Is Vista a good match for my system?

[TheNiceGuy]

Hi all.
I have the system in my sig. Quite happy with XP right now.
I was considering upgrading to Vista. This would be mainly for games. Since DX10 games are coming soon, I thought it might be worth upgrading to Vista now. Later, when DX10 capable GPUs come down in price, I can slap in a new card and bingo -ready to play. If needed, I could also add 2 RAM sticks or a USB flash stick.

Is this a solid plan?

P.S.- if Vista is has the potential to be buggy with my specs, I'm not interested because I also use this PC for work. It needs to be stable.

 

[jose]

I would not touch vista till the first service pack comes out.

My friend loaded Vista on his 3.3 (e6600) 2g ram & 8800GTS and it slowed his system down.

He can't wait to throw it in the crapper.

Do your self a big favor and forget about it.

Regards,
Jose

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: jose
I would not touch vista till the first service pack comes out.

My friend loaded Vista on his 3.3 (e6600) 2g ram & 8800GTS and it slowed his system down.

He can't wait to throw it in the crapper.

Do your self a big favor and forget about it.

Regards,
Jose

Nice. Very informed post. :roll:


OP: Your specs are just fine and will run Vista great. The more important thing to be concerned about is what software you intend to run. I would suggest posting what you run most and let others that are already running Vista reply with what their experiences are. Just like with new hardware (especially video cards) it's unwise to upgrade for something coming down the road. If a DX10 title that you are interested in comes out, go for it. I'm not saying don't upgrade I'm just saying I wouldn't do it for that reason alone.

I upgraded months ago for my own reasons and now I really have a hard time going back and touching XP boxes. They feel old and crappy now. I really don't know enough about your situation to give a definative answer but as a loose recommendation I would suggest upgrading.

 

[tehtank]

Originally posted by: jose
I would not touch vista till the first service pack comes out.

My friend loaded Vista on his 3.3 (e6600) 2g ram & 8800GTS and it slowed his system down.

He can't wait to throw it in the crapper.

Do your self a big favor and forget about it.

Regards,
Jose

Funny. I have a stock e6600, 2gb ram, and an 8800GTX and it runs just about flawlessly.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: tehtank

Originally posted by: jose
I would not touch vista till the first service pack comes out.

My friend loaded Vista on his 3.3 (e6600) 2g ram & 8800GTS and it slowed his system down.

He can't wait to throw it in the crapper.

Do your self a big favor and forget about it.

Regards,
Jose

Funny. I have a stock e6600, 2gb ram, and an 8800GTX and it runs just about flawlessly.

hehe. See, I told you it was an "informed" post.

 

[nerp]

And waiting for a service pack is silly. MS has said that service packs won't come out with great frequeny and many of the smaller updates and fixes will be rolled out incrementailly via windows update. So SP1 for Vista being the dawn of a new day is a misguided notion.

 

[rchiu]

What kind of sound card do you have? I am considering vista too but not too sure I wanna deal with Sound Blaster X-Fi EAX support for games.

 

[Solema]

That rig should run Vista fine, tho maybe a tad slow with the 1GB of RAM. The big issue I see is your gaming desires. The problem is, any game that will use DX10 is going to require much better specs than the rest of your rig to run even decently. Look at games coming out now already, like Supreme Commander. It's not even DX10 but it essentially requires a dual-core CPU to be even playable. Simply "slapping in" a DX10 card later probably won't be enough to run any DX10 games at playable frame rates with a single-core CPU and 1GB of RAM.

If you want to play around with Vista now regardless of games, I say go for it. But don't get it with the plan to throw a DX10 card in later and be set. You'll be disappointed.

 

[Ausm]

Your system will run Vista just fine. I am quite impressed with Vista so far and XP does seem MUCH slower.


Ausm

 

[HardWarrior]

If you're happy with XP then it makes since to wait. As it is, your current HW is going to make you cut Vista back so far that it won't be worth it.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: HardWarrior
If you're happy with XP then it makes since to wait. As it is, your current HW is going to make you cut Vista back so far that it won't be worth it.

..disagree.

 

[jose]

Smilin,

Thanks,... I didn't want to get too technical...

Just go and install Vista, and you can come back and tell us what you think, personally I write software under both Unix/Linux and Windows and I'd never do work for the Vista platform. Unless you want to pay me a couple of million dollars and sign off on whether or not the apps functions the way they're supposed to.

MS has the habit of changing stuff just for the hell of it.


Besides MS says we should all move to vista, and we all know they don't lie.

Regards,
Jose

 

[spherrod]

System will run Vista fine - as Smilin already said, the determining factor should be what software you need to run and whether these have any issues with Vista.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: jose
I would not touch vista till the first service pack comes out.

My friend loaded Vista on his 3.3 (e6600) 2g ram & 8800GTS and it slowed his system down.

He can't wait to throw it in the crapper.

Do your self a big favor and forget about it.

Regards,
Jose

Vista x64 running great here even with 20 games installed ,what makes you think SP1 will make Vista a lot better?....Long as you keep your Vista updated and don't use any beta drivers plus check that your third party software is compatible with Vista you should not get any major problems.


TheNiceGuy it should run fine.

 

[mechBgon]

P.S.- if Vista is has the potential to be buggy with my specs, I'm not interested because I also use this PC for work. It needs to be stable.

My system is fairly similar, an A8N-E with an X2 3800+ and a vanilla 6600, running Vista x64. I stuck with Vista's video driver, and it runs stable (including gaming). It feels a little lethargic compared to my XP installation, but I think part of the reason is that the XP installation is on my Atlas 15k II, whereas Vista is on a 7200.10 SATA drive. Near the opposite ends of the access-time spectrum, those two are :evil: I'd put Vista on the SCSI drive but 36GB is not going to cut it

As for the upgrade plan, I'd include a dual-core processor in the plan.

 

[boomerang]

Lookee, Lookee

 

[Kniteman77]

I'm personally waiting until 6 to 9 months after the release to upgrade, SP1 should be close by then. Maybe December of next year, and my system could blow vista away . . . just don't want to deal with buggy drivers for the next 9 months.

 

[Brazen]

Please, run Vista. I tried and couldn't put up with all the bugs. Hopefully, the more beta testers there are, the sooner I can feel comfortable using it

 

[KeypoX]

Originally posted by: Ausm
Your system will run Vista just fine. I am quite impressed with Vista so far and XP does seem MUCH slower.


Ausm

For gaming vista seems soo soo soo soo bad ... i am about to install xp right now with dual boot it sucks that i just undid this config but o well

OP do not install vista if you game

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: TheNiceGuy
Hi all.
I have the system in my sig. Quite happy with XP right now.
I was considering upgrading to Vista. This would be mainly for games. Since DX10 games are coming soon, I thought it might be worth upgrading to Vista now. Later, when DX10 capable GPUs come down in price, I can slap in a new card and bingo -ready to play. If needed, I could also add 2 RAM sticks or a USB flash stick.

Is this a solid plan?

P.S.- if Vista is has the potential to be buggy with my specs, I'm not interested because I also use this PC for work. It needs to be stable.

I wouldn't go with Vista yet, I am dual booting vista and XP on my conroe machine. There is no 1080p support in the vista drivers for nvidia, which sucks with my 42" LCD, there is no drivers for my sound card at all, not even beta. I'd wait until it's been out for a while longer, so there is better driver support.

 

[aka1nas]

That machine is a little low on RAM to be comfortable gaming in Vista. Basically, take what you use in XP and add another 512MB to it, and that's about what you'll need to get about the same performance in Vista.

The driver situation is being quickly sorted out and the OS has been perfectly usable for gaming for a few months now. XP was a LOT worse on contemporary hardware for the first year or two of it's life.

 

[HardWarrior]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: HardWarrior
If you're happy with XP then it makes since to wait. As it is, your current HW is going to make you cut Vista back so far that it won't be worth it.

..disagree.

Very witty and to the point.

OP, don't allow yourself to be used as a crash dummy by people who don't seem to care what your experience turns out to be. Simply put, Vista is a hog compared to XP. If you want it to run as designed you'll have to feed it the sort of HW it needs. Games that you can play now WILL be slower under Vista, even if you turn off Aero and have an otherwise tread-bare install.

If you just WANT to install Vista that's fine. I get that. However, go into it with your eyes open. Don't just take the word of a bunch of strangers, me included. There's a large, and growing body of empirical data on how Vista performs on a variety of platforms.

My experience so far? Besides a few graphical problems (might be fixed by a reinstall/restore) Vista runs great, and that includes being able to max out games like FEAR at 1680x1050. Aero smokes the XP GUI. The diagnostic\support tools are freaking great. The install was butter-smooth, though kind of long (about 3 hours as an upgrade on an SATA 300 16meg cache). I've had 1 crash so far, and it was so "pretty" I couldn't believe it.

Good luck in whatever you decide, Guy. PM me if you need something.

 

[TheNiceGuy]

Thank you all for the interest!

Hmmm. If I need replace the video card, processor, motherboard, and possibly all new compatible RAM to utilize Vista... then I think I'll wait for a while. That's basically a whole new PC. There are no games out I really need to play on DX10. And I upgrade with the purpose of results - not for upgrading's sake.
I guess I was wondering if simply installing Vista would soup up my current hardware. But it sounds like the opposite is likely. The games I play now are "Medieval 2: TW" and "Battlefield 2".

Thanks for opening my eyes all!

 

[Arkaign]

Vista MURDERS BF2. As of now, there's zero reason to move to Vista unless you like throwing $$ away. Try a PC out @ Best Buy, Fry's, whereever, that has Vista on it. Oh, and 1gb of ram is below minimal on Vista. I've seen brand-new Dual-Core notebooks with 1gb of DDR2 dual channel, and Vista ran like total ass on them. Vista will come into its own in the years to come, particularly when DX10 becomes mandatory for gaming (2008?), but for now it's a big loser. I have a decently high end box, and rarely boot to my Vista home premium side. Even w/4gb of memory it's a PITA.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: HardWarrior

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: HardWarrior
If you're happy with XP then it makes since to wait. As it is, your current HW is going to make you cut Vista back so far that it won't be worth it.

..disagree.

Very witty and to the point.

Thanks It bugged me that I put in a well thought out response for the OP then someone with the opposing view drops this in as a recommendation. I wasn't going to let the tripe slip by completely unanswered.