Lots Of Questions About Vista....

[Assassin X]

Ok, being a gamer I obciously have no choice but to get Vista if I want to run Vista and Direct X 10 games.

 

Well I have alot of questions since I hate new OS's.

 

1. If I buy the "upgrade" do you lose anything on your harddrives or will it be just like updating a program? Basically I am trying to find out is it the same as wiping your hard drive out and installing a new OS.

 

2. Will it have options to DOWNGRADE the options in Vista so it looks more like 98s style so its uses less ram? In XP I have all "fancy" themse, pictures, non-essential programs off so its basically doing nothing unless I tell it to so games have priority.

 

3. Would it be easier if I just bought a new system instead of an upgrade? I won't tell you my specs because I know I need a new system but just asking from a general stand point.

[HogDog]

1. I think you have to wipe your HDD but don't quote me.

2. Yes you can turn off the new windows "Aero" theme

3. Depends if your hardware can run vista, but you say your upgrading to play DirectX 10 games therefore you will need a DirectX 10 GPU, i.e. 8800 GTS or GTX, so you might want to consider a new rig.

[Bleeble]

1. I'm almost 100% certain that an upgrade keeps everything on your hard drive. After all, if you had to wipe the drive and do a clean install, it really wouldn't be much of an upgrade, would it?

 

2. You can turn off all of the fancy stuff in XP, so I assume you could do the same in Vista. In fact, the cheapest version of Vista doesn't even have that Aero nonsense.

 

3. Well, since I don't know your specs, I don't know if it's worth trying an upgrade. But if you're using the stuff in your profile (P4, 9800, etc), you should definitely consider a new computer. But considering that you can build a good Core 2 Duo system for less than a thousand (more like 700-800), it's really not that bad.

[gotdamojo06]

I would check your specs vs. the recommended vista specs, which are located here...

 

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/capable.mspx

[ClayMeow]

1. Yes, performing an "upgrade" will keep the stuff on your hard drive, however, only certain upgrade paths work. For example, I believe if you're running WinXP Pro, then Vista Home Premium is the "lowest" version you can upgrade to (I could be wrong on that, but I believe that's what I read). However, as with any new OS, it's always advisable to do a fresh install anyways.

 

2. Yes you can turn any of the options off, and in fact, if Vista doesn't think your system's good enough, it'll disable features for you itself (aka. it's scalable). Regardless, Vista has a feature (the name escapes me at this moment) that, when playing a game, gives that game priority, frees up memory, and disables all non-essential background processes.

 

3. Not entirely. As a gamer, if you want DX10, obviously you'll need a DX10 video card which until this week, wasn't available. This also means, you'll need a mobo with PCI-Express, since afaik, there are no plans for AGP DX10 cards. Nothing else is absolutely "necessary" for Vista, so no, I wouldn't say you need to "buy a new system." 2GB of RAM is advisable, but that's advisable for any gamer nowadays, even for XP.