Can Vista be run on older machines?

[nyker96]

I'm wondering if Vista can be run say on a older AXP, and older gcards like Ti4200 etc.
I do understand it will take advantages of DX10 cards/dual core CPUs etc but can it even work on older machines at all? or will it be like snailing.

 

[aka1nas]

An athlon Xp rig should be able to handle it fine, though you'll want at least 1GB of RAM. A directX9 card would help as then Aero glass may take some of the burden of the CPU and make things more responsive.

 

[lobbyone]

I experimented on a P2-400MHz, and guess what, it works!...very very slowly though. An Athlon XP will be a whole lot faster than what I tried to experiment!

 

[nyker96]

sounds like a yes.

 

[mhahnheuser]

Ran on P3 733MHz with 384Mb SDRAM and ATI 9250 PCI video accelerator just fine. All plug and play, but no Aeroglass of course.

 

[jaykishankrk]

Please correct me if i am wrong here!!

i have read a review in AT about vista..

A system without a GPU which supports Aero in vista will find its Processor utilized at around 60-70 percent more then XP for Vista Basic.

if Vista is made to run in Classic mode then it would utilize around 30 percent of u r Processor ( range may be not accurate!!).

so this tells me that if u r system is incapable of supporting Aero in vista, its not so good idea to jump into one rather have XP instead.

 

[Aberforth]

Vista Aero requires Shader Model 2.0- So it needs a GPU. And Vista doesn't slow down the processing with Aero because it is completely dedicated to GPU.

 

[jaykishankrk]

i havent gone through the entire article but as far as i can remember, the drawing of polygons and other shapes related to windowing is transferred to GPU instead of CPU given that aero is supported in a particular system. so assuming that you dont have a GPU that supports Aero in vista, you are intended to use Processor for all the off Loaded work of GPU with respect to Windowing. This causes a lot of work for the Processor to do which was intended to be done by the GPU and thus decrease in performance. again please correct me if i am wrong here!!

 

[Aberforth]

Originally posted by: jaykishankrk
i havent gone through the entire article but as far as i can remember, the drawing of polygons and other shapes related to windowing is transferred to GPU instead of CPU given that aero is supported in a particular system. so assuming that you dont have a GPU that supports Aero in vista, you are intended to use Processor for all the off Loaded work of GPU with respect to Windowing. This causes a lot of work for the Processor to do which was intended to be done by the GPU and thus decrease in performance. again please correct me if i am wrong here!!

you cannot run Aero Interface without a GPU with Shadermodel 2.0. Vista will switch to Basic mode automatically

 

[jaykishankrk]

I got your point but what i exactly meant was, if u have a system with windows vista basic, that goes to say without Aero enabled(basic vista), there is no point in having that system loaded with vista basic as it consumes a lot of processing power which is unnecessary and the reason for this is described in my previous post. so if u have a rig which cannot run vista Aero then it would be better to have an XP instead of vista which looks a better option considering its minimal usage of CPU as compared to Windows vista with aero enabled.

 

[Aberforth]

Originally posted by: jaykishankrk
I got your point but what i exactly meant was, if u have a system with windows vista basic, that goes to say without Aero enabled(basic vista), there is no point in having that system loaded with vista basic as it consumes a lot of processing power which is unnecessary and the reason for this is described in my previous post. so if u have a rig which cannot run vista Aero then it would be better to have an XP instead of vista which looks a better option considering its minimal usage of CPU as compared to Windows vista with aero enabled.

well....aero isn't the only feature of Vista, there are 100's of new features. 🙂

 

[jaykishankrk]

it depends on the user, where he has to decide upon using vista without Aero while compromising the processor usage or use XP which is the best buck for the money considering the rig he has. but as you say that there are 100's of other features in vista other then Aero, i completely agree on that, so if you need 100's of features then be ready to compromise on processing power or else if u r happy with XP then enjoy the perfomance. 🙂

what do you say??

 

[delco007]

Originally posted by: mhahnheuser
Ran on P3 733MHz with 384Mb SDRAM and ATI 9250 PCI video accelerator just fine. All plug and play, but no Aeroglass of course.

hEY
i have read somewhere that if a system has a memory less than 512 mb of then Vista will refuse to get installed on that system , did Vista giv you any kinds of warning or some disclaimer that you are instlling vista on a system that has low memory .Ofcourse theres no bar on the graphics since vista does not mark down any system on graphics quality .

 

[delco007]

 

[lopri]

For a smooth Aero interface, I'd recommend at least 6600 or 7300 class video cards. I've tried 6200 TC, and while it worked, it wasn't exactly smooth.

 

[mhahnheuser]

Originally posted by: delco007

Originally posted by: mhahnheuser
Ran on P3 733MHz with 384Mb SDRAM and ATI 9250 PCI video accelerator just fine. All plug and play, but no Aeroglass of course.

hEY
i have read somewhere that if a system has a memory less than 512 mb of then Vista will refuse to get installed on that system , did Vista giv you any kinds of warning or some disclaimer that you are instlling vista on a system that has low memory .Ofcourse theres no bar on the graphics since vista does not mark down any system on graphics quality .

I put on a a version of RC1 which didn't make any fuss. All hardware including ATI 9250 GPU supported. Performance for average user experience was supprisingly brisk. Played around with it for an hour or 2 and then returned it under win XP pro. But I was surprised by the way it performed having heard about what a hog it was. We also have the same version currently on a P4 3.73MHz extreme nForce 4 platform and VISTA's performance is outstanding and outperforms XP Pro, although SLI is not supported in this version.