My husband and I were thinking about picking up a system for our youngest (he’ll be eleven in a couple of weeks). He’s been getting more and more interested in gaming.
We found a nice system at Micro Center for a VERY reasonable price. Question–how do games cooperate with Vista 64 (the system has 6GB of RAM and Vista 64-bit)? Are there a lot of current games that have problems with it?
Also, I’m sure he’ll be dipping into our collection of slightly older stuff as well. As a rule, how does fairly recent stuff (last four-five years) behave with Vista 64-bit?
From my own experience, if a game runs in vista 32 bit, it will most likely run in vista 64 bit. I’ve never had any trouble with Vista 64 as far as running games goes.
Seconded. None of the many PC games I play have problems on 64-bit Vista.
The one problem you may run into is older games with 32-bit Starforce DRM. I’d avoid them, if possible. But if you must, the Starforce people do now have a 64-bit driver on their web site.
I’ve not had any issues with games in Vista Ultimate x64, with or without SP1. I’ve even had Fallout2 (from a decade ago) running in it without a hitch. The game I’ve played most extensively is Titan Quest with it’s expansion from 2.5 years ago, and since I’ve had Vista (late Spring of 2007), that’s been played regularly.
I’d say that you should check on the must-play games on an individual basis to see if they work well in Vista x64, but overall I’d suggest things would be fine.
Yep, new games shouldn’t be an issue at all. The only problem cases I’ve come across are DOS games (solved by running them in DOSBox) and Jedi Knight (1997) which wouldn’t install because of its 16-bit installer (though there are apparently workarounds for that, but my nostalgia waned before I tried any).
They only area where Vista64 has affected me is Gametap, whose DRM system apparently can’t handle 64 bit operating systems forcing me to cancel my subscription. I guess it didn’t FORCE me, but I couldn’t play the games and thus didn’t see any reall reason to keep paying them.
I’ve been gaming on Vista Ultimate 64 bit for about a year and a half now, and I’ve had absolutely no problems. The only issues I’ve had with games not running are really old ones, like DOS era and such. I was actually pleasantly surprised at how cooperative the OS has been. This is my first 64 bit OS, and I was ready for a bumpy ride :)
It’s been the most stable Windows OS I’ve ever used. The ability to put in a ton of extra RAM is damn handy (and helps with the stability) for modern games.
Other than the fact that Gametap can’t be arsed to update to the 21st century, everything else has run flawlessly for me so far, and I say this as someone who was initially scared by Vista.
