Do I need Vista Ultimate?

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pando

235 posts

Master Geek

# 19492 19-Feb-2008 14:32

I've held off going to Vista as i'm a moderate gamer when I get time and like my performance.

I've helf off upgrading mainly because i've heard bad bad bad stuff and I wanted to wait until SP1 got released to see what the general feel of it is like from other gamers POV.

All I ever do is with the following:
Internet using Opera
Email using Thunderbird
Adobe photoshop CS2 for my photography
Open office for my documents
I use Kaspersky Internet Secuity 7 for my security
Diskeeper 10 pro
Nero 6 suite
And GAMING - mostly Steam and nothing dx10...yet...it will be after I switch
I'm in a home network with a file server, media centre, and other pc's.

My PC can handle vista:
X2 5600+ on a M57-S4 nforce mobo
2GB ballistic DDR2-800 (CL3)
nv 8800GTS (320)
2x320GB WD RE Sata2 (Raid0)

* note that I would grab more of the same ram if I upgraded, even if it's not fully utilised.

For what I do with the above which version would you recommend, or should stay with XP pro, and why?

Thanks

freitasm

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Geekzone

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# 111601 19-Feb-2008 14:58

You could have adopted Vista on its first wave. You should be ok with Windows Vista Home Premium.

FYI I game with Titan Quest, Steam, Supreme Commandar, Halo 2, Age of Empires and never had a problem.

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pando

235 posts

Master Geek

# 111612 19-Feb-2008 15:40

If you say so Mauricio then it's got to be alright :)

$284 for an additional 2GB crucial ballistix and OEM Visa home premium excl. delivery...now the wait

pando

235 posts

Master Geek

# 112867 25-Feb-2008 11:05

Can't be bothered starting a new thread regarding my thoughts on Vista

Clean installing was VERY simple, kind of felt like it was a no brainer, especially after years on 98, 200, and XP installs.

Took twice as long to boot and shut down compared to XP, but after analysing ALL the services and disabling half of them my boot and shutdown times are now not that much slower than XP. I have to admit that there are A LOT of unessential services and I have already made a friend happy with his Vista business bytweaking his laptop's install by disabling his unnecessary services too.

Tested Kaspersky and it picked up adware that Defender didn't. Disabled security centre, defender, and firewall and using my Kaspersky security instead, was always going to do this but fell better about it now.

I had only one major problem, Steam kept crashing in-game, after very carefully baselining everything I traced it to my overclocked ram being the problem? The exact same settings worked fine in XP (tested this with the new RAM first) but I reduced the tRas and tRct slightly and it fixed crashing - all sweet now, can't see why this worked in XP but not Vista but it's going so all good!!!

Only beef now is the extremely SLOW network transfer speeds. We're running a gigabit network and I was getting over 400Mbps sustained before, now getting, wait for it...50Mbps...WTF? Hope this is resolved in SP1!!!

All up, it feels like XP with a new front end (Aero), games all working, programs all workings, so long as the network speeds are improved soon i'll stick with it otherwise it'll be a dual boot system.

chakkaradeep

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# 112870 25-Feb-2008 11:11

MrPink:
Only beef now is the extremely SLOW network transfer speeds. We're running a gigabit network and I was getting over 400Mbps sustained before, now getting, wait for it...50Mbps...WTF? Hope this is resolved in SP1!!!

There are huge improvements in File Copying with SP1, I would suggest you to wait for SP1, test the same after installing SP1

Regards,
Chaks

Desktop : Intel Quad Core Q9400 2.66GHz - 8GB RAM - 500 GB + 500 GB HDD - NVidia GeForce 9800GT - LG246WH Flatron Display - Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise with Hyper-V
Virtual Machine : Powered by Hyper-V and VMWare Workstation
Laptop: HP dv7-3004TX Entertainment Notebook PC | HP Touchsmart tx2 1119au - Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Mac: iMac 21.5" Snow Leopard
Mobile : iPhone 3GS

freitasm

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# 112871 25-Feb-2008 11:16

MrPink: Only beef now is the extremely SLOW network transfer speeds. We're running a gigabit network and I was getting over 400Mbps sustained before, now getting, wait for it...50Mbps...WTF? Hope this is resolved in SP1!!!

I use Teracopy....

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pando

235 posts

Master Geek

# 112876 25-Feb-2008 11:21

Yes, read all about the improvements beforehand (and your teracopy MF) so was why I held off vista so long, but still...how could they release an OS that reduced performance so badly, I didn't realise it was THAT bad!!! lol - should qualify, dumped 120GB onto my external, all my important backups of high res photos and home movies, dumped my 20GB steam backup on our network server...watching it copy back at 6MB/s made me choke while the USB2 HDD blazed through at over 6x the speed