XP or Vista for 64-Bit AMD Dual Core 4400 ??

[vilhiem]

Ever since I built my new 64-Bit AMD Dual Core X2 4400+ rig
(w/2gb of DDR, X-Fi Sound Card, 3 Raptor Hard Drives) and running Windows Vista Ultimate,
I swear, it seems less snappy than my old Intel system with Windows XP.
For example, games like BF2 seen to stutter at times and even DVD playback seems to not run so smooth.

So, here are some questions:

Should I just dump Vista and install XP onto this new system of mine?
What good does Dual Core do anyway? I don't seem to see much benefit?
And what about this 64-bit stuff, what kinda improvement should there be?
OR, ... is something just not configured correctly?

Thanks!!!!

 

[BillLeeLee]

So, here are some questions:

Should I just dump Vista and install XP onto this new system of mine?
What good does Dual Core do anyway? I don't seem to see much benefit?
And what about this 64-bit stuff, what kinda improvement should there be?
OR, ... is something just not configured correctly?

Thanks!!!!

For reference: I used Windows XP 32-bit on my system before switching over to Vista Ultimate x64.

1 - I do still have some performance hiccups sometimes when just using my computer like playing media files, there will be a little pause in the middle of a song, for example. Overall though, I actually feel Vista is smoother in use than XP was, but I think part of the reason is because I am using 4 GB of RAM. I would suggest keeping Vista at least, but you may want to dual boot with XP.

2 - Dual core is great for multitasking. Improves system responsiveness since the system can balance work between two CPU cores, so if you are playing a game and encoding a video at the same time, you will not notice much of a performance loss. If you are only gaming, the benefit will not be as great because many applications and games right now are still programmed for single threaded execution. Some applications benefit greatly from multicores, like some scientific and mathematics software. Personally, I like to encode multiple songs at the same time that I rip from my CDs. Makes short work of the hundreds of songs I have to encode at a time.

3 - Right now, the most immediate benefit from 64-bit Windows is the ability to address more than 4 GB of RAM. Also, this means that you can actually use 4 physical gigabytes of RAM (32-bit windows has to use part of the address table for non-RAM addressing, like devices). It is expected that eventually, more software will be targeted or updated/rebuilt for the x86 64-bit CPUs, and for some software, this could produce performance benefits. Of course, most software now in the x86 world is only available in 32-bit.

 

[vilhiem]

I understand if I upgrade to 4gb of DDR memory, I would need 4x1gb sticks of DDR. Supposedly, this will eliminate the FSB benefit of using just the 1st 2 slots? Or, will I see actual improvement if I merely increase to 4gb?

Is that correct?