait til it does release to hopefully insure I've taken into account what it offers when I make final decisions on all components of a new system. I know I'm early in asking these questions but I'm still interested in keeping up with various topics including OS for FSX/P3D.

Noel

I think the major upgrade to P3D will be to later Direct X versions eg 10. I can't seeing them re-writing the code in native 64-bit mode as it would be quite expensive and legacy support could be a nightmare. If you look around there are very few 64-bit games (and software) actually for sale. However, I have photoshop CS5 64-bit and that runs like a dream even with many many images open and it can access severat terabytes of Virtual Address Space (as opposed to the maximum 4GB accesed by FSX SP2/Acc/Gold) so I have never seen an OOM.

It sounds like you have a good handle on what's happening and P3D can only get better, so let us hope they give us a licenece for all simmers in the not too distant future.

pH

It sounds like you have a good handle on what's happening and P3D can only get better, so let us hope they give us a licenece for all simmers in the not too distant future.

pH

 

OMG! Don't tell me there could be a licensing issue? From other posts on this question I think the message was, 'don't worry about it!' Do you think there is any risk simmers somehow won't be able to buy the software? You would have to show a valid pilot's license, or verification of student status? I guess there might be a weird nat'l security concern that's about the only reason I can think of.

Noel, I wouldn't worry about it - I myself do not "qualify" for a P3D licence but you may!!

Now the good news :lol: X-Plane (ver 10.2) is now available in 64-bit configuration mode so it can handle lost of Physical RAM (16GB at least) but better still up to 8 Terabytes of VAS (8TB for the system/kernel) so very little chance of OOM errors. So perhaps P3D could be made available as a 64-bit app - lets hope so!!

Regards

pH