Vista time?

ScumLord

I've upgraded me pc to 4gb ram and got a new hd 4850. But I notice that I can't use the full 4gig of ram and can't take full advantage of my directx 10 card.

Is it Vista time for me?

daveharnett

ScumLord wrote: »

I've upgraded me pc to 4gb ram and got a new hd 4850. But I notice that I can't use the full 4gig of ram and can't take full advantage of my directx 10 card.

Is it Vista time for me?

Is it ever vista time? I'm assured that it has gotten better, but i'm still not convinced that it's worth it.

- 3.2 gigs of addressable ram versus 4 will make no appreciable difference.
- dx 9.1c versus dx 10 makes no appreciable difference in any game I know of (other than slowing it down).
- I have yet to find any real benefit/feature which vista offers over xp.

KamiKazi

The extra 800mb of ram will be eaten up by Vista, seeing as its a memory hogging piece of ****

Anti

you need a 64bit operatign system. And if its windows you want to stay with go with vista x64 as xp x64 is a pile of cack. And believe me, Vista has come a long, long way. I've been using it since 12 months before launch and never had a single issue i couldn't work out.

alansweeney100

Yeh, like Manties said its not Vista you need, its a 64bit OS to take advantage of that RAM you're not using.
Vista 32-bit will run slower on your PC than XP
I've been using Vista 64 bit for over a year, its grand.

Solitaire

daveharnett wrote:

Is it ever vista time?

... no :P

The problem is that both XP and Vista can only address 3.2GB of RAM as they're 32-bit OS. They can't "see" beyond that. And Vista is epic fail anyhow.

A 64-bit operating system can address all of your memory, but have plenty of other issues instead. They are slower, have lower compatibility with existing software (Vista 64 is even worse than Vista in that regard!) and issues with drivers bordering on the epic. I hope you don't have any esoteric devices on your system... Overall, the upgrade will net you no perceptible performance increase, but will give you a whole bundle of pain and fail. XP 64 is supposed to be pretty bad (especially vis a vis drivers). 64-bit OS is really designed for systems with 6-8GB RAM, which is what you'd need for any kind of performance boost over 3.2GB in XP.

ytareh

Vista?No way!Ive installed and uninstalled it three times going happily back to XP Pro each time .It may be replaced next year anyway!Its slow and unresponsive ...prettiness is no consolation!

ewj1978

Been using vista since its launch and apart from some problems with the odd old game I've found it to be grand... I updated to a 64 bit version but quickly went back as I found it lethargic and full of problems from all sorts of area(anti virus etc...)

Rsaeire

I find it all depends on your uses, whether you've used both OSes and your system specs. I despised Vista from what I read online, mostly before SP1 was released, but come the time when I eventually used it, I found it great; with the exception of Internet Explorer crashing too often. Luckily Internet Explorer has stopped crashing, since it was updated a few months ago, and now my Vista system runs great. I've even gone back to turning most of the Aero features back on such as translucent windows, minimise and maximise animations, taskbar thumbnails etc. This doesn't slow my system down as the graphics card takes care of it all.

I also love the new explorer functionality and information in Vista, as I find it gives more detailed information regarding storage and offers transfer speed information when copying files, among other things.

I still, however, use XP Pro on my laptop as I use Photoshop and Dreamweaver and they tax my system enough as it is without Vista running on it too.

Donald-Duck

Solitaire wrote: »

... no :P

The problem is that both XP and Vista can only address 3.2GB of RAM as they're 32-bit OS. They can't "see" beyond that. And Vista is epic fail anyhow.

A 64-bit operating system can address all of your memory, but have plenty of other issues instead. They are slower, have lower compatibility with existing software (Vista 64 is even worse than Vista in that regard!) and issues with drivers bordering on the epic. I hope you don't have any esoteric devices on your system... Overall, the upgrade will net you no perceptible performance increase, but will give you a whole bundle of pain and fail. XP 64 is supposed to be pretty bad (especially vis a vis drivers). 64-bit OS is really designed for systems with 6-8GB RAM, which is what you'd need for any kind of performance boost over 3.2GB in XP.

Hey, please don't spread crap.

There is very few issues with 64 bit software these days, and even less with Vista. The only exceptions are small inhouse business apps and extremely old software.

The whole "VISTA IS THE DEVIL AND RAPED MY DOG" thing died out already, and spouting lies doesn't help anything.

Anti

Donald-Duck wrote: »

Hey, please don't spread crap.

There is very few issues with 64 bit software these days, and even less with Vista. The only exceptions are small inhouse business apps and extremely old software.

The whole "VISTA IS THE DEVIL AND RAPED MY DOG" thing died out already, and spouting lies doesn't help anything.

Agreed, 99% of the problem with vista is the retards who dont know how to use it, so go around blaming everyone but themselfs for not having the intellegence to work it..

Also if you find vista slow, then your pc is a heap of **** to be honest.

PEBCAK tbfh.

death1234567

I use Vista 64 bit with 4GB of RAM and a 4850 too and I've never had any problems, I got it after SP 1 though. Microsoft OS's tend to be ****e until the first SP IMO.

leninbenjamin

Vista's great, unless you're stupid enough trying to run it on 4 year old hardware with 1GB RAM or less (which i've seen people try to do, no wonder they hate it).

You can disable anyway most of the crap that slows it down, but still benefit get most of the graphical benefits. I've been running both Vista and XP for a while now, got Vista on me laptop, and XP on my work desktop. both machines have a pretty similar spec, and Vista performs just as well as XP imo. Driver's were an issue when i first got Vista, but not any more, in the last year it's come on leaps and bounds and i haven't had a major issue with it. I'd definitely recommend it ahead of XP.

death1234567 wrote: »

I use Vista 64 bit with 4GB of RAM and a 4850 too and I've never had any problems, I got it after SP 1 though. Microsoft OS's tend to be ****e until the first SP IMO.

indeed, overall it's been the exact same story as with XP. early users are the guinea pigs in all OS releases.

haven't had any experience with the 64bit versions, but from reading and talking to people who've used them, users of Vista64 seem to have much higher levels of satisfaction with their OS than users of XP64. don't take that to be definitive or anything, but that seems to be a trend i've picked up on.

Anti

death1234567 wrote: »

I use Vista 64 bit with 4GB of RAM and a 4850 too and I've never had any problems, I got it after SP 1 though. Microsoft OS's tend to be ****e until the first SP IMO.

Sp1 actually added a huge speed boost to vista alright. But your system isnt exactally cutting egde, and yoru graphics card wont make vista any faster. Alot of it is down to the speed of your ram and processor and yoru hard drives. But the biggest problem is the ammount of crap people install which run in the bakcground

leninbenjamin

Manties wrote: »

But the biggest problem is the ammount of crap people install which run in the bakcground

not to mention Vista comes with a pile of added on junk enabled, which is it's biggest downside. things like the widgets sidebar, the media manager watching folders crap, and some of the security crap all need to be disabled after the install.

the other thing often overlooked is the Anti-Virus. some of the better AV software for XP actually runs like a pile of turd on Vista and can considerably slow down the system, AVG being one of the worst offenders i can think of.

sort all this out though, and Vista flies. runs as smoothly as XP on mid to higher end systems.

Donald-Duck

leninbenjamin wrote: »

the other thing often overlooked is the Anti-Virus. some of the better AV software for XP actually runs like a pile of turd on Vista and can considerably slow down the system, AVG being one of the worst offenders i can think of.

No, it doesn't. Don't assume stuff. There was an issue in the first month or two with AVG and vista. Not since then.

ethernet

leninbenjamin wrote: »

not to mention Vista comes with a pile of added on junk enabled, which is it's biggest downside. things like the widgets sidebar, the media manager watching folders crap, and some of the security crap all need to be disabled after the install.

the other thing often overlooked is the Anti-Virus. some of the better AV software for XP actually runs like a pile of turd on Vista and can considerably slow down the system, AVG being one of the worst offenders i can think of.

sort all this out though, and Vista flies. runs as smoothly as XP on mid to higher end systems.

AVG is light-weight. Running it in a VM. 0% usage for all its processes (2% when updating) and 50 MB RAM usage.

Agree on crapware: reformat, reinstall for one's sanity.

Go for 64-bit if possible and if you can get proper drivers for your hardware. SP1 fixed a lot of things and SP2 is en route.

leninbenjamin

Donald-Duck wrote: »

No, it doesn't. Don't assume stuff. There was an issue in the first month or two with AVG and vista. Not since then.

I'm not assuming anything, I'm only talking from my own experiences. i only dumped AVG a few weeks back. It kept locking up, particularly during updates, and taking more resources than it should to do simple tasks, occasionally causing other apps to take a serious hit. overall performance has improved quite considerably since i dumped it. Perhaps it was a compatibility issue with something else, but all i know for sure is that since I stopped using AVG things have been running a lot smoother, so i'm inclined to blame AVG.

Anti

leninbenjamin wrote: »

not to mention Vista comes with a pile of added on junk enabled, which is it's biggest downside. things like the widgets sidebar, the media manager watching folders crap, and some of the security crap all need to be disabled after the install.

the other thing often overlooked is the Anti-Virus. some of the better AV software for XP actually runs like a pile of turd on Vista and can considerably slow down the system, AVG being one of the worst offenders i can think of.

sort all this out though, and Vista flies. runs as smoothly as XP on mid to higher end systems.

And they take a flick clicks to turn off

leninbenjamin

Manties wrote: »

And they take a flick clicks to turn off

indeed, but it's surprising how many people overlook this.