Dual-boot x86 and x64

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Guest

I have a laptop (1GB of RAM, 64mb shared video card, 1.8ghz turion64
processor), and I am worried about
a)compatibility with some of the hardware, and
b)performance of some fo the heavy games (such as command and conquer:
generals) if I am to install vista premium.

to solve this, I have come up with the idea of dual booting the system, but
I am wondeirng if that will work with x64 vista premium and x86 xp pro? If
so, how would I go about doing it, and could I do it without formatting the
existing xp partition? Thanks in advance.
 
You already halfway there then. Pop in the Vista x64 disc, boot from it and
install it on a different partition. Once installed the Vista boot manager
should recognise XP and allow you the choice of XP or Vista.

The secret to dual booting Windows is installing the oldest OS first and you
have already done the first bit.

Colin T
"(e-mail address removed)"
 
YES! ok, and is this a recommended thing for someone with such requirements
as mine?

and

when dual booting, if I boot to XP, my RAM and my processor and everyhing
else will ONLY be using XP... I wont have any of the load of Vista on it,
correct? (cuase that is how I am looking at it. If I want to play a heavy
game that will require the 64mb of video card that VISTA is using, then Ill
boot to XP and have that extra memory. But then again, Im also not sure how
video cards work. If I am playing a game in full screen mode, is the video
card processing any of the vista graphics? or just the game graphics?)
 
Yes, when booted into XP, the PC only uses XP and Vice Versa.

When playing a directX game in Vista, it "turns off" the AERO interface to
allow the game as much memory as possible. At the minute the Vista drivers
for video cards aren't great which is why frame rates etc are better in XP.

I'll assume that since your graphic card only has 64MB of memory that it
also uses system memory, Vista even without the AERO interface uses a
greater percentage of system memory compared with XP, so you'll likely find
your gaming experience better in XP until you upgrade your system.

Colin T
"(e-mail address removed)"
 
what if I were to switch a stick of RAM and make it 1.5Gig ram? would that
compensate for a huge loss? Or woud I just be better off dual booting for the
variety of tasks I do (gaming, homework, downloading, photo editing)? Which
of these tasks would I NOT have to worry about Vista slowing down?

What amount of video memory does Vista use withOUT Aero turned on? If I have
it set up that way and play a game, would it still disable sometihng t
improve, or is that as low as it will go?

thanks in advance, and sorry for all the questions. I'm just REALLY curious.
 
I think I have worried you too much, Vista runs fine with 1 GB RAM. With
1.5Gigs even better, Vista is supposed to be better at memory management
compared with XP, and should be faster with higher memory, than XP. All your
tasks should run fine, though gaming is graphic card intensive and with the
low memory on your graphic card and the current Vista graphic card drivers,
Vista will in the short term, not be as good for gaming as XP.

For gaming purposes a new graphic card would be better than another 512 Meg
of memory, but extra memory would be a good idea as well.

I have no idea how much memory on the graphics card Vista uses when it
switches Aero off, but with Aero turned off it's 2D desktop rendering like
XP's, and as far as I know it doesn't turn off anything else. Your best
giving it ago yourself and decide what works best for you.

Colin T

"(e-mail address removed)"
 
I agree with Colin, you would be better off putting any money into a new
graphics card since Vista's new GPU puts lots more load there. Also
probably would be wise to hold off on that until January when the new
DirectX 10 graphics cards will become available. I would also avoid shared
memory, but this may all be irrelevant since shared memory, anymore, is
usually only with video imbedded on the motherboard.
 
unfortunatly for me, getting a new card would involve replacing my
motherboard. Im stuck with this baby. But anyways, from his last message I
understand that you're saying that XP is better for me in some cases than
Vista, but if I want Vista, I can have it. So, I'm going to assume that a
dual-boot is my solution to the problem. Now, the question is, should I
install Vista on my laptop's hard drive, then have xp on a network or
removable hard drive (perhaps one of those hybrid ones)? This would give me a
great amount of spcae for both os's. One of the dciding factors of this
question would be: If you install a game or program on ONE partition (ex.
photoshop CS2 on the XP partition), do you have to reinstall it on the other
partition? If so, then I will almost certainly start looking for removable or
network hard drives because I'm not going to waste my 100Gigs on reinstalling
giant programs like CS2, office, Age of myth, and command and conquer.
 
I thought so about imbedded video, what with shared memory. You will find
some games will work from another partition, but most will require
installation on both to work on both. Just find out which one each game
works best on and install only there. As far as I know you won't be able to
install a bootable Vista on an external drive. You should be able to install
Vista on your internal drive and install the programs to an external drive.


"(e-mail address removed)"
 
Could I install vista nad XP on the internal drive, then install the progrmas
that I want to work on both on the EXTERNAL, then run it like that? Would
that all work?
 
With 2 versions of XP it worked fine for most programs. When installing on
the second system, it just overwrote the first install but created the
proper registry entries. I would guess that it may work that way for Vista
and XP also, but if you only install to one or the other system, they should
be able to share the Programs folder without conflict at least if they
install to their own folder. If programs install into a common folder there
may be a conflict with shared files. Probably not and worth a try. Good
luck.

"(e-mail address removed)"
 
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