Vista 1Gb = Vista 2Gb

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# 118903 26-Mar-2008 21:21

ahmad: You don't have to have an entirely clean system to notice performance enhancements.

That does matter. The applications you install have a high impact on the performance of your system.

[ Do you know that Firefox takes hell lot of memory to run? ]

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

ahmad

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# 118917 26-Mar-2008 21:44

All I can tell is that firefox start time is the same as before, and running with multiple tabs is no faster or slower than before. Vista still feels "somewhat sluggish" - an "acceptable" sluggishness, but definitely noticeable compared to my XP system.

chakkaradeep

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# 118921 26-Mar-2008 21:50

ahmad: All I can tell is that firefox start time is the same as before, and running with multiple tabs is no faster or slower than before. Vista still feels "somewhat sluggish" - an "acceptable" sluggishness, but definitely noticeable compared to my XP system.

I dont want to get into argument, but all these "somewhat sluggish - an acceptable sluggishness, but definitely noticeable compared to my XP system" - I can prove wrong if you come and see my systems running Vista SP1, but then, its my view of seeing things which might not be true with others

ahmad

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# 118929 26-Mar-2008 22:07

Others may be able to comment on my system specs (see OP) but I would consider that this is towards the low end of the system range, but somewhat above the bottom.

I'm not expecting massive performance out of such a cheap machine, so I've never expected miracles. That's why I don't think a slight degree of sluggishness is unacceptable.

I must say though that my brother in law has a system has would randomly lock up for a few seconds, and his PC is super fast (I don't know the exact specs but everything in the WEI (ok ok) is above 5 and some are 5.9.

Driver issues you think? I don't know about that but I never found a lot of sluggishness in XP so why should only Vista have driver issues?

chakkaradeep

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# 118935 26-Mar-2008 22:15

ahmad:
Driver issues you think? I don't know about that but I never found a lot of sluggishness in XP so why should only Vista have driver issues?

May be or may not and thats the worst part of Vista. Drivers working in XP are not guaranteed to work properly in Vista unless they have a separate version for Vista and this is incompatibility and Vista ranks top in that.

ahmad

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# 118950 27-Mar-2008 00:29

Chaks you might have inadvertently discovered some issue on my laptop.

SP1 can't be rolled out on my laptop via WU due to a driver issue with Conexant HD Audio.

I tried uninstalling and when I restarted Windows it auto reinstalled.

Anyway, that restart booted Windows quite quickly, but when restarted with the driver installed, it was slow again.

So I tried disabling, and Windows booted in 1:05 vs. 1:50.

A correctly installed audio driver shouldn't add that much time to the boot right?

I might wait for the issue to be resolved before installing the SP1 I downloaded. Although based on this experience, even a "working" driver might still have issues that are not obvious.

chakkaradeep

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# 118953 27-Mar-2008 01:00

ahmad: Although based on this experience, even a "working" driver might still have issues that are not obvious.

With Hardware & Software several problems might happen and we dont know what would cause them

Its pretty easy to find out if its an issue with Software but with Hardware, its pretty difficult. Again, for the drivers to be perfect/reliable you need to rely on your Vendor and in your case its HP/Compaq. If its creating issues, you should query them and ask why it makes your experience bad or if they have any updates for it and if so when would it be available for you to install it.

I dont see what is wrong between 1:05 Vs 1:50

You are counting that extra 45 seconds as a BIG factor

ictgeeknz

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# 118963 27-Mar-2008 04:38

ahmad: Hi Sinn, the "problem" is one of possible wasting of resources (ie. money).

When I bought the laptop, I was pretty sure that 1Gb would "do" for me, but everyone I discussed this with said that I pretty much "needed" 2Gb to run Vista properly, despite me emphasising that I would only be using the computer for very basic tasks (firefox, MS Office, IM applications).

So I'm just commenting that after the recommended update, I don't have any objective evidence to suggest my computer is running any smoother or faster as some said I would get.

I have a desktop PC running Windows Vista Home Premium
Specs: Pentium 4 3.06GHz w/HT, 1GB DDR333 RAM, ATI Radeon 9550 256MB
WEI: 4.2 (Processor) 4.2 (RAM) 3.5 (Graphics) 3.2 (Gaming graphics) 5.7 (Primary HDD)

So not too much different to yours.

Power on to logon = 0:45 (mine = 0:55)
Power on to fully loaded desktop = 1:50 (mine = 3:50 ?!?)
Load Firefox (or IE) = 0:10 (mine = 0:15)
Load Word for first time after startup = 0:14 (mine = 0:15)
Shutdown = roughly 0:20 (mine = 1:25 ?!?)

My RAM usage sits around 65-70%. If it got around 80% and I noticed it swapping to the Page File heaps, I would upgrade to 2GB. (Actually I wouldn't because, I'm almost due for a new PC as this motherboard is about 5 years old.)

ahmad

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# 118983 27-Mar-2008 09:01

ictgeeknz - thanks for your comparative times.

They are reassuring for me in that they are comparable and therefore I don't think a lot is "wrong" with my system. That just seems to be the speed of Vista itself.

I already suspected that the times were appropriate though - before this laptop I had another and times were similar, so I never believed that something was seriously wrong with my setup to cause slow times. The times are just what Vista tends to need.

I have so much objective data about loading times for Vista that it is not funny. Since Day 1 I've had a stopwatch sitting near my computer timing processes, which is really quite sad.

chakkaradeep

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Ultimate Geek

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# 118985 27-Mar-2008 09:10

ahmad:
I have so much objective data about loading times for Vista that it is not funny. Since Day 1 I've had a stopwatch sitting near my computer timing processes, which is really quite sad.

There are days where Leopard takes 1:50 seconds to give me login page and there are days where leopard takes 40 seconds to give me login page - Who can I blame - Me or MacBook or Leopard? Dont ge me wrong here, taking this criteria of Logon/Shutdown times does not take you anywhere in regards of Performance of System. I think its discussed a lot now about this and we are moving with the same thing again and again. I think the topic needs to die.

Batman

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# 119399 28-Mar-2008 19:15

dear ahmad, i think we all agree by now that for YOUR SETUP w home basic, upgrading from 1g to 2g of ram has not improved your personal experience. period.

should you upgrade to say home premium (ie with all the extra aero glass business), OR if you open truckloads of applications at the same time you WILL find 2gig better than 1gig. if not, then why not sell you ram on to someone on the for sale section?

just my 2.267 cents ...

Involuntary autocorrect in operation on mobile device. Apologies in advance.

ahmad

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# 119402 28-Mar-2008 19:39

Sorry should have made it clear that I'm not running Basic. I have Aero turned and have not customised the visualisations - Windows manages those.

It's funny that before I bought the RAM I had so many people telling me that I "had" to upgrade the RAM, despite knowing what my usage would likely be (internet and word processing/office).

dnb4life

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# 119411 28-Mar-2008 20:14

how are you testing your performance? obviously only increasing by 1gb of ram will not increase performance dramatically. and it certainly won't make much difference for startup and shutdown times, it should be evident in the amount of multi-tasking you can do and speed of windows indexing. as for an explaination as to why it didn't help - the only thing i can think of is with users of windows xp you would see huge performance leaps with relatively low amounts of upgrade i.e 512mb ram. with vista it doesn't seem to be anything like that, i believe this is because it is a very resource dependant operating system and the more ram one requires the less noticable performance gain will be. when people told you that vista runs better on 2gbs than 1gb of ram they were telling the truth, i've seen plenty of systems that have been helped hugely by an extra 1gb stick and frankly if you don't believe people then downgrade back down to 1gb. if you do however i will laugh, loudly.

ahmad

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# 119413 28-Mar-2008 20:21

$40 is too good to pass on. Especially given that it will enhance resale value of this laptop.

But I didn't rush to upgrade. It would have cost me $50 to get it January ($10 postage for a tiny tiny package), but I waited 2 months so that I could pick it up personally in Auckland.

The $10 was *that* important to me (ie. I didn't believe performance was going to improve so much that it was worth another 10 bucks).

dnb4life

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# 119550 29-Mar-2008 15:38

ah it's pretty clear you were convinced performance would improve, maybe if you actually bothered to customise your windows visuals it actually will. your current argument is ridiculous, who cares about $10 you would have spend on postage (that would have been for a signature trackpak) when your ram was only $40, this only proves how cheap you are. and believe it or not there's programs for benchmarking your usage, sitting infront of your computer with a stopwatch counting processes is such a waste of time.

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