Go to Windows 7 or stick with XP.

[Andy 22673]

I'm sure this has already been asked more than once. As far as gaming is concerned should I move on to Windows7 or stick with my old XP? I know some advantages would be more system memory with 64bit and DX11.

Also I wonder if in the near distant future games will be developed to run only with Windows7. Looking for some thoughts guys.

Thanks

[Petrolmania]

I just went to WIN7 and have no regrets. GT Legends runs smoother, everything that worked before still works now. 1 or 2 items I had to get a 64 bit version (7zip for example) but with some research it's all doable and myself I plan to use WIN7 every bit as long as I can as I did XP.

I've seen some say it sucks and went back to XP, but in my case, it's worked flawlessly with no issues whatsoever and I have no regrets. Now I did start with 8GB RAM (16 now) and I remember an issue with Vista (which I had NO interest in so never used it.) was it needed a lot of RAM so I don't know if that's related. I also right from the initial install turned off the entire start menu as I did with XP and also went through some of the suggestions and registry file (Which turns a lot of the stuff off without having to individually go through the entire start/services menu.) added from the BlackViper site, again same as I had done with XP, so possibly, that made a difference.(?)

Anyways, I WAS a cynic with the switch but am now a believer.

[gears]

7 +1

[brabham67]

Unless your running XP era hardware, there's no reason not to use Win7, IMO. In my case XP was holding back my machine, or at least some of the device drivers for XP were.

[DurgeDriven]

There has to be a cut off point but it is pretty low.

AMD dualcore / 2GB DDDR2 / 8600GT .....somethin' like that.

Even older processors with DDR and onboard run okay in it for movies etc.


I am all for lowering processes but I do not think you have to bother with Black Viper unless your heavily resource limited or on a slow tower.

With fast CPU/Ram/SSD you will not notice the difference in sims.

[MickeyMouse]

Originally Posted by Andy 22673

Also I wonder if in the near distant future games will be developed to run only with Windows7. Looking for some thoughts guys.

Just wanted to comment on this part. DirectX 9 is still very popular and powerful, so I think it will still be supported for a couple of more years at least. There are still AAA games being released that are DX9 only.
The only hitch may be Microsoft deciding to pull the "Games for Windows" logo unless XP is locked out, but they haven't shown any interest in doing that.

[JETninja]

Win 7 all the way, not just better memory management, even on an old PC it feels faster. It learns your most used programs and stores them in local memory so they start much faster. Its also a much safer OS, XP is just plain dangerous to have on a PC connected to the net these days. And MS's free AV is just plain awesome, you'll never notice it and thats the biggest compliment. Have it running on 4 pcs in this home and love it.

[triskele10]

They support XP until 2014, it's or your self to make a choice.
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecyc...=en-ie&c2=1173

[maeckie]

switched to win7 just a week ago.
will definetely not switch back. ( but i still run xp as secondary os, as some applications refuse to work in win7 )

[ravenmorpheus2k]

I upgraded to Win 7 64 bit as soon as it came out as a RC, on my laptop as it has 4gb of RAM, and my desktop PC came with Win 7 64 bit. There was a period where I was still using XP (Home 32bit) but nowadays I don't even use XP - I don't think I even have any apps that won't run under Win 7.

As for games - I installed XP on my desktop as a backup OS, tried to run Assassins Creed in XP and it wouldn't run at all well, I could only get 10fps on average. But I had no such problems with it in Win 7. Could be something I did wrong in installing XP though.

[Velo]

Why not dual boot to try it out. If there is a problem then it's easy to switch to XP.
I recently did and it seems I am going to stick with W7

-edit:
running XP inside W7 won't work - no 3D in a virtual box, or something

for the OP: as usual, game developers will ask more and more of hardware and focus on DX11 -which XP does not support. So I guess XP is fading out...

[Petrolmania]

I also find it's little th9ings I like about WIN7. It took me a wee bit to get to know it, like whehn I went from WIN98 to XP, but since I use my PC for EVERYTHING!!, it's for instance nice to watch a DVD without having to find software and screw around with it.

Yes Durge, I admit blackviper is more from habit as I tend to t=weak things by nature. lol.

[freejrs]

Just go to WIN 7 without question. No contest. I upgarded from XP 32 bit to WIN 7 64 bit last year.......

Day and night really. Day and night.

[JETninja]

Something else, while XP was a huge seller, Win 7 is the biggest seller MS has ever had and is still racking up 20 million sales a month. It works and works very well, and it will be a long time before Win 8 can even come close (if it ever does)

[MrYubby]

I've been running Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit on a Core i7 for 4 months now, it's been fast and very stable. All my racing sims except GT Legends work fine and perform at least as well as they did on Windows XP. Windows 7 will not allow device drivers to run at ring 0, which effectively breaks Starforce copy protection (at least the version that shipped with GT Legends) which subsequently breaks GTL. Fortunately SimBin has a trade-up policy that's good for a free upgrade to the Steam version of GT Legends, which is compatible with Windows 7.

Some hardware vendors (Creative in particular) are dropping support for Windows XP, their latest generation of SoundBlaster cards only work with Windows 7. It's only a matter of time before a lot of the other computer hardware and software vendors will follow suit. Also, Direct X 11 is rapidly becoming a standard for game developers and that technology will only work with Windows 7 (or above).

Windows XP served me well, but it's rapidly becoming obsolete. I still don't care much for the Windows 7 user interface, but I'm getting used to it.

[Lunsmann]

Originally Posted by MrYubby

Fortunately SimBin has a trade-up policy that's good for a free upgrade to the Steam version of GT Legends, which is compatible with Windows 7.

Sorry to nitpick here - but the new digital version of GTL is NOT a Steam game. It does NOT use steam at all. The reason the previous disk version remained incompatible with Win7 was the fact that 10tacle owned the starforce licence and being defunct was not available to engage starforce for an update.

The old starforce removal hack is what made GTL and Win7 compatible with each other, and SIMBIN saw the wisdom in reclaiming GTL and re-releasing it free from copy protection. Thus legitimising the removal of the old starforce copy protection.

Sorry once again - just wanted to clarify the steam bit.

[DurgeDriven]

Originally Posted by MrYubby

Windows XP served me well, but it's rapidly becoming obsolete. I still don't care much for the Windows 7 user interface, but I'm getting used to it.

You can set W7 up near identical to Classic XP.

If GPL didn't run well in W7 I would still have XP images to restore in a few minutes.........bugger dual boot, too messy.

So I finally decided to toss XP along with Nascar2003 and F1-2002/F1C ( massive folders ) and anything else did not run 100% in W7 last year.

I have original GTL DVD + 2008 "fix" :p ... works as good as the rest in W7 if you install it on a drive, keep the backup then wipe the OS if you paranoid too. lol
I been using the one folder archive for 4 years , before that I ran GTR and GTL starforce both online and never had a issue.

I still use the same archive, just keep adding to it and back it up now and then.

I understand Steam users but no way I would ever put steam on my PC for just GTL.

I have 6 sims incl pCARS and rF2 why would I ever need steam .......

Any developer decides just Steam is good enough, be forewarned, you will never ever get my money...........their loss. :p


SimBin lost me after Evo, I glad anyways I never liked Race for having the SLOWEST transfer rate ever.
Try a 40GB folder SSD to SSD go on I dare you you.
A defragmentation gets to a Race folder it has a stress attack. hehehe

[looseether]

As far as gaming goes, win7 is the future and XP is the past.

Having said that my experience with Windows 7 has been anything but good.

Personally, I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole unless you have to run the latest games and you have the latest hardware. I don't so I stick with XP.

Very little of my main software ran on windows 7, but my biggest gripe with the thing apart from its UI is networking. Networking to non-win7 boxes like XP has been a nightmare and I always hard-code everything (I'm old school).

The majority of people I know who have switched to win7 have had problem after problem. I am in the process of once again putting XP on to another friend's win7 box because GTL doesn't work, GTR2 doesn't work and all we want to do is race each other. Interestingly GPL and Nascar 2003 do work - thumbs up Papyrus !!

Originally Posted by DurgeDriven

If GPL didn't run well in W7 I would still have XP images to restore in a few minutes.........bugger dual boot, too messy.

I will be setting it up to dual boot as this is the most elegant and user-friendly solution, especially for the computer challenged. If you do dual boot XP and win 7 try to use separate drives, it makes things much easier.

So my suggestions are
1. If you have an XP box and it ALL WORKS then don't touch win7 - leave it alone.
2. If you have the latest hardware then you have little choice but to run win7.
3. If you must run the latest games then once again you have little choice but to run win7.

[RMi Release Group]

I have just took the Win7 plunge due to buying a new/old box:
350eu
Dell XPS630
Core 2 Q9600 quad
4 gig
2x500gb sata
GTX 560ti

All of my sims are working flawlessly in Win7 ( except GTL ). All except Race07/Evo were simply copied from my XP box over the network, rF was reactivated for free, no loss of an activation instance... seeing how it goes from here...

[kooda]

Win 7

[Siggs]

7

[2dope]

7 64bit for new games
xp 64 bit for everything else - it is just faster (by 10%) than 7 in raw cpu computing power. But 7 has much faster graphics (thanks to DX11) and it is good for gamming purposes (but I still play in gtr2 under xp, there is no difference, this game still uses DX9 engine)

[DurgeDriven]

Cutoff point is hardware compatibility.

I would not use dual-boot if you paid me to.

I used 2 HDDs since Dos6 > Win 3.11 < Win95

I use Trueimage now and put as many OSes as I like on one drive
in a few minutes. You do not like it takes minutes to restore.

[MrYubby]

Don't sweat it, I don't get offended by this kind of thing. Actually this is good information, I just assumed that Simbin had ported GTL to Steam, it's good news that it does not require Steam. I still love to drive GTL, but I didn't really want another Steam title, so thanks for clarifying that.

Cheers!

Mark G.

Originally Posted by Lunsmann

Sorry to nitpick here - but the new digital version of GTL is NOT a Steam game. It does NOT use steam at all. The reason the previous disk version remained incompatible with Win7 was the fact that 10tacle owned the starforce licence and being defunct was not available to engage starforce for an update.

The old starforce removal hack is what made GTL and Win7 compatible with each other, and SIMBIN saw the wisdom in reclaiming GTL and re-releasing it free from copy protection. Thus legitimising the removal of the old starforce copy protection.

Sorry once again - just wanted to clarify the steam bit.

[Kodiak]

If you go to Windows7 then make sure you also use this: ClassicShellSetup_3_2_0.exe
It is the menu system like it is in XP.
It is much better than the Windows7 menu style, and best of all it is freeware!
Google ClassicShellSetup_3_2_0.exe and you'll find it.

My best regards, Kodiak.

[brabham67]

Originally Posted by Kodiak

If you go to Windows7 then make sure you also use this: ClassicShellSetup_3_2_0.exe
It is the menu system like it is in XP.
It is much better than the Windows7 menu style, and best of all it is freeware!
Google ClassicShellSetup_3_2_0.exe and you'll find it.

My best regards, Kodiak.

Different strokes for different folks I guess. I use W7x64 Pro at home, but still run XP pro at work(my CAD/CAM software won't work in W7). I personally think that W7 is much quicker to work with than XP. In fact I was just cursing myself out today because of its clunky interface!

[DurgeDriven]

Originally Posted by Kodiak

If you go to Windows7 then make sure you also use this: ClassicShellSetup_3_2_0.exe
It is the menu system like it is in XP.
It is much better than the Windows7 menu style, and best of all it is freeware!
Google ClassicShellSetup_3_2_0.exe and you'll find it.

My best regards, Kodiak.

I think mine look pretty neat desktop
I pin My Computer and Bin since windows 95 not stopping now.
I delete the entire start menu though :p
Uncheck everything in add/remove features the lot incl MP, IE and NF
Any other programs not pinned to start menu you see run from association
AB and clock are only things in taskbar

33 proc @ idle, CPU is dead 0% ....nothing goin' on there


All the pinned shortcuts are custom made so the names can be shortened :p

[Andy 22673]

Thanks for all the input on W7 guys. I'll give you my hardware specs and tell you what I was thinking of doing. This was my first computer build and I gotta give a big thanks to a lot of the folks at NoGrip who helped me do it by answering many of my questions thanks again.

Intel C2D E8500
Asus P5Q3
2GB Corsair DDR3 1600
WD Caviar Black 500GB
OCZ StealthXStream 600W
Sapphire HD 4850
Windows XP
LG Flatron 19in Res 1280X1024

This is what I've been thinking about doing for a while now upgrading my OS to W7 and replacing my HD4850 with a HD7850 and increasing my DDR3 1600 to 4GB. I also would like to replace my old 19in LCD with a 23or24in LCD with a higher res 1920X1080. What do you guys think worthy goals or not? Most of what I do is Racing Sims. My hardware should be ok for W7 not?

[brabham67]

Originally Posted by Andy 22673

My hardware should be ok for W7 not?

You bet! I had W7 running on a lesser system, and was completely happy with it.

[Andy 22673]

I'm a little confused about all the different options to W7. Do I need a full version or a upgrade? Should I download from Microsoft or get on a disc?

[brabham67]

When I did my last upgrade, I purchased the OEM version from a local retailer. It's a full version of Windows 7 x64 pro, but is tied to the motherboard I used in my machine, and I don't get telephone support from MS. If I ever upgrade mother boards, I'll have to buy a new OS. It was only $139, as opposed to $329(?) for the full retail version(which is not tied to hardware and gets full telephone support from MS).

[Andy 22673]

So maybe I would be better off with a full retail version for the sake of a future build.

[DurgeDriven]

Originally Posted by Andy 22673

So maybe I would be better off with a full retail version for the sake of a future build.

If you specced Retail XP years ago for a new build you were tar and feathered as a heretic !@@!

RETAIL is WORTH the MONEY always was always will be. !

[brabham67]

Originally Posted by DurgeDriven

If you specced Retail XP years ago for a new build you were tar and feathered as a heretic !@@!

RETAIL is WORTH the MONEY always was always will be. !

I disagree, but I'm all out of tar and feathers. If I knew I'd be upgrading my recently upgraded machine in the next year, I would have gone retail. But the next build will be a fresh one, and this current machine will move on to other duties. So buying another OEM OS isn't a big deal for me.

[DurgeDriven]

If you rarely install a OS you get OEM for sure.

[OhioSpeed]

I got win7. I like it alot. But for the life of me I can't get F1C to run under it. It seems to crash all the time. The fact that it doesn't support 1920-1080 kinda bites as well.

[Andy 22673]

It doesn't support 1920X1080, what res does it support? That was good information because I was going to get a new LCD.

[DurgeDriven]

F1 Challenge uses the same sort of hack you use for any 4:3 game.
ie: Richard Burns Rally but I sick of debating it.

The difference is when a game supported Native 1920x1440 and 2048x1536 AKA 4:3

Examples: EA F1-2001 and Papyrus Grand Prix Legends.

So they can do 1920x1200 np.
F1-2001 needed a edit to chop the vert. a bit

Ohio is right F1C has terrible bugs and compatibility in W7.
I love the thing but it was just not worth the effort.

Equally if you run another hardrive for XP as I did for years Late Generation cards are just as much of a drama. If you go into it I gather that DX 10/11 cards do a few things in DX9 different to what a DX9 card does, if that makes any sense.

High AA/AF with DX9 card was lovely but with DX10 quality was impacted, not just jags more then that you have to compare the 2 yourself.

So if you have a XP hardrive a DX8/9 card and a CRT I say go for it ..... F1C is great.

GPL on the other hand looks picture perfect any OS, resolutions or GPU.

[Andy 22673]

So Windows7 Runs fine at 1920X1080 just not on older games?

[DurgeDriven]

BTW

If you do want to run it you get most things at Wookey's

http://alliance.bondurand.com/f1c_tracks.htm

I have a few mods not there including all Aussie Muscle + skins which was only available 2 places I know of and both are shut down.






They don't look like that in W7 let me tell ya.

[DurgeDriven]

Originally Posted by Andy 22673

Is the Windows7 issue with 1920X1080 Res just a driver issue?

Crashes, odd bugs, glitchy graphics, framerate........what else.

Just does not look like the pics above which are XP + DX7-9 Video @1280x960

Even on W7 in a 1280x960 window with late video card it looks horrible.

But that is just my opinion mate.

[DurgeDriven]

My

How I loved this on my hardrive.
Online too.

[mrpowcz]

Only with very old software theres reason to use win XP, else its obsolete.

[Sphinx666]

I use XP Professional SP3. In 7 I had issues with GTR2, Dirt, Age of Empires 2, Splinter Cell, Call of Duty and many more. I like the new look but nothing else made me try and use it. I am a pretty pro gamer so I need older games to work to, not to mention when I had problems with running GTR 2 and couldn't fix them, the decision was already taken.

[mrpowcz]

Sphinx666: did you try to actually fix those issues? Simply starting the app with admin rights and in compatibility modes solve 50% of these issues.

Plus, one can install W7 and run WXP in virtual PC (if you have decent cpu and at least 4gb ram) so if everything fails to run under W7 directly, you'll run it there.

[Sphinx666]

Originally Posted by mrpowcz

Sphinx666: did you try to actually fix those issues? Simply starting the app with admin rights and in compatibility modes solve 50% of these issues.

Plus, one can install W7 and run WXP in virtual PC (if you have decent cpu and at least 4gb ram) so if everything fails to run under W7 directly, you'll run it there.

Yes, I tried everything, I am pretty good with computers but no luck. There were all sort of different problems with older games. Anyway, when the time comes I will have to have both I guess, it should work well since I have more than enough performance.

[mrpowcz]

Ah ok just sayin, some people who are afraid of newer systems just say "it doesnt work" and throw it away

[Sphinx666]

Originally Posted by mrpowcz

Ah ok just sayin, some people who are afraid of newer systems just say "it doesnt work" and throw it away

You are right about that. At least where I live it's like people are afraid of change in any domain lol

[BrunoB]

Originally Posted by Sphinx666

In 7 I had issues with GTR2, Dirt, Age of Empires 2, Splinter Cell, Call of Duty and many more. (-)
I am a pretty pro gamer so I need older games to work to, not to mention when I had problems with running GTR 2 and couldn't fix them, the decision was already taken.

I have no hidden agenda here of promoting Win7. But I went directly from Win98 to Win7-64(without WinXp) without many issues.
Main exception was my old belowed dBase4(16bit) and Blade Runner(16bit installer).

But without taking a bet I am sure that for all(?) the progs/games you mentions people in fora who deals with these progs will show you they are running pretty good under Win7.
And if my postulate is right() then your issues is elsewhere than in Win7.

[LittleZippyUK]

I went from Windows XP to Windows 7 purely for Battlefield 3 and it's a huge improvement! rFactor needed playing around with to get it working but thats ok, it also allows for much more RAM to be run compared to XP.

I would recommend the switch!