Windows Vista discussion !

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 1:59 pm

Right guys i thought i would start a thread to discuss vista. Im considering buying it and the ultimate oem edition is £120.

Personally im wondering whether to get the 64bit version???

But i thought we could use this post to gauge how good it is with those who have installed it chipping in.

So any advice post it here!

LT!

Community Founder Joined: Jun 30, 2005 Posts: 2630

I installed it yesterday and all went pretty good Very Happy

I installed the 64 bit version and only really needed 1 driver and that was for my webcam, in no time at all I had found a vista driver for that Smile

I found the harddrive was active far too much and noticed without doing much on the PC it was using 800mb harddrive paging file. This was anoying so I turned my paging file off. I have 4gb of ram so its not a problem.
It has a lot of nice features and after a little while of using it I really like it Very Happy

I have the OEM version Home Premium and already installed it on different hard drives with no problems ata all.
I also activated it about the same ammount of times which wasnt a problem for anyone who has any worries about an OEM version etc.
As for gaming I havnt installed BF2 or BF2142 but I intend to install them this evening I did manage to download and install Counterstrike and that run fine but I did notice a small drop in fps hopfully that will perk back up when I get a direct x 10 card installed Very Happy

Cheers
|2es-mrix

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:46 pm

I was wondering if you would get the 64 bit version, i have a 64bit processor would you recommend plumping for the 64bit version or is it just a faff to work with? How do other programs run in the 64bit environment???

Since you use 64bit is that why you have 4gb of ram, coz 32bit can only use 3gb cant it?

Nice post tho M

LT!

Joined: Mar 30, 2006 Posts: 560 Location: wick

Stupid Question number 1: I have 64 bit system so should i purchase the 32 or 64 version of vista, LT confused me with the above post.

Joined: Apr 24, 2006 Posts: 525 Location: Manchester UK

Buy the 64 version of vista - the 32bit is limited to 4GB of RAM. This might sound like a lot, but in 5 years when you're still running the same copy of Vista, waiting for the next Windows, 4GB is going to be in every entry-level Dell. Remember when XP came out and most people had 256MB of RAM in their comps? ...

In fact, I think Premium-64 allows up to 16GB and Ultimate allows up to 128GB.

Also note the 64-bit will become more and more supported as 32-bit chips are phased out. Almost no CPUs being made are 32bit any more. The 64-bit OS's can take advantage of extra hardware on the chips meaning you get more processing horsepower out of the same CPU when compared to say, 32-bit OS.

By the way - here's some info on vista editions for all you out there scratching heads!
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_editions_final.asp

Quote:

I have the OEM version Home Premium and already installed it on different hard drives with no problems ata all.
I also activated it about the same ammount of times which wasnt a problem for anyone who has any worries about an OEM version etc.

Great!

Thats good news as it will save me about 200 quid. Vista Ultimate is only £130 on Overclockers.co.uk for the OEM version.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SW-041-MS

Quote:

but I did notice a small drop in fps hopfully that will perk back up when I get a direct x 10 card installed

This is because Vista is not compatible with DX9 - so if you have a DX9 card, what it's doing is running in emulation mode. The move to DX10 is a bit clumsy as they've got rid of backwards compatibility, but it will pay off in the long run. Just see those videos of Crysis and know its all going to be ok ... Surprised

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 9:46 pm

Quote:

This is because Vista is not compatible with DX9 - so if you have a DX9 card, what it's doing is running in emulation mode

does this mean if i get vista that i wont be able to play dx9 games such as wow or dow or bf2

sorry for stupid question!!

DgO

Joined: Apr 24, 2006 Posts: 525 Location: Manchester UK

Quote:

does this mean if i get vista that i wont be able to play dx9 games such as wow or dow or bf2

Hey mate, dont worry, Im just a sad geek that spends all his time looking this sort of stuff up. Embarassed

Yes you will be able to play these, what I meant was Vista has at its core DirectX 10 - which is not directly compatible with DX9, as they have made a lot of changes to the way graphics engines work. However, using DX9 emulation, you can still play all your old games on Vista. Like mrix said, you will notice a small drop in frames per second due to the emulation overhead.

Besides, you can always dual-boot:
http://www.windowstalk.org/dual_boot_vista.htm

This way, if you create three partitions, C: D: and E: you can put Windows Vista on C, Windows XP on D and all your work / media on E (so if either operating system fails, you still have your files!). When you boot your computer, windows will detect you have more than one OS installed and give you a choice about which you want to start. Both OS's should be able to access the same files on E, however you will have to install programs specifically for each OS.

Very Happy