Hints at Vista's Actual Requirements

[JediSanf]

Wow, ever wonder just how your system is gonna measure up to the Vista behemoth?

PCMag has a screenshot of Vista Build 5308 Performance Rating and Tools (http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewer/0,1205,l=171996&s=26945&a=171997&po=11,00.asp). Click and tremble.

Full article here (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1930231,00.asp).

Sorry for all the Vista news but I think I rate a 1 and... I needed a support group :eek:

[DeadlyDonkey]

Vista's coming out at the end of the year. Anybody who hasn't upgraded their computer to near high-end specs in the past few months is being a bit naive in expecting to be able to run Vista well.

Remember, upgrading to Vista isn't exactly essential.

[Heretic Machine]

Well personally, I think it'd be kind of silly to upgrade specifically for Vista at this point... Shouldn't you wait for video cards that will actually support all of DX10's features, if you're so inclined to upgrade to Vista?

[DeadlyDonkey]

Well personally, I think it'd be kind of silly to upgrade specifically for Vista at this point... Shouldn't you wait for video cards that will actually support all of DX10's features, if you're so inclined to upgrade to Vista?

Exactly, if you are going to upgrade, easily the best time would be early next year. By then there will be lots of DX10 cards, Vista will be out for a few months, so it'll be easier to judge performance on Vista, and also you'll be able to pick up some bargains in the new year sales.

[Nightstorm]

Waiting for DX10 proficient cards (not just compatible and slow, but can actually muscle through the stuff) would be prudent. In addition, that screen has a Geforce FX 5200 as the graphics card, which was not a workhorse in any way shape or form. More like a pig that just sat there. Well I digressed, but that spec in the picture is pretty old. The biggest thing there is the 2GBs of memory. You shouldn't have to worry much. And like deadlydonkey said, the end of the year is a good ways away. With that said though, I can't wait!

[Vandenh]

Those specs will be super low end by the end of the year. And, like many others have said, the upgrade to Vista doesn't have to happen when launched... you can easily wait until your hardware is ready. I am in the market for a new PC end-of-the-year so I guess a Vista one could be in the cards.

[Nadreck]

While some of the features in Vista are appealing, I won't upgrade to it until hardware catches up (DX10, etc). It's a fool's gambit to upgrade your machine right now...

[Mr_Snuffle]

Those specs will be super low end by the end of the year.

We have a much different definition of super low end

[KidCactus]

Why is that computer rated 2? Shouldn't it be something just above 3, or doesn't the subrating matter at all? :D

[flinxz]

I like to let an OS be on the market for at least a year before I start using it. I figure now is a great time to upgrade. If they say October then we all know it means at least April of the next year. Then there are at least 2 months where everything is way overpriced (DX 10 cards that is). Give the OS the time needed for the huge bugs to be fixed and it has easily been 18 to 24 months from now.

I am upgrading, call me insane or whatever, but my top end GeForce 4 is having a hard time these days. I do not wish to invest in a new AGP card just to be bottle necked by my CPU as well as not being able to transfer the card to the majority of new systems.

I have had this system for three years. That is the longest I have ever had a system. Honestly the majority of the people that are going to be reading Evil Avatar probably do a decent upgrade every year and a total overhaul every other year.

[Gel214th]

Vista, a way to get you to spend money to upgrade your hardware when you don't need to.

Vista offers nothing that makes the expense of new hardware worthwhile and if it cannot run properly on existing hardware it is a bloated mess.

As a business owner I'm supposed to switch out all my old PCs so that I can upgrade to Vista?

Please.

As a gamer I'm already upgrading to run the latest games, but I am not doing it because of Vista.

THis is rubbish, a new OS that is even less efficient on existing hardware than the old one, and does not include 90% of the new features which were touted and promised at the start.
Progress.
Right.

[Syl]

I find it odd that the requirements are so high, when i've heard from people who use the Vista Beta that it can run on pretty much everything, generally it takes less resources than windows XP.

I know one guy who got it working on a 333mhz machine just for kicks.

[bapenguin]

There's just nothing in Vista that appeals to me. They dropped the one cool feature I was looking forward to in WinFS.

[bboy]

Add to that the fresh new DRM related additions that will MS will be 'peppering' us with. It's a new 'feature' for us of course!

/waller rapery and ass f*ckery I tell ya.

I will not be buying this OS

[Steve_Erhardt]

What I find hilarious are the programs that are "slowing down Windows start"...

Uh... those are all part of the OS, dipshits. It's like saying my hips are slowing me down when I run. :rolleyes:

[StGeorge]

Vista's coming out at the end of the year. Anybody who hasn't upgraded their computer to near high-end specs in the past few months is being a bit naive in expecting to be able to run Vista well.

Remember, upgrading to Vista isn't exactly essential.

Well as gamers, Microsoft is basically going to drop support for DirectX9 after Vista is released, and force all developers to DirectX10... which only works on Vista. So upgrading to Vista will be a requirement for gamers, and we'll be lucky if the requirement isn't to upgrade to Vista Ultimate (of which the current estimate is that it will cost $499).

[LilEvilFish]

how about no? Loads of people talk about the death of PC Gaming, if we had to upgrade to Vista, well.. MS killed gaming.

[StoneGut]

Ack... it's a pretty good rating system I guess. It will avoid the problems with people with little or no knowledge buying softare that they know will work on their computer.

The article has some gret info on Vista. To bad an upgrade will most likly be in order before most people purchase it.

[DeadlyDonkey]

how about no? Loads of people talk about the death of PC Gaming, if we had to upgrade to Vista, well.. MS killed gaming.

DX10 is vista only. That's a fact. Get over it, the PC market is used to upgrading every couple of years, it won't kill it.

A lot of games will have DX10 features but run fine in DX9, just like Pixel Shaders were a while back. After a year or so the first games that are DX10-only will arrive.

I remember well Deus Ex 2 being the game that pretty much forced me to upgrade my GFX card, because you could only run it with cards which had Pixel Shaders. It'll be the same scenario again.

[Vandenh]

USB memory, Media Server build in, much better security and hardware encryped HDD.

Nuff said....

[shnastybiznastic]

There's just nothing in Vista that appeals to me. They dropped the one cool feature I was looking forward to in WinFS.

for real. I was looking forward to improved terminal services myself.

[Nite_Moogle]

The Aero UI is what eats up most of the resources, sam as OS X. Vista's core should run more smoothly than XP on today's upper-end systems.

[Conner Dain]

I've read about Vista's new features and frankly, I have no plans to upgrade. An OS should do a few things really well. Microsoft's philosophy of adding more and more into the OS is wrongheaded. I'm guessing that Vista will (realistically) need at least 512 mb RAM to work reasonably well. That's a lot of memory just for the OS. XP isn't perfect, but if a user takes reasonable care of it and uses a good package of Anti-virus, anti-spyware, and general security software, it's a good os. Why change?

[The Letter 3]

I have had this system for three years. That is the longest I have ever had a system. Honestly the majority of the people that are going to be reading Evil Avatar probably do a decent upgrade every year and a total overhaul every other year.
You make me feel bad! I'm going on four years with my system... P4 Northwood 1.6 ghz (512 Kb L2 cache), 512 MB RAM, 80 GB HD (ATA), and a 128 MB GeForce 3 Ti200. As a testament to Half-Life 2 and Doom 3, I can play both of those games with a decent resolution and medium settings.

If you want to, Flinxz, I'd be all about letting you do a decent upgrade or total overhaul! :D

[Steele Johnson]

Whenever MS comes out with a new OS, most of my current games don't run on it. So I'm never in a rush to upgrade. The list of features really doesn't give me much of a reason to upgrade. DX10 will be released for xp as well.

I usually wait until I get my next computer which typically has the latest OS already installed.

[Magnanimous Gnome]

Yeah, I'm not really impressed with this either. I find it odd that 2GB of RAM got such a low rating - that's just a huge amount of memory to me.

This upgrade will be forced on all who want to play the latest and greatest games next year, which is too bad.

This is the first time I've seen screenshots of Vista in action. Kind of amusing that it looks quite similar to OSX, at least from what I saw.

[shnastybiznastic]

You make me feel bad! I'm going on four years with my system... P4 Northwood 1.6 ghz (512 Kb L2 cache), 512 MB RAM, 80 GB HD (ATA), and a 128 MB GeForce 3 Ti200.

How do you think I feel? 800Mhz p3 Coppermine, 256MB PC133, radeon 3200 PCI video card. :(

[bboy]

I wonder if Vista's power management will switch a notebook back to legacy UI when the battery is low on juice.

[AntB]

Just like WindowsME and Windows XP, I'm going to skip Vista. Atleast for a year or two. Couldn't resist Windows XP after service pack1.

I went streight to 2000 from 98 and I didn't look back up untill 2 years ago when I upgraded to Windows XP.

I get all Windows reivisions for free since my father is a network engineer and he has licence keys up the wazoo, so the cost doesn't matter to me much.

Also, I'm planning to upgrade my video card relatively soon, planning to get a $600 card, so I won't be shelling any money out on a videocard for atleast the next 2-3 years. DirectX10 won't take hold for that long anyway. Look how long it took developers to start using DirectX9's full shader functionality. Many still don't use it.

[Mason]

Well as gamers, Microsoft is basically going to drop support for DirectX9 after Vista is released, and force all developers to DirectX10... which only works on Vista. So upgrading to Vista will be a requirement for gamers, and we'll be lucky if the requirement isn't to upgrade to Vista Ultimate (of which the current estimate is that it will cost $499).

They're releasing a new version of DirectX 9 along with Vista, and that'll definitely be the dominant codepath until DX10 hardware has filtered down into most of the market, which will take years. Don't expect DX9 to disappear any time soon.

[EternalGamer]

How do you think I feel? 800Mhz p3 Coppermine, 256MB PC133, radeon 3200 PCI video card. :(


Well I'm joining you two in the "survivor PC" category. I'm the proud owner of a Duron 900MHZ, Voodoo 4 graphics card, 768MB RAM and a 12GB harddrive (which after around five years of use I still have not filled). And my compture runs flawless for what I use it for. For anyone that doesn't play games or work with high end graphics programs, upgrading has really become pointless. I use my computer for MS Word, Internet/E-mail, listening to MP3s, and the occasional emulator or DVD. It does all those things at perfect full speed.

Dan

[shnastybiznastic]

For anyone that doesn't play games or work with high end graphics programs, upgrading has really become pointless. I use my computer for MS Word, Internet/E-mail, listening to MP3s, and the occasional emulator or DVD. It does all those things at perfect full speed.

Just wondering... What things (if any) did you change to get better performance out of Windows. I left Windows for Slackware when my computer started to run slowly(4-5 years ago), but recently I wanted to play planescape or diablo 2 again, and wine dosent run them at full speed for me.

[EternalGamer]

The only thing I've done to my PC over the last few years was add 512MB of PC100 RAM. I did that a few months ago, and I wasn't actually really needing it for any of the things I do, but I thought my system deserved to have a treat thrown at it for so many years of solid use. I did notice an improved start up speed in Windows and loading up Word and other programs for the first time upon bootup became nearly instantaneous. The only PC game I've played in years is Unreal Tournament. I played Diablo 2 for a while years ago, but it always ran fine even before I upgraded the RAM.

I have found that when I stopped upgrading and playing games on my PC that is when it began to run a lot smoother and more stable. When you aren't upgrading drivers all the time uninstalling and reinstalling large software programs, Win XP is pretty fast and solid system and it gets into a nice optimized groove. I have not had a lock up or error of any type for literally years. As a result, I have decided to keep my serious gaming on my console systems where it can't fuck up a perfectly good computer which I need for other things.

Dan

[Citizen Philip]

When some smartass entrepeneur (sp) gets the time to make a PC OS for GAMING using Linux or whatever, I will dump Windows.

Of course.. once hardware vendors start making drivers for non-Windows system.. that'd be nice too.

[Demize99]

Where's Windows Vista version 7: None of the bullshit, just the basics. All I want from my OS is to let other programs run. So provide the APIs for networking and that, and then leave the media and other junk to specialists. Just make me an OS that runs minimally, and let me do games.

[shnastybiznastic]

When some smartass entrepeneur (sp) gets the time to make a PC OS for GAMING using Linux or whatever, I will dump Windows.
I can completley understand that sentement. People tell me good things about Cedega/WineX, and I may get a subscription, when I finally get around to building a new workstation.

Of course.. once hardware vendors start making drivers for non-Windows system.. that'd be nice too.
ATIs drivers are pretty good, not open source, which I guess bothers some people, but I never had a problem with them. NVidia has good drivers too, and they are open source. Now if only WiFi card manufacturers would get on the stick.

[MStiles]

Don't worry too much. That PC is rating low just because it has a GeForce FX 5200, which we all know sucks. It would easily rate a 4 or so with a decent GF6600 or Radeon x1600.

[skarironfist]

Well I am waiting until HDMI Video cards and Displays are out before making any serious decisions.

Since I would like to play Hi Def movies on my PC and everything I am reading says, that unless both the video and display have the encyption built in, then it will not give a true image.

Whats annoying is I just got a Nvidia 7800, before I was aware of this issue.

The use of Memory sticks for quicker booting time (If you have them plugged in), is something that I like though.

[PathMaster]

So what your saying is that I should wait to build myself a new pc, even tho this four year old machine cant quite hack it....alas computer deities, why do you mock me so....?

[ElectricMonk]

is this rating supposed to be out of 5 or 10?

[Megalith]

Wait, so you need like, 5 gigs of ram for Vista to run optimally.

LoL.

[Sl1pstream]

I thought I heard something about switching between the 3D desktop (the one that probably needs those specs) and the 2D one (the one that hopefully doesn't).

I'm willing to switch to Vista, if my laptop can handle the 2D desktop. I want Media Center stuff without buying a new computer.

[Neosho]

is this rating supposed to be out of 5 or 10?

This is EXACTLY what i was wondering...

[overdrivechao]

Wait, so you need like, 5 gigs of ram for Vista to run optimally.

LoL.

Streamlined for efficency like all *** productions. They can't scrap the OS and rebuild from scratch like Apple did with OS X and then again here with the intel chips. Owning 95% of the market means death for your company if you change something huge, so windows seems doomed to get bigger and uglier and more CPU intensive.

[triangle]

Greetings,

I got really interested in WinFS filesystem. It is a great one imho. If you also whis to find info on it I suppose you give a glance at this source http://www.ntfs.com/ I found out really useful things there.

[shnastybiznastic]

I got really interested in WinFS filesystem. It is a great one imho. If you also whis to find info on it I suppose you give a glance at this source http://www.ntfs.com/ I found out really useful things there.
WinFS is neat, but it's long overdue, I mean, Reiser4 will probalby be stable before it hits.