What does it really take to run Vista at its prime?

[AndroidVageta]

I would really like to know what kind of system would be recommended by you guys? I mean, I know what M$ thinks are good requirements but from what I've read it sounds like you need a beast of a machine to run this OS.

Basically, do you all think that a system like mine (sig) would be able to run Vista well and still maintain its ability to run games at an exceptable speed? Personally I like Vista...or atleast my limited usage on it, but would it be a safe move for me to go to say Vista Ultimate x64 over XP Pro SP2? I'm getting a ATI 3780 soon and would like to use DX10 (Vista only obviously) but not if playing games in DX9 are going to be 25% slower than in XP.

So should (could) I make a comfortable move to Vista? Driver support I'm not worried about...I don't have much that needs drivers and things seem to be alittle more stable with drivers nowadays. Thanks for the help guys!

 

[Billb2]

You'll be fine.

 

[AndroidVageta]

I'm mainly worried about gaming and encoding performance really. I mean, my old rig (AMD64 3200+, 1GB DDR1) could RUN Vista but game performance was medicore at best...I know that in Splinter Cell Double Agent avg. fps were in the 30 range on XP but around 15fps on Vista Ultimate x86, but ofcourse thats testing on my old AMD64 system.

 

[George P Burdell]

At least a dual core at 2+ GHz, and 2+ GB of RAM to start with.

 

[nerp]

2GB is the minimum for any machine. My celeron M 440 laptop has 2GB of ram in it and it runs Vista very well. I don't do any gaming or hard core encoding on it so it's fine enough for what I DO use; web, email, word, outlook, irc, streaming movies and music, ripping CDs on occasion, etc.

My other boxes in my sig run their respective verions of Vista very well. The Opty 180 is a great MCE box and runs Vista with flying colors. My main intel box is a monster and the 4GB of ram almost seems excessive but there IS still a nice boost between 2gb to 4gb in terms of having more cached memory and shuch. But I could easily get away with 2GB in the box, but I wanted 2 sticks for dual channel and the price of DDR2 is so cheap that I couldn't think of anything but.

 

[lxskllr]

Vista takes more resources, but it also makes better use of excess resources, especially ram. In XP if you had more ram than you needed, it just got wasted. In Vista the extra ram gets used to speed up applications, and it'll use as much as you give it. It's definitely "heavier" than XP, but any new "enthusiast" machine will handle it easily.

For your rig I would suggest getting a 2*2gb kit for a total of 6gb. Your 2gb is enough, but 4gb is better, and if you buy more you might as well go big. Vista will use it, and it'll be a nice boost for not much money.

 

[Piuc2020]

General System Performance: Vista is the winner
Games Performance : XP is the winner
Ultra High-End: Vista 64-bit, Tri and Quad SLI are exclusive to Vista as is DX10 and the 64-bit version of Vista is so so much better than XP.

Vista is so much better for general system performance, I'm really much more productive with Vista than with XP but in my eyes XP is still unrivaled as a gaming OS except for the ultra high-end as DX10 and 3-way/4-way SLI is only available on Vista.

I think that in a few years Vista (especially the 64-bit version) will really take off and leave XP in the dust for good in every area.

 

[XBoxLPU]

I say the sweet spot is anything above 2GB with my general preference above 3gb of system memory

 

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: AndroidVageta
I'm mainly worried about gaming and encoding performance really. I mean, my old rig (AMD64 3200+, 1GB DDR1) could RUN Vista but game performance was medicore at best...I know that in Splinter Cell Double Agent avg. fps were in the 30 range on XP but around 15fps on Vista Ultimate x86, but ofcourse thats testing on my old AMD64 system.

Most recent benchmarks show little to no difference in gaming performance between Vista and XP. Sometimes XP is slightly faster by a few frames and other times it is Vista that is faster by a few frames. The video card drivers are the important factor here. Now that both ATI and Nvidia have decent drivers, things are starting to level out.

The system in your sig is more than fine for running Vista. As others have suggested, you should upgrade to at least 4 gigs and run 64 bit Vista for a modern gaming system.

 

[AndroidVageta]

My motherboard only supports 2GB of RAM as it only has 2 DDR2 slots and the VIA chipset can't support more than 2GB of DDR2. Would 2GB still be enough for Vista x64 and gaming? I've just seen Vista, loved it...and its time to move from XP...never too fond of it anyways...Server 2003 was always better but gaming was limited IMO. Thanks!

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: AndroidVageta
My motherboard only supports 2GB of RAM as it only has 2 DDR2 slots and the VIA chipset can't support more than 2GB of DDR2. Would 2GB still be enough for Vista x64 and gaming? I've just seen Vista, loved it...and its time to move from XP...never too fond of it anyways...Server 2003 was always better but gaming was limited IMO. Thanks!

I have 2GB and run Vista x64. Most of my game playing (when I get around to it) is older stuff, but I have tried a handful of new games lately (UT3 demo probably being the most recent). 2GB is probably pushing it for newer games, but IMO it's sufficient. I'd upgrade to 4GB if DDR1 didn't cost an arm and a leg these days...

 

[kylef]

Originally posted by: AndroidVageta
My motherboard only supports 2GB of RAM as it only has 2 DDR2 slots and the VIA chipset can't support more than 2GB of DDR2. Would 2GB still be enough for Vista x64 and gaming?

If your motherboard only supports 2GB of RAM, then I would definitely stick with Vista 32-bit. x64 really doesn't help you unless you want more than 3 GB of memory.

(Some would argue that you get a very small perf improvement for native 64-bit code, such as a faster syscall instruction and 8 more CPU registers. But IMO you give it all back in terms of the extra code size and memory footprint. In the end, the two cancel each other.)

For Vista 32-bit, 2 GB of RAM is the sweet spot. You should be happy.

 

[BD2003]

2GB is more than enough. 1GB is plenty for basic tasks as well. Your system will run it great.

As far as what it takes to run at its prime - it partially depends on what you use your system for, but its quite scalable and will enjoy all the ram you can give it. ANY dual core is overkill for running the actual OS - its really going to be the apps you run that determine what you need, not the OS. Aside from the higher memory requirements for Vista, performance will be generally the same between the two unless youre running a real dog of a CPU.

 

[George P Burdell]

Originally posted by: kylef
If your motherboard only supports 2GB of RAM, then I would definitely stick with Vista 32-bit. x64 really doesn't help you unless you want more than 3 GB of memory.

(Some would argue that you get a very small perf improvement for native 64-bit code, such as a faster syscall instruction and 8 more CPU registers. But IMO you give it all back in terms of the extra code size and memory footprint. In the end, the two cancel each other.)

For Vista 32-bit, 2 GB of RAM is the sweet spot. You should be happy.

Agreed. Unless you have a specific app that has a 64bit version (like a video encoder or server), the only major benefit of Vista 64 is the ability to support > 4GB of RAM.

I use Vista 32 on the laptop with 2GB RAM and Vista 64 on the desktop with 2GB. Starting off with a 64bit OS gives me the option of upgrading to 4GB (or more) in the future.

 

[jkohm]

Originally posted by: lxskllr
Vista takes more resources, but it also makes better use of excess resources, especially ram. In XP if you had more ram than you needed, it just got wasted. In Vista the extra ram gets used to speed up applications, and it'll use as much as you give it. It's definitely "heavier" than XP, but any new "enthusiast" machine will handle it easily.

For your rig I would suggest getting a 2*2gb kit for a total of 6gb. Your 2gb is enough, but 4gb is better, and if you buy more you might as well go big. Vista will use it, and it'll be a nice boost for not much money.

Can Vista really make use of more than 3gb of ram? Was XP restricted to 3gb? I'm confused. Help.

 

[CU]

Vista can make use of as much ram as you can give it. It will use it as disk cache and other helpful things. XP will use upto 4gigs, but some of that ram gets mapped to other devices like the video card, so you will only see about 3.2gig of it. Also if a 32 bit app needs more than the 2gig barrier in 32bit XP / Vista32, then Vista64 should be used. That way assuming the app is large address aware it will use upto 4gigs of ram the 32bit limit for a 32bit app. In XP / Vista32 you would have to change the user space / kernel space ratio to free up more address space, which is risky. I would use Vista 64 if you have a 64bit app or a 32 bit app that needs more than 2gigs of ram or you run enough apps at once that combined you need more than about 3.2gigs of ram.

 

[fritzfield]

Originally posted by: AndroidVageta
My motherboard only supports 2GB of RAM as it only has 2 DDR2 slots and the VIA chipset can't support more than 2GB of DDR2. Would 2GB still be enough for Vista x64 and gaming? I've just seen Vista, loved it...and its time to move from XP...never too fond of it anyways...Server 2003 was always better but gaming was limited IMO. Thanks!

I had that Asrock board running Vista 64 until last week. With the 1.90a BIOS, I could run 2 x 2GB DDR2 RAM, although only 3GB was recognized by the BIOS and by the 64 bit Vista. The OS ran just fine. I wouldn't hesitate to run 2GB with Vista 64 on that board. However, my new Intel chipset board does appear to be snappier than the Via chipset board.