My Vista Experience

[Greenwood]

Finally decided it was time for an upgrade - purchased HP Pavilion PC with Q6600 processor - all the goodies - and also a Geforce 8800 GT Alpha Dog Edition.

Also what came pre-installed on my PC? Windows Vista. I thought I would give it a try. I liked it at first. Was running very fast - some of the small changes MS made was very nice. All was good with Windows Vista UNTIL I put Mr. Geforce in the PC.

I made sure I updated all the drivers - everything was done right - but for some reason SH4 would crash to desktop. I set the graphics as high as I could get them - I thought that might be the reason - or heat. I decided to load up some other graphics-intense games. Company of Heroes - installed it - ran for about 5 minutes then dropped to desktop. Windows Vista gives me an error saying my video driver has stopped responding?? What ??

Ok one more try - I install and load up Armed Assault - very graphics intense game. Would run fine for 5 minutes - then ba boom - desktop I go.

At this point - I thought it could be defective card - or over-heating. I decided without any further investigation that it was not these things - and it might very well be Vista.

I down-graded to Windows XP - installed SH4 and all those other games. Let me say that SH4 looks absolutely beautiful with very high graphics settings - and this time the game managed to run perfectly, thanks to trusty ol Windows XP! All the other games I couldn't run in Vista properly, i was able to run with Windows XP, all those games on ultra high graphics settings and they worked amazing.

Thats my first, and last Vista experience :-)

[TDK1044]

The price you pay with Vista for a few extra bells and whistles is simply not worth it in my view. Even if everything is set up correctly, system response time is horrible....even with more than sufficient RAM.

I'll be sticking with XP for at least a year...probably two.

[seafarer]

I've run both an 8500 and now an 8600GT/OC (512MB) under Vista 32 bit with no problems - including playing SH4. My neighbor uses an 8800GT (bought just before XMas - don't know the brand but it was one of the offerings from Newegg.com) with SH4 under Vista 32 bit.

We are both using Forceware version 169.25 for Vista 32 bit. His machine has 3GB of RAM and mine has 4GB and both are AMD 64x2 machines (mine is a 4800+, I believe his is a 5000+).

I'm just saying that the card should have been fine under Vista :hmm:

[Greenwood]

Originally Posted by seafarer

I've run both an 8500 and now an 8600GT/OC (512MB) under Vista 32 bit with no problems - including playing SH4. My neighbor uses an 8800GT (bought just before XMas - don't know the brand but it was one of the offerings from Newegg.com) with SH4 under Vista 32 bit.

We are both using Forceware version 169.25 for Vista 32 bit. His machine has 3GB of RAM and mine has 4GB and both are AMD 64x2 machines (mine is a 4800+, I believe his is a 5000+).

I'm just saying that the card should have been fine under Vista :hmm:

Yes it should have been. When I was running the games before they crashed they looked perfect, ran very smoothly. But every game I tried would crash with a video error. There might have been something I could have done to fix it. I'm in no way a hardware guru.

[Peto]

I've had experiences with Vista that run the gauntlet from horrible to fine. It seems that some hardware configs just don't get along with Vista and I haven't been able to find any consistent reasons why (or why not). I know it doesn't work on my rig for much of anything but running Vista itself. If I try to run a 3rd party program it's done. Thank heavens for Dual Boot OS's.

Still, I look forward to the day when Vista begins to work better as there is upside potential in the OS. My feeling is that MS "tried" to make Vista intuitive--that it would know what a user wants to do. And that aspect of the program is getting in the face of many users who like to stream-line their systems for specific purposes. I'm not positive about that though...

Video is still the biggest hurdle in my experience. It's always happy to drop me to the desktop regardless of the driver version I use... Vista performance seems to be very platform dependant.

[SUBMAN1]

I'll probably stick with XP till Windows 9 comes out. I have one Vista system at home, and that is more than 1 too many. I like its ability to manipulate flash drives (which XP can't do effectively) with the diskpart program is one of the few reasons I keep it around.

XP works fine, runs weverything I want it to and does it faster than Vista, so why on Earth would one want Vista?

-S

Back when XP first came out it was a mess too. People would load it and then back down to Win 2000. But after a year or so XP started performing ok - after all the fixes and updates. Vista likely will also in about 6 to 8 months. But the question is do people really need more than XP? The number and quality of games for PCs is likely to keep falling. Computer sales are going down - in Japan I understand the market is about dying. Everyone is going to other platforms. I think I stick with XP until I see a major GAMING reason to upgrade.

[Tchocky]

That's assuming you see a PC as primarily for gaming

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by TDK1044

The price you pay with Vista for a few extra bells and whistles is simply not worth it in my view. Even if everything is set up correctly, system response time is horrible....even with more than sufficient RAM.

I'll be sticking with XP for at least a year...probably two.

I'm with TDK on this one. It needs at least a year and a service pack or two. The companies who make goodies for the computer need to get a better understanding of Vista.

[Kapitan_Phillips]

Originally Posted by seafarer

I've run both an 8500 and now an 8600GT/OC (512MB) under Vista 32 bit with no problems - including playing SH4. My neighbor uses an 8800GT (bought just before XMas - don't know the brand but it was one of the offerings from Newegg.com) with SH4 under Vista 32 bit.

We are both using Forceware version 169.25 for Vista 32 bit. His machine has 3GB of RAM and mine has 4GB and both are AMD 64x2 machines (mine is a 4800+, I believe his is a 5000+).

I'm just saying that the card should have been fine under Vista :hmm:

How do you afford all that happiness?!

[kranz]

imo vista sux.Thousands of confirmations etc even if you want delete one file.Maybe it's just a matter of configuring those messages but....I have this vista on HP Pavilion dv blablabla and everything is supposed to be 150% "multimedia" but they ******* this up.I'm using the touch pad which means that one unfortunate click makes me .I have 1 GB ram and sometimes I get stucked in Word when pasting sth. For me-D grade where XP is B.