building a vista pc

requiem1

i know this is a bit premature but i'm looking for some good advice.
My dad wants me to build him a vista ready computer and he said he'd pay for me to build one for myself. But i'm a bit concerned regarding the arrival of directx10 and all this hdcp content. My initial plan was to give him my samsung monitor and 6600gt but reading about vista has made me a bit skeptical as to compatibility. Would i be right in saying that my monitor with its dvi ports will work with vista but won't support any hd content and my 660gt should be fine despite the fact its not directx10 compatible?(he doesn't game so no worry about that)

I'm heading to the states in december and was going to buy most of the gear over there but should i wait until vista comes out?

Ziycon

To be honest with you i wouldnt bother building a PC for Vista until its been out on the market for a good year or two! as with any MS OS release there is always teething bugs/problems in the first year or two!

PogMoThoin

There is no such thing as "vista compatible"

In order to run Vista smoothly, all you will need 1Gb+ of ram & have 128mb+ graphics card to run the aero features. No harm in building the pc with this in mind.
In order to run dx10 properly you will need a dx10 gpu, which are out in november, but i'd sit & wait to see how the 1st revision of these fair out before buying as there will more than likely be problems at first. Adding a gpu is an easy upgrade later. Just buy an average gpu for now 2 get the system up & running.
No harm in picking up a few bits in the USA, ram & gpu's are a lot cheaper, processor & hd's would be a little cheaper. These are small & would be easy to get home in your baggage (take them out of the boxes). Don't buy a psu in the USA, its bulky & won't work here.

Cerdito

PogMoThoin wrote:

There is no such thing as "vista compatible"

In order to run Vista smoothly, all you will need 1Gb+ of ram & have 128mb+ graphics card to run the aero features. No harm in building the pc with this in mind.
In order to run dx10 properly you will need a dx10 gpu, which are out in november, but i'd sit & wait to see how the 1st revision of these fair out before buying as there will more than likely be problems at first. Adding a gpu is an easy upgrade later. Just buy an average gpu for now 2 get the system up & running.
No harm in picking up a few bits in the USA, ram & gpu's are a lot cheaper, processor & hd's would be a little cheaper. These are small & would be easy to get home in your baggage (take them out of the boxes). Don't buy a psu in the USA, its bulky & won't work here.

thanks have you heard anything regarding cost or feaures of any directx10 graphics cards? i can't find anything one them and whats the story with hdcp monitors are they necessary?

BigEejit

Cerdito wrote:

thanks have you heard anything regarding cost or feaures of any directx10 graphics cards? i can't find anything one them and whats the story with hdcp monitors are they necessary?

the dx10 cards will be expensive as they are also going to be dx9 compliant ... as on previous occasions, rev 1 dx10 cards are bound to have flaws/bugs/annoyances and I would recommend avoiding them. As was mentioned, just get a 128mb graphics card (or something like a 7900gs with 256mb for not much more but decent performance) for the aero desktop in vista, and when all the bugs have been ironed out of the dx10 cards get a good midrange one ...

RAM is important as vista will prefetch data from the disk and try to keep ram full to try to avoid having to go to disk for data when you want it .... go for 2GB RAM, not the pc8888 stuff, just ordinary pc6400 will do.

HDCP monitors are out there and they are damn expensive, I would suggest avoiding at the moment as rumours are going that HDCP will not be compulsory until HDCP reaches a critical mass of compliant gear in peoples computers (NOT business computers)

tba

I seriously don't understand why anybody would want a proprietary protocol monitor...

8T8

Unless you are planning on getting HD-DVD or Blu-ray drives and movies then HDCP has no impact whatsoever on Vista.

I would recommend reading this thread in the HTPC forum I recently covered this topic.

The only item you really need to watch out for is if the GPU can address up to 256MB RAM otherwise if not then you will be limited to maximum resolution of 1600x1200 with Aero Glass enabled (you can turn it off and remove the limitation).