Window Vista vs. Windows 8

Today I switched over to vista again, I ran Windows 8 for weeks and just got tired of not being able to costomize it, theres so much theme restriction MS has put on the thing it makes me feel trapped and that its not my own OS. Win 8 has had alot taken out, including gadgets, games like chess titans which was a fun game I liked, Aero glass, and probably more Im forgetting at the moment. The one thing that was going for it was gaming, some of my games ran smoother. But I want an OS that you can call your own.

My laptop is a Lenovo Ideapad z565, it likes vista and runs it fast. With windows 7 it really dosen't like too much as far as gaming. I guess its just weird but anyway right now I am using a defrag program to optimize the system and soon I'm going install my favorite games and try to get them to run as good as they do on win 8.

I didn't see any topic about this so I started one to find out how others feel. And I will post my results shortly of how Vista stacks up to win 8 on gaming performance as far as how my computer performs.

I think maybe something is going on with my HDD, because I get stutters in the game I play and when it does this my hdd light is constintly flashing like its working hard to load all the textures. The game is Grand theft auto san andreas multiplayer, and it usually happens when i'm driving or flying a plane and going fast.

When I had Windows 8 installed it ran smooth and didn't stutter, maybe because windows 8 has better hdd support. I don't really know, I just get trying to defrag and optimize the hdd as much as I can so it will load everything as fast as windows 8 did.

I've made up my mind and I'm not going back to windows 8, I'm going to keep trying and deal with this problem. I like Vista more then any version of windows and I've bounced around from xp to 7 to vista to 8. But now I'm tired of re-installing every time a problem comes up and I get fustrated because I try everything and can't get this one game to run right execpt on win 8.

If anyone knows some services I could turn off or any settings to make the hdd quicker please help. I can only assume thats what is happening, my graphics is more then enough to run this game but something is making it stutter and slowdown.

Perhaps it isn't powerful enough for game play. From here: Review Lenovo IdeaPad Z565-4311 Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

Gaming performance


StarCraft 2: an unplayable 22 fps on medium

The IdeaPad Z565 will never be a gaming laptop, thanks to the limited capabilities of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470, which have been demonstrated many times before. This is an entry-level GPU which we would place in the upper half of our third performance class. The HD 5470 has access to 512 MB of GDDR3 video memory. The memory has a speed of 800 MHz, while the core has a speed of 750 MHz. Despite the high speeds, the processing power is relatively small at 120 gigaflops (compared to the HD 5650 with 360-520 depending on speed), because it only has 80 MADD processing cores available to it. The GPU supports DirectX 11 effects.
The GPU surpasses its predecessor the HD 4570 in terms of gaming performance, thanks to its slightly higher speed. However, it still only scored a weak 3,634 points in the 3DMark06 test. Intel systems with this GPU are at roughly the same level with around 3,700 to 3,800 points (e.g. the Aspire 5741G-334G50Mn or Asus K52JR-SX059V). Because the HD 5470 has already been tested extensively, we only carried out two gaming tests.

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As far as performance compared to 8 the only thing I can think of pertains to drivers. You really should have drivers for Vista and I only found graphics drivers for Windows 7 and XP. As far as I know you shouldn't have any problems with Windows 7 drivers but make sure that you aren't using drivers for 8. The only other thing that I know about 8 is that like you I don't like it.

I agree, this laptop was advertised to have hd 5470 but when I got it about 6 months ago it only had hd 4200. However games like gta san adreas are not very gpu demanding. I have 256mb dedicated Vram, the games min requirements say 64mb, 128mb recommended. So it should be okay. I see you've looked at lenovo's website on my laptop and found their old graphics driver. I have a newer driver and software because I went to AMD's website, they have all windows versions for hd 4200, even windows 8.

It maybe a driver issue, or a hard drive issue, I'm not sure it could be both. I've went off topic though from this threads tittle and made it a support topic which actually I should be posting on a different forum for gaming. But in my opinion, I cant stand using windows 8 and not being able to make it look the way I want it to. Windows 7 was okay, but I like Vista and all my drivers are supported either through microsoft or Amd. So I going to stick with it and keep working on making games run smooth. It maybe time for an SSD as I heard their great for gaming and speed.

There's virtually no appreciable difference in HD performance between Windows versions. It rests upon the HD firmware and the Windows system drivers. Windows 8 is slightly more efficient overall compared to Vista, in terms of the running of system processes.

Lots of people don't like the Windows 8 interface. I suspect Microsoft will have to react to this and introduce some changes in SP1 that provides some optional relief to those who prefer the previous UI. Some enterprising people have already modified the Windows 8 configuration with a 3rd party "Start" anchored button, to give back some Windows 7 visual appeal. It seems to help enough to be workable. I'm planning to do this, eventually (I don't have Windows 8 currently installed, but will do this customization).

I really wouldn't mind win 8 if they had an option for transparency glass aero. I already know of a mod that brings windows 7 explorer back into win8 therefor again having a start button menu. My biggest beef with MS is not having transparent aero.