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  #1  
Old 01-17-2009, 02:19 AM
butchwolf butchwolf is offline
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Question vista home premium sp1 or xp sp3?

Hey all...my proposed new computer comes with vista home premium sp1 and I'm wondering if I should plan on buying xp home sp3 and installing the xp instead...is there a procedure for doing this properly? A follow up question might be should I upgrade the vista home to ultimate for 150.00 more? I know this is addressed in various places but I can't find a definitive concensus....thanks
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Old 01-17-2009, 08:52 AM
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albee1952 albee1952 is offline
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Default Re: vista home premium sp1 or xp sp3?

So you are buying an "off the shelf" computer? Have you checked to see that it will work with PT? Pro Tools is very choosy about what hardware it works with and you really need to do your homework on this(which maybe you did already) as you can buy lots of computers that will not work no matter what you do with the OS. Back to your question, I prefer XP SP3 and I would simply buy another hard drive, pull the Vista drive out and do a fresh load of XP. Now there is more to think about here. What size drive is the new Vista system drive? What size audio drive does it have? (you DO know that you need to be recording to a separate hard drive? This can be external on firewire[but NOT USB] or internal[better performance and cheaper]) If the Vista system drive is a reasonable size(160gig is plenty!), then you might think about buying another 160 gig for your XP install. Later on, when your system is working solid, take the Vista drive and install it in an external case(can be USB for this) and use Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image to clone your XP system drive. If you have a crash or some other catastrophe, you can take that cloned drive and install it place of your screwed up XP drive and be back to work in minutes. Lots to think about here......
Of course, you can simply choose to reformat the Vista drive, using the XP install disk.
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Old 01-17-2009, 10:00 AM
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Default Re: vista home premium sp1 or xp sp3?

...and dont forget to check and see if you can actually get XP Drivers for all your computer parts.

As a side note, PT using XP gets around an 80% boost in performance over that horrid OS we call...Vista.

Shane
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Old 01-17-2009, 10:49 AM
tonepad tonepad is offline
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Default Re: vista home premium sp1 or xp sp3?

Quote:
Originally Posted by butchwolf View Post
Hey all...my proposed new computer comes with vista home premium sp1 and I'm wondering if I should plan on buying xp home sp3 and installing the xp instead...is there a procedure for doing this properly? A follow up question might be should I upgrade the vista home to ultimate for 150.00 more? I know this is addressed in various places but I can't find a definitive concensus....thanks
"New" these days usually means a 64bit version of Vista. DO NOT go there! Make sure you're getting the 32bit version.

+1 on Vista 32bit running PT fine. The big thing is that Vista is just not as snappy feeling as a finely tuned XP install, but that is in reference to general system ops. When you're in PT it runs and feels as fast as in XP, and IMO Vista does seem more stable, but you can cause it to crash, but you can do that on the MAC side as well.

Shane and the boys are right about XP/PT performance... basically the XP OS uses less Ram, so PT can breathe a little better.

A few of us are thrashing Windows 7 with some early positive impressions, though we're only into the basic op issues at this time, later for PT performance tests.
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  #5  
Old 01-17-2009, 02:03 PM
butchwolf butchwolf is offline
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Default Re: vista home premium sp1 or xp sp3?

Awesome support guys! Yes, this is an off the shelf box...Dell xps 420: Intel core 2 Q6600 Quad 2.4 1066FSB...4 GB at 800 MHz...x38...the smallest drive offered is 500GB SATA 3Gb/s 16MB...I'm only getting this because of a great financing promo and appears to be approved by Digi (???) It ships with the ati Radeon HD 3450 256 video card which is an issue for I use a two monitor system currently...any ideas...funny thing, I've been using a Dell 3000 P4 2 GB memory system w/xp home and has been a solid performer with up to 32 tracks...very few plugs no midi....I simply ran out of PCI slots to upgrade UAD (which I like) and upgraded to Pt 8 from 7.3...I guess now is the time to get some more power but I want to do this as painless as possible with good financing...thanks much again for any and all input....
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Old 01-17-2009, 02:13 PM
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Default Re: vista home premium sp1 or xp sp3?

Make sure you have the ability to return the computer in case it's not compatible with Pro Tools. If possible, post a Sandra or PC Wizard report either before you buy or right after so that the gurus can advise if it will work with PT or point out any possible problems.

Also, what Digidesign interface are you using?

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  #7  
Old 01-17-2009, 09:44 PM
butchwolf butchwolf is offline
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Default Re: vista home premium sp1 or xp sp3?

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  #8  
Old 01-19-2009, 06:14 AM
bblue bblue is offline
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Default Re: vista home premium sp1 or xp sp3?

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Originally Posted by Benoni View Post
I dont know if the quote for an "80% boost with XP" is scientific, but from my expeirence I have had NO, NOT ONE, ZERO, NIL, errors or problems running PT8 with Vista Ultimate SP1. I did have Many many many errors in XP Pro though. If you set up Vista right you will be fine. Dont waste your money on an OS Microsoft is phasing out and dropping support for soon.
You'll have no errors in XP Pro either, if it's set up correctly and current with service packs, etc.

As you say, Vista is quite solid.

But when you start doing large sessions with lots of plug-ins, tracks and VI's you'll find that Vista bogs down much sooner than XP does for the same memory and resource usage. It's not a small amount, either, especially with PT8.

Quote:
I am sure there would be a slight performance increase with XP since it take less ram space, but I must say I like Vista BETTER. Make sure to do a manual install of SP1 dont just rely on Windows Update to do it for you.

New PCs seem to run Vista better than installing it on a 3 or 4 year old machine.
Of course they do. Vista has much higher inherent CPU requirements which older machines simply cannot provide.

They have close to equal in RAM requirements at the minimum level (best for PT) assuming you have turned off all the necessary services and eye candy in Vista which gobble up memory. Under that scenario XP uses about 400M for the OS, whereas Vista is closer to 750M which you can usually work around. That's not the issue, though.

I prefer Vista too, for the stability, stable drivers and generally smarter operation. I moved from XP to Vista Ultimate a few months ago and was quite happy with it until I started using 96k recording exclusively and in combination with large sessions and VI's -- with PT8. It really bogs down, requiring you to juggle buffers and tweak plug-ins, etc. 1-2 weeks ago I moved back to XP (and can now boot either one with the same PT8 configurations and sessions). The difference is astounding. There is one session in Vista and PT8 that I cannot even play (45 tracks, a few VI's and lots of plug-ins) let alone use low-latency mode for new live tracks. In XP it works flawlessly with lots of overhead, standard size buffers, not a hiccup at all. The *only* difference is Vista overhead.

Until you get to the larger and more demanding sessions, Vista will do OK, and be just a little slower for the same CPU. Not usually a big deal until you start pushing.

Win7 should give better performance than even XP with an equal or smaller footprint, and be as or more solid than Vista now. We're all looking forward to it!

--Bill
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  #9  
Old 01-19-2009, 09:40 AM
Jamtime Jamtime is offline
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Default Re: vista home premium sp1 or xp sp3?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shan View Post
As a side note, PT using XP gets around an 80% boost in performance over that horrid OS we call...Vista.

Shane
Really?! Does that mean that the Dverb test scores 80% more in XP? I´m really surprised! I´m still using XP and have no experience with Vista, so I´m not arguing with you, I´m just very surprised!

/Micke
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  #10  
Old 01-20-2009, 01:22 AM
bblue bblue is offline
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Default Re: vista home premium sp1 or xp sp3?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jamtime View Post
Really?! Does that mean that the Dverb test scores 80% more in XP? I´m really surprised! I´m still using XP and have no experience with Vista, so I´m not arguing with you, I´m just very surprised!
When I converted back to XP recently on the same MB hardware, where I was getting 257 Dverbs in Vista, I got 324 in XP. That ratio will hold fairly consistently.

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