What's the verdict on Windows Vista and Flight Sim?

[beatle 0]

Nice looking specs for a notebook :-><>While the SP1 update will probably help out, the DX10 update won't be of much use since the 7950 isn't a DX10 compatible graphics card (I'm pretty sure only the 8000 series cards are DX10 compatible).Tim

[Guest emkramer]

I'm only on a P4 2.8 Ghz with 1 GB of PC3200. I love Vista. It's solid, stable and just as peppy as XP was. However, FSX runs like a dog on it. With XP, I could stay locked at 24 fps nearly anywhere, no stutters, things were great. With Vista, I'm lucky to get a constant 18, and it's full of hesitations, stutters, coughs, gags and sneezes.I've got XP set up to dual boot, but the Vista boot selection screen isn't turning on my USB devices (like my keyboard), so I'm stuck running FSX in Vista until I get a PS/2 keyboard (or upgrade to a C2D (which is likely not going to happen)).

[Geofa 108]

I find performance of fsx about the same as xp on my rig (p3.2 2 gigs ram, nvdia 7600). I love Vista though and would never go back.With that being said-there is an occasional crash-and I have a feeling it is due to nvidia drivers not being up to snuff-they keep updating the drivers but have a feeling they are behind the 8 ball.All in all-if you like being cutting edge-go for Vista and suffer a few growing pains. If not go the conservative route.I've always chosen the cutting edge path myself but understand that doesn't suit every user.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

[DescendDescend 25]

Yes, I took the plunge. For FS9 I found the frame rate much more stable. Havent flown FSX much as waiting for the heavies but frame rates are similar or better for both. 3dmark06 slightly higher. The overall user interface, tools, search functions etc are much better that xp in my view. Would not go back!Only snag is that HP have still not released Vista drivers for my network printer and the xp ones only just about work.

[Guest AkeldamaUK]

I have Vista on my main desktop (a fairly modest AMD64 3000+ machine) and have had no problems running FSX.Last week I bought a midrange laptop for business purposes. It has a Core 2 Duo 5500 CPU, 2GB RAM and a Geforce Go 7600. I didn't think this Vista notebook would run FSX very well at all - thanks to the modest graphics horsepower.I was wrong.I've got all the scenery sliders on full except:No autogen (not used it for over a year, I'm a no-autogen convert for aesthetic purposes, besides the UK cities look completely wrong with FSX autogen).No bloomWater 2 lowTraffic 20% (Still gives me loads thanks to JF Traffic 2005)And pootling around the skies of the UK in the Cessna 172 I get 40-60 fps. Much better than my desktop machine with its more powerful 7600GT. And I've not seen a single blurry texture yet.I'm delighted with the performance of Vista and FSX on this machine.

[Guest emkramer]

Interesting. I wonder what the deal is with my system? Perhaps 2.8 Ghz is just not quite enough for FSX to be happy in Vista. It is certainly a CPU issue, as changing graphics setting has no effect (resolution, AA, AF, water 1.x to 2.x, etc). Maybe it's something else. I've disabled services, stopped programs, done memory optimizations, defrags. FSX and Vista don't get along on my computer. Too bad, too. Bottom line: I'm still using Vista, and I love it.

[Guest lflinares]

ALSO:I tried my sytem above with 4GB of RAM, istead of 2GB and noticed no changes inperformance. Vista 32-bit also lists the total memory as 3.3GB. I still plan on keeping the additional memory. The next improvement can only come from SP1, which will supposedly optimize Core 2 Duo usage.Happy flying!LuisKMIA

[Bob Scott 7,720]

To the original poster:Unless you just want to upgrade for the sake of upgrading, or just like the challenge of wrestling a new OS to the ground so it will do your bidding, I'd recommend you stick with XP until and unless Vista does something meaningful for you that XP can't.Could be that DX10 will be that thing for me, but for now I'm leaving my systems on XP Pro (and two lesser peripheral systems are still on Win 2000), and happily letting the rest of the pack lead the charge to be the beta testers for drivers and add-on version incompatibilities.You're asking "Why not upgrade to Vista?"...I instead would pose the question "Why upgrade?"CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VSantiago de Chile