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Going Vista... Advice?

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OCBucksFan

OCBucksFan

I won a math debate
So, my company is getting me Vista Ultimate. Unfortunately, I work in an environment that kind of requires me to be familiar with the newest operating system, and with XP support only having another 2 years, I need to learn where Microsoft is going.

Currently, I run Windows XP MCE 2005, 2 Gigs of Memory, 80Gb HD with a Hyper Threaded 2.8 GHZ P4.

I am going to upgrade the HD to a 500 gig, thinking about taking the memory to 4 gigs, otherwise, will this PC be fine? Do I need to go Pentium D to make this happen?

What's others experience with Vista?
 
I've been using Vista for about two months. I run a black keyboard, black and silver mouse. The tower is white with a silver front. There's also black on it. It plays cd's and shit. Lexmark printer. Uh...tabs...uh...my monitor is old school. Hope that helps.
 
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I'm not sure the performance/cost ratio would be high enough to upgrade both the processor and motherboard, as you'd do. Then you'd probably consider upgrading all 4 GB of ram, losing out on the 2 GB.

Personally, since you're building it anyway, I'd try upgrading the HD (with a nice buffer & RPM) & +2 GB Ram and see how it runs. If it's good enough, you can save your cash and spend a $150 down the road and get a lot more bang for your buck. If it's not fast enough for your taste, you can always make the proc/mobo upgrade later.
Do you know alot about processors BuckFan?
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For all but a select few, a dual core processor will be just fine.
 
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I've been running Vista for a while now, and the quirks are rare for me, nowhere near as bad as advertised. Overall the interface is improved and the general computing experience.

In a perfect world I'd be running a macintosh, with windows emulation and unix capabilities, but that is simply too costly for now.
 
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jwinslow;1320392; said:
I'm not sure the performance/cost ratio would be high enough to upgrade both the processor and motherboard, as you'd do. Then you'd probably consider upgrading all 4 GB of ram, losing out on the 2 GB.

Personally, since you're building it anyway, I'd try upgrading the HD (with a nice buffer & RPM) & +2 GB Ram and see how it runs. If it's good enough, you can save your cash and spend a $150 down the road and get a lot more bang for your buck. If it's not fast enough for your taste, you can always make the proc/mobo upgrade later.
For all but a select few, a dual core processor will be just fine.
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I just wasn't sure about Athlon processors.... I found a cheap desktop (something for the bedroom), that has an Athlon Dual Core processor.. I had never heard of Athlon before.
 
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Nothing wrong with amd..Nothing wrong with vista either,but you have to have a decent computer to run it. If you are going to bump up the ram to 4gbs and install a new hard drive you wont have any problems with it imo..I use vista ultimate as well
 
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OCBucksFan;1320189; said:
What's others experience with Vista?
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I ran into some issues that you probably won't experience because of my type of use, hardware, etc.


4GB of anything you can find - depending on what eye candy you want to use the more the better for your gpu.

Anything less than some type of dual core and its not very snappy on the desktop. Just make sure to enable multi core booting otherwise it might take a while to get your machine going.


As for "Athlon" Unless its a 64 or X2 I wouldn't bother. Your early athlons were single cores and really nothing of an upgrade unless its say, a 4000+ San Diego at least.


depends on what you use your machine for really...
 
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Athlon is the budget alternative to Intel. Many years ago, they provided great bang for the buck (they weren't as powerful, but you got a lot more pop for much less). These days, Intel is clearly superior in performance and often in value as well, with the deals coming out these days.

Spend some time perusing slickdeals.net (search by topic for 'desktop') to get a good feel for the deals available. You may find some upcoming black friday deals, some which you can get online. I'm not crazy enough to join that madness, but snagged a great deal on Guitar Hero at Midnight before Black Friday from my laptop.
 
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jwinslow;1320885; said:
Athlon is the budget alternative to Intel. Many years ago, they provided great bang for the buck (they weren't as powerful, but you got a lot more pop for much less). These days, Intel is clearly superior in performance and often in value as well, with the deals coming out these days.
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Actually, not really quite the case. For the longest time the Athlon, 64, X2 and Opteron were far superior chips to anything Intel had and the choice for most anybody intelligent.

The prescott and late edition Northwoods were, at best, a flop.

AMD wasn't always the "underdog" role, but beating Intel off their pile of money isn't easy.

Now a days AMD produce mainly budget minded chips. The triple core is a fantastic unit, and if you can get your hands on the right stepping and core, I've nabbed 50% overclocks on air.
 
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i have had vista on my office pc for quite sometime now, its been pretty solid, i'm running 4gb of ram and this thing screams. there are only two of us here that have vista, too many progams still not vista compatible in the finance sector.
 
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Actually, not really quite the case. For the longest time the Athlon, 64, X2 and Opteron were far superior chips to anything Intel had and the choice for most anybody intelligent.
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Curious, what time period was this? I was something of an enthusiast during college (01-05), but tailed off and lost touch going into 05.
Now a days AMD produce mainly budget minded chips. The triple core is a fantastic unit, and if you can get your hands on the right stepping and core, I've nabbed 50% overclocks on air.
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agreed, but a lot of the pre-built units from brand names do not seem to offer the same discounts with AMD chips that they once did. I realize buying stock units is revolting to most performance users, but when a huge sale/glitch (stacking coupons) comes along, it can be quite a steal.
 
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jwinslow;1321217; said:
Curious, what time period was this? I was something of an enthusiast during college (01-05),
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Intel's last good P4 was 2003. AMd started leading with the Barton's in 2002 and lasted just about the length of the 939 timeline (late 2006)

Those were the days. I remember my first batch of Opteron's. CAJBE and CAJYE 146 and 148. On air I got the 148 to 3200mhz. Beyond 3ghz
for those chips were absolute gold. *nerd dreams*

jwinslow;1321217; said:
but a lot of the pre-built units from brand names do not seem to offer the same discounts with AMD chips that they once did.
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Of course, AMD has nothing compared to the resources that Intel has. Production alone (which is why they opened fab 36 in dresden) was a huge issue during their leadership period (2003-2006) which is why sometimes their chips would be a bit on the expensive side (and it was either that or buy a Prescott space heater)

Intel can offer discounts on volume because they have the money and the fabs necessary to produce mass on a cheaper dollar.
 
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