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Should I even bother with Vista or should I spend the money on parts?
Talonrazor
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I was given a $100 today and I plan to use it on my new computer I'm building. I'm coming in underbudget on the computer due to cutting some corners and I'm now thinking of spending the extra $100 plus $50 of my own money on getting an upgrade for Vista Premium. However, I could also direct that money to getting a 500GB SATA drive (right now I've got a 300GB SATA and a 150GB PATA). The PC is primarily for video editing with secondary uses as a gaming rig.
What do you guys think? Should I get Vista? Is it worth it? Or should I focus on getting more space for media?
What do you guys think? Should I get Vista? Is it worth it? Or should I focus on getting more space for media?
Talonrazor on
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Satans..... hints.....
the same games run slower in vista than they do in XP
There aren't going to be any games that require either Vista or DX10 (Microsoft's artificial restriction on Halo 2 aside) for a while yet. Plus, you're going to need a DX10 graphics card anyway to take advantage of it.
The logical thing to do is get the card first, since XP is still the superior gaming platform and will benefit from the performance increase. You can then switch to Vista later if/when it gets the better games.
So yeah. Parts.
Wait a couple years for Microsoft to make Vista reliable.
gg parts + XP pro
No.
It's not that Vista is bad... it's just not ideal (at the moment) for video editing when you could get better results on older tech.
But ain't no way in hell I'd pay actual cash money on it.
It's easy to get caught up in hype for a new product. :P
There really isn't that much wrong with vista outside of drivers and the nVidia drivers should be getting fixed soon.
This can be extended via various , microsoft built in commands, to 1 year or so.
i am enjoying my Vista, but SP1 would be welcome
Also, unless you are running uber hardware, just stick with XP. If you are video editing, I would get core 2 duo chips a the very least. Newegg has just informed me that the E4300 is now down to $155
Librarians harbor a terrible secret. Find it.
Should be noted if you're using Avid xpress or something they don't currently support vista at all.
Honestly the 10% drop in most cases isn't anywhere near a 10% drop at all. And also when you're looking at 90fps, or a 100fps in games. It really doesn't make that much of a difference. Especially when the drivers will be in a better shape in a month or two. And then add on to that Dx10 in games a month or two ahead of that point.
Vista has legitamite issues, but they haven't been hit on yet. It's extremely stable, runs faster than XP on new hardware, but all of this means nothing in the face of a huge lack of 3rd party support. Drivers are months behind, some hardware is still completely without support, and games haven't been written for it. I'd say, at this point it's great for a business or school machine; the speed and stability improvements (on good hardware, it increases exponentially) only apply to Office programs and general OS use, thus far. For gaming or home use, the value drops quite a bit. You'll get improvements if you buy it on a new machine that make it worth it, but a separate upgrade price gives nothing for a gaming machine, at the moment.
Anyone who tries to sell you on Aero and the gimmicks is full of it. Any actual improvement is under the hood.
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/pretty-vista.ars
http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2917
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/
In short, most of the praise and complaints you hear are complete bullshit. There's a whole different set of valid complaints and valid praises.
Further to this, if you do use any software that is unsupported on Vista, and do want to buy a copy of XP, bear in mind that Microsoft is forcing the issue and pulling XP at the end of the year.
Sensationalist crap. It's already been "pulled" in the retail channel, and only limited OEM copies are shipping; I'm not sure if either are being manufactured at this point. The only thing the January 31st date means is that "royalty" companies that print their own copies; HP, Dell, etc... can no longer do so. They've pretty much removed XP from most product lines at this point anyway, so it's not a huge change.
It's mostly a moot point, though. Vista Business and Ultimate OEM licenses have "downgrade rights" that allow you to install XP Pro instead of them, using generic OEM, Retail, or Volume media/keys. Companies can't even buy XP licenses in bulk now (and haven't since November of last year); they just request XP Pro media if they're still testing/need to stay on, XP. Not to mention there's a large amount of Retail and OEM XP licenses floating around the internet and in the sales channel.
http://techgage.com/article/windows_vista_gaming_performance_reports
Later in that article, they also talk about the fact that Vista does not currently have DirectSound or DirectSound 3D hardware acceleration support in Vista. MS has moved to OpenAL for hardware-based audio enhancement, which only some newer addon cards and hardly any onboard chipsets support. So until audio chipset manufacturers ship drivers that support DirectX audio -> OpenAL audio conversion (assuming they ever do), all you get under Vista is plain-jane stereo. No surround sound, no hardware effects, etc. You can read all about that straight from the horse's mouth here:
http://www.openal.org/openal_vista.html
For the time being, for the majority of PC gamers, Vista is an inferior gaming platform compared to XP.
I do want a fast machine and the kind of video editing I do is mostly hobbies (for example, the total 250GB I have now in the old machine are totally full) but my current employment is discussing the possibility of bringing me onboard as a full-time video guy for their department (I work for the Uni). If that happens, I'll be using Avid/other fancy software. The fact that Avid doesn't work on Vista is a big one for me. That's not going to fly at all. I already have XP and I've heard a few people say how much they like Vista so I was thinking about getting it with the free money. However, you guys have convinced me that is dumb as hell. Now the big question is:
Should I buy this 500GB HDD or should I sink the $100 into a better processor after the Intel price drop on the 22nd (was looking at E6600 or E6400 depending on how much they get cut)?
EDIT: New computer specs -
P5B-E Asus Mobo w/ C2D & Zalman heatsink/fan
4gb of Corsair DDR2 XMS2 RAM
EVGA 8800GTS
Enermax Liberty 500W
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro
Acer 22" LCD
Everything is here save CPU and Zalman.
There is NO automatic, mythical 10% framerate drop simply because you are running vista. 99% of issues people are running into is lack of proper driver support (*cough* NVIDIA). A few days after launch day i read post after post on how people could not play game 'x', while i was playing just peachy, simply because ATI got their shit together and released a proper driver package.
Vista might do some things differently behind the scenes allowing to some framerate drops, but unless you are dipping below 60 FPS, you are not seeing that. Vista's superfetch, indexing, etc more then makes up for a minor bump down. And it will only get better as developers work with Vista more.
Creative Labs is the problem for your drivers as well. According to that posted article, they have been working on it for 3 years (OpenAL spec) .. its a shame there are NO drivers out yet. Sound works just fine otherwise. Soundblaster historically supports ONLY the latest & greatest hey sell, and screws older hardware.
XP wasn't all that hot shit when it launched, it took a while to get where it is... but if you have a decent system, then Vista is JUST FINE for gaming. Its only getting better.
I would stick with whatever you can get the cheapest, as NO version of windows is worth $400. Or even $200. The aero glass is a neat add on, and the usage of yuor vid card to render things originally taken up by CPU is nice.. so are the countless other addons. Sure, there are issues, but SP1 will see a nice resolution to most of them
Librarians harbor a terrible secret. Find it.
Didn't know that, going on the tech news sites. Besides, the branch of Currys I was in last week still had a wall of XP copies, and no boxed Vista. The point I was making is that if you want a new copy of XP, get it soon.
I dunno, it just feels better.
You can get it for like $70 here: http://www.academicsuperstore.com/market/marketdisp.html?PartNo=784207&qk_srch=vista
Superfetch is like the most useful feature ever.
Are you paying attention? It's the least buggy release of an OS MS has probably ever had. It's had vastly more public testing, and the experience of XP's spectacular initial failures. Again, reference the articles linked above. I haven't seen anything outside of troll-posts on Cnet or Tom's claiming otherwise.
As far as 3rd party support goes, however, it's a mess. The whole new driver/kernel model prevented quick and easy ports from XP software, in many cases, so it's a big clusterfuck. I still have a brick under my desk that was once a Dell printer, waiting for drivers. SP1, also, will work quite differently from previous versions (apparently), being more of an Apple OS X-like rollup of patches and small updates, rather than huge leaps like XP's Defender. And hopefully more admin controls for UAC. Still, the "wait for SP1" guideline is misinformed and stupid, even if waiting for other reasons is a good idea.
Again, to echo earlier sentiment, most users will find Vista beneficial. That benefit probably won't be realized by buying an upgrade version and slapping it on older hardware. Exactly why downgrade rights are in place, and XP is still being sold across the board (with OEM stuff increasingly less, of course).
The amount of misinformation out there pisses me off. It's like saying OS X isn't customizable at all or Linux is extremely difficult to use, all the time. One would think that most OS manufacturers are as aware of former flaws as internet people.
Cat, where does that expression come from. I've never heard it before and it kinda made me do a double take.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/twigged
"twig 2 (twg)
v. twigged, twig·ging, twigs Chiefly British
v.tr.
1. To observe or notice.
2. To understand or figure out: "The layman has twigged what the strategist twigged almost two decades ago" Manchester Guardian Weekly."