Compy Shopping

[Scionith]

Going to buy a new computer, where should I do it? And going to preface this with me being too lazy to build my own. I've looked at Dell and Alienware and they seem about equal.

Probably looking for a decent processor like a 2.4 GHz Intel Core Duo, 2 GB Ram, don't need a new monitor. Seems like nVidia is the defacto video card to get these days? And is it worth getting anything better than the 256 MB GeForce 7900 GS? Seems like a big step up in price beyond that.

And probably most importantly, do I try to avoid Vista like the plague? Keep in mind, I'd want to use the PC when I get it, and play games with it. I suppose I could always just get a PC with Vista and then just install the XP I have over it. Which might be a good idea regardless just to get rid of all the stupid software companies put on fab systems.

[Lefiel]

go with dell. i used to hate em but im satisfied with this pc. what you described as your wants for a new pc is basically what mine has cept it has a 7300. im pretty sure you can get a pc with xp on it and dell offers a free upgrade to vista you can redeem i forget how long it lasts tho.

[Yummy]

I say check out what Alienware has for their gaming PCs first! I dunno if they're still overpriced though. Wish I could help with the videocard specifics and stuff but I haven't kept up with that scene for a LOOONG time.

http://www.alienware.com/intro_pages/geforce8_quadcore.aspx

interesting :tati:

[Trynn]

I've looked at Dell and Alienware and they seem about equal.
Alienware is owned by Dell, so they are basically the same thing now. FYI, VoodooPC is owned by HP now, which leaves FalconNW (I think) as pretty much the only moderately big-name independant "performance" brand out there.


Seems like nVidia is the defacto video card to get these days?
That really depends on your uses. For Windows gaming, ATI and nVidia are about the same, unless you start getting into the DirectX 10 cards (ATIs aren't out yet... nVidia's are, but their drivers suck). If you want to install linux at all, go with nVidia. Otherwise either brand is fine.


And is it worth getting anything better than the 256 MB GeForce 7900 GS? Seems like a big step up in price beyond that.

If you want to "future-proof" yourself by buying a DirectX 10 card now (note: there are no DirectX 10 games out... and likely won't be very many for a good while still), then an nVidia 8xxx-series is the only game in town, and in that case might be worth it to put up with the buggy nature of the drivers right now. If you don't care about DX10 right now, then a 7900 (or equivalent ATI card) is more than sufficient for anything.


And probably most importantly, do I try to avoid Vista like the plague?
Short-ish answer: If you get a 7xxx-series card, you shouldn't have many problems using Vista and games. A lot of the earlier issues have been ironed out by now.

Long-ish answer: It really depends on what games (specifically) you're planning on playing. Most of the problems people have with Vista have to do with either drivers or specific app compatibility problems. For instance, I have no problems playing Civ4 in Vista, but I can't even load Dawn of War because DoW's got hardcoded values for the driver versions it recognizes (talk about a really, really stupid software design...), so it throws an error saying my graphics card isn't supported (even though it is).

So, if you only have a select number of older games (anything out post-Vista-RTM should work on Vista) that you want to play, I'd suggest looking the various forums for those games to see whether they work in Vista. If you have a much wider selection of games and/or may purchase older games to play on this new computer, you'll probably want to switch to XP or set up a dual-boot system in order to have a wider range of app compatibility. I found this link (http://www.iexbeta.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_Vista_Software_Compatibility_List) awhile ago, which may help somewhat... it's a wiki that someone started to track which apps (not just games) work completely, partially, or not at all on Vista. It's quite handy.

[Zumi]

I just got a dell 2.4 ghz core 2 duo - seems to be a major jump in price past this point
2 gb ram
dual geforce 7900 running in sli - This doesn't have a problem running anything really
Which ended up costing $2400 with no moniter since I already had one

I installed the vista upgrade that they sent in the mail, there really wasn't any problems with it running anything. But it does make the video card fan run all the time in the 7900 cause vista is a 3d environment.

Oh yea, save your money and don't get SLI, you notice amost no difference between having 1 video card and 2 video cards

[Halon50]

Heard word on the pipe (http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/12212). AMD dropped their entire line of X2 cpu's to under $200 except the top-of-the-line 6000 or whatever it is for $241. Which means Intel is gonna drop their core duo CPU's in a week or two. Soooo, I'd say build-your-own machine once Intel's price cuts go through, since it usually takes a month or so for computer builders to reflect the new prices.

[Scionith]

Heard word on the pipe (http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/12212). AMD dropped their entire line of X2 cpu's to under $200 except the top-of-the-line 6000 or whatever it is for $241. Which means Intel is gonna drop their core duo CPU's in a week or two. Soooo, I'd say build-your-own machine once Intel's price cuts go through, since it usually takes a month or so for computer builders to reflect the new prices.
Meh, there's always another price cut on the horizon. Not going to build my own just because I'm too lazy now. And waiting a couple months and computer components always should be cheaper.

More on that DX10 stuff. Cards that natively support it would just have an advantage running programs using it right? I haven't researched video cards in like 3 years so I'm way out of the loop. But I'd imagine that DX10 could be software supported on older cards, and just suffer a performance hit. It usually seems that I could buy the nice middle of the line video card now, and when DX10 starts becoming prevalent in applications I could buy a new middle of the line video card that supports DX10. And still save money not buying the uber future proof card right now. I could be waaay wrong though.

[Trynn]

The jump from DX9 to DX10 is quite different than previous DX revisions, from what I understand... like, they completely redesigned stuff (most likely to work with Vista's new driver model, and also to work with the Xbox 360's development model). As far as I've read, DX9 cards won't run DX10 games, unless those games also include DX9 API calls for downstream cards.

That being said, you could certainly buy a nice mid-range DX9 card now, and just get a new nice mid-range DX10 card in a year or two when there are more DX10 games out. Also, I forgot about this earlier, but nVidia is set to release its mid-range 8xxx-series cards (which will all be DX10-native) next Tuesday. So if you can wait just a little bit, you might be able to effectively future-proof yourself for a cheaper price. The buggy drivers will still be an issue in the shorter term, of course, although I expect nVidia will release new Vista drivers (they released new XP drivers for 8xxx last week) on or around that date as well.

[suji]

Heard word on the pipe (http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/12212). AMD dropped their entire line of X2 cpu's to under $200 except the top-of-the-line 6000 or whatever it is for $241. Which means Intel is gonna drop their core duo CPU's in a week or two. Soooo, I'd say build-your-own machine once Intel's price cuts go through, since it usually takes a month or so for computer builders to reflect the new prices.

If you can show me a link to somewhere reputable online (not ebay) that I can buy a socket939 4800 XP, I will send you an unsigned heart chocolate:aurora:. I've been looking for one of those for a while now and it's been freakin hell trying to track them down for a good price.

[Trynn]

Um, there is no Athlon XP 4800+. The XP's only went up to 3200+. Or did you mean an socket 939 Athlon 64 X2 4800+? I've found that listed on both Directron and ZZF, but both show out of stock. I could've sworn that they were discontinued too, so I dunno if they'll come back into stock.

[suji]

Um, there is no Athlon XP 4800+. The XP's only went up to 3200+. Or did you mean an socket 939 Athlon 64 X2 4800+? I've found that listed on both Directron and ZZF, but both show out of stock. I could've sworn that they were discontinued too, so I dunno if they'll come back into stock.
yeah, that's what I mean. They are out of stock everywhere I've checked too, it's been pretty frustrating. I guess I got confused.

I have been shopping for a powerful socket939 chip but because those indecisive fucks can't stick to one chipset, it hasn't been easy.

[thelegendarycravy]

ill build you one and mail it to you. i think you should go with:

phase cooled intel core 2 duo extreme
double 8800GTX watercooled
8gb of ram
2terabytes of HDD
2 dvd burners
2 30inch dell monitors

ill ship it asap, send me a check for like 10g's kthx

[thelegendarycravy]

seriously though:

Go with a Intel Core 2 Duo
Get a Nvidia 512MB 7900 or ATi 512MB X1950XT
At least 2GB of ram
SATA HDD

Wont be too much and should be good for awhile.

[Halon50]

If you can show me a link to somewhere reputable online (not ebay) that I can buy a socket939 4800 XP, I will send you an unsigned heart chocolate:aurora:. I've been looking for one of those for a while now and it's been freakin hell trying to track them down for a good price.

If MWave (http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewproduct.asp?PID=CPU-ATHLON64&updepts=CPU&DNAME=Processors+%2D+CPU) doesn't have it, I doubt you'll find it anywhere except some small mom-n-pop electronics stores that might still have one stashed away...

...

So a search on pricegrabber returned this (http://techbargains.pricegrabber.com/user_sales_getprod.php/masterid=9157345/lot_id=6347507/ut=4cd4843bb6be2898). I'd say it's a discontinued part, lemme check.

EDIT: Yeah, when AMD's website (http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_11120_11124,00.html) lists their own PiB list as AM2 socket only, I'd say they've stopped supporting the 939 socket and will cut off the OEM supply altogether.

[Yummy]

too bad my dad doesn't work at AMD anymore :\

[Donedeal]

Case -- Lian Li V2000b Plus 2 ------------------------------
PSU --- Seasonic S12-600 ----------------------------------
MOBO - Asus P5W DH ---------------------------------------
HD ---- 2 x 250gb Seagate Perps --------------------------
CPU --- Intel C2D E6600 (Topped by Ultra 120) ----------
RAM --- 2x 1 gb Gskill HZ ddr2 800 -----------------------
GFX --- Evga 8800gts! ------------------

Build it and tell me it's not the best, also save yourself one grand.

[Lefiel]

whats a evga ?

[thelegendarycravy]

whats a evga ?

a company that makes nvidia video cards. they are good along with BFG technology or w/e

[Izzy]

hay, more details on when that intel price drop is happening, and when it will trickle down onto hp laptops Q_Q plzzzzzzzzz

[Tyler]

ibuypower comps are pretty good!

[Zilent]

Well I have personally used 4 different brands of computers for a long time in my house. Out of them all, Alienware which is the brand of my laptop is the best. My mom has a gateway laptop and we used to have a gateway desktop and they both are pretty much crap. They were fine in the begining but it seemed after a certain amount of time shit just hit the fan (not literally) and they pretty much became slow as hell and useless. Then we also had a dell desktop which worked pretty damn well. It crapped out after we got damn adware on it but it still works pretty well. Then there is always a Mac, but goddamn does that thing helluva lot harder to control with all its stupid functions and crap so screw it. But yeah I am very happy with my alienware, I have had it for almost a year now and it's still running the same way as when I first pulled it out of the box. So I suggest to go for an Alienware if you are gonna buy it thru a manufacturer instead of building it. Yes Alienware is owned by Dell but Alienware is still its seperate entity!

[Izzy]

hay, more details on when that intel price drop is happening, and when it will trickle down onto hp laptops Q_Q plzzzzzzzzz

someone in the know halp and answer plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Immortaldonut]

Macs really aren't that hard >_>

[Trynn]

Here's all the information I can find on techreport about a rumoured Intel price cut this month:
Here's the initial rumour from December: http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/11455

Here's additional detail giving an actual date (April 22):
http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/11836

Here's confirmation on the date from another source:
http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/12133

That's all I can find. I guess we'll know for sure on the 22nd

[Tyler]

Well I have personally used 4 different brands of computers for a long time in my house. Out of them all, Alienware which is the brand of my laptop is the best. My mom has a gateway laptop and we used to have a gateway desktop and they both are pretty much crap. They were fine in the begining but it seemed after a certain amount of time shit just hit the fan (not literally) and they pretty much became slow as hell and useless. Then we also had a dell desktop which worked pretty damn well. It crapped out after we got damn adware on it but it still works pretty well. Then there is always a Mac, but goddamn does that thing helluva lot harder to control with all its stupid functions and crap so screw it. But yeah I am very happy with my alienware, I have had it for almost a year now and it's still running the same way as when I first pulled it out of the box. So I suggest to go for an Alienware if you are gonna buy it thru a manufacturer instead of building it. Yes Alienware is owned by Dell but Alienware is still its seperate entity!





yeah but Dell owns Alienware, cant be so sure the quality is the same!


i got my alienware before that happened and i love it. I have a Gateway desktop that I've had for almost four years now, still works great. Granted I've reformatted the HD several times, but imo that's something you should do (or i like to do) every so often to clean up. (ie spring cleaning for my computer)

[Zumi]

In my gateway I had before my dell the hard drive died, and later a memory stick died which took me a long time to figure out that was the problem.

[Zilent]

The quality is the same, like I said, Dell owns it but Alienware still operates by itself.

[Trynn]

Here's more info about the Intel price drop for Izzy: http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/12325

Looks like Intel did in fact drop prices across the C2D, C2Q and Xeon lines today. Of course, this price drop is only for desktop processors, so doesn't answer your question about laptops. Intel is supposed to be officially unveiling Santa Rosa (they're new mobile platform) early next month, so you likely won't see any changes in laptop pricing until at least the end of May.

[Lycender]

You should buy my computer :P

[Scionith]

Got my new computer last night and managed to get FFXI running on Vista. I had to stay up until 2AM because the damn POL update took forever and I wanted to start the FFXI update before I went to bed. I did the registry edits to have the Screen resolution and Background resolution to 1680x1050, and it looks pretty good. I need to put fraps on there to see what kind of FPS I'm getting but it seemed fine unless I spun the camera around. I suppose I could look to see if there's new video card drivers though. If every thing is good, I guess I could try bumping the Background resolution higher, and get some oversampling going.

I also need to get the hang of the whole Vista thing. I didn't even bother getting around to figuring out how to make it stop asking me if I could run a program or not. I double clicked it, I want to run it. Q_Qa

[freja]

What are the specs on your new computer? :D

[Scionith]

Went kind of middle of the road with it.

Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E6600 (4MB L2 Cache,2.4GHz,1066 FSB)
4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 4 DIMMs
20 inch UltraSharp™ 2007WFP Widescreen Digital Flat Panel
256MB nVidia GeForce 8600 GTS

Nothing else too interesting about it. I think they sent me the wrong speaker with my monitor though, my sleepy 1AM self couldn't figure any possible way to attach it. And the speaker on the order is a Dell AS501 10W Flat Panel Attached Spkrs for UltraSharp™ Flat Panels so it seems like I picked the correct one.

[suji]

I bought a nice machine.
Now buy Supreme Commander and tell me how it runs. ;)

[Scionith]

I was planning on picking it up sometime. It's just a standalone game right? Not like an expansion onto another game. I'm so out of the loop on computer games now, I don't even know where to look.

[Zumi]

Sort of like the computer I got. Did you get vista64 but cause I think it will only detect 2.75 GB of ram otherwise. But I just got done deleteing vista off my computer and reinstalling XP. Got so many blue screens in vista, now it seems to be working fine in XP. I am reinstalling my programs right now.

[Scionith]

Vista told me that I had 3 GB of RAM, but I figured it said that because it was hogging 1 GB of it. If it just can't detect the 4th, that's pretty lame. I would hope that's an issue that they would soon... address.

But I won't downgrade the computer to XP until I start running into issues I guess.

[Sykes]

Actually, it is a limitation in 32-bit memory addressing. You'll probably never see your last GB, and despite manufacturer claims, there are relatively few consumer motherboards that can actually see that last GB.

Long-winded explanation of why that issue exists can be found here (http://www.interact-sw.co.uk/iangblog/2005/08/05/is3gbenough).

[Trynn]

Yep, what Sykes said. It's not a limitation of Vista, it's a limitation of using 4GB of RAM on a 32-bit operating system. You'd get the same thing if you used linux or BSD. To get your computer to recognize 4GB of RAM, you need to use 64-bit Vista (I'm not sure if your new computer came with it, but the retail version of Vista includes both 32-bit and 64-bit editions). Oh, and Sykes, Core 2 Duos are 64-bit chips running on a 64-bit chipset, so the limitation here isn't with the motherboard.

[suji]

Sci, it's a stand-alone game. I was really joking, unless you really wanted to try it out. I mean, the game has insane computer requirements and I worked pretty hard to get it to run well and was never able to, so I was mostly curious to see how your computer would benchmark (selfish motivations!).

If you get it, there's a built-in performance test thing that you can run by changing the shortcut to have the argument "/map perftest", which invokes the game with the performance test game map and it'll do a little simulation and general a report after.

Before tweaking and with my older video card, I was getting 8fps. After tweaking and buying a geforce 7950 gts or w/e, I got it up to....... wait for it........ 15 fps:erm: I think I'm pretty CPU-bound, but it was disappointing to have it still suck after trying pretty hard to make it not suck.

[Sykes]

Yeah, I realized that after I posted. What I was referring to was the fact that some motherboards are able to stick the last 1 GB of memory past the 1 GB of reserved addresses to circumvent the problem even on 32-bit systems.

That said, going to Vista x64 introduces a host of new annoying application and driver compatibility issues.

[Scionith]

I was actually interested in getting it, the last big RTS I played was Starcraft. I tried WC III, and hated it so much. I have some college friends who are big into RTS games too, so if I like it I probably would get them to play as well.

[Trynn]

That said, going to Vista x64 introduces a host of new annoying application and driver compatibility issues.
Yep, that's for damned sure >_<

Oh and Suji, my gaming system has basically the same specs as Sci's (take away 2gb of ram, and change the GPU to an 8800gtx and you've got my system). I've been meaning to pick up Supreme Commander, after the thread you guys started on it, so I can probably benchmark it when I get around to buying the game.

[suji]

I was actually interested in getting it, the last big RTS I played was Starcraft. I tried WC III, and hated it so much. I have some college friends who are big into RTS games too, so if I like it I probably would get them to play as well.

well, give it a whirl, then. :) Honestly, it's a really cool game and it looks freakin awesome if you're able to get it to run and medium/high settings.

[Tyler]

Yep, what Sykes said. It's not a limitation of Vista, it's a limitation of using 4GB of RAM on a 32-bit operating system. You'd get the same thing if you used linux or BSD. To get your computer to recognize 4GB of RAM, you need to use 64-bit Vista (I'm not sure if your new computer came with it, but the retail version of Vista includes both 32-bit and 64-bit editions). Oh, and Sykes, Core 2 Duos are 64-bit chips running on a 64-bit chipset, so the limitation here isn't with the motherboard.

hahahha i learned about that in class last semester im so cool i could have actually answered a tech question

[Zumi]

I am guessing since your computer came with Vista it should be fine.

What I learned from installing Vista is that it has so many driver issues and even issues with its own dlls and that it just blue screened several times. The interface might be nice but its just not worth crashing all the time. Vista also has a lot slower preformence over XP. It likes to hog your RAM for sure. I did like the interface but I need a computer that works correctly, not something that doesn't work well and crashs all the time. MS should of tested it more before they released it.

What I got was a dell xps 700 last January. core 2 duo E6600, 2 gb ram, dual nvida 7900 GS. Even with the most up to date vista drivers I was getting blue screens, crashes at least once a day. Had to format my HD to reinstall XP which kind of sucked cuase I had to reinstall everything. Now my PC runs much quieter with XP, in Vista it ran the video cards fans full blast all the time and really had no fan control. XPS 700 is probalby one of the most quiet computers I have had, when its running XP. I guess my computer was designed for windows XP, even though it has a vista capable sticker on it, performance actually goes way down with vista.

[Trynn]

What I learned from installing Vista is that it has so many driver issues and even issues with its own dlls and that it just blue screened several times. The interface might be nice but its just not worth crashing all the time. Vista also has a lot slower preformence over XP. It likes to hog your RAM for sure. I did like the interface but I need a computer that works correctly, not something that doesn't work well and crashs all the time. MS should of tested it more before they released it.Okay, I need to comment on this, because it's one of my pet peeves.

Are you 100% certain that Vista was causing the problems, and not some third party driver or application being loaded at startup (neither of which Microsoft can do anything about)? Your comments here are honestly the first I've heard about Vista crashing regularly (or even commonly) for someone... in almost every report I've read, and my own experience using it at home for 3 months and at work for 7, it's been more stable than XP. Microsoft tested Vista extensively before it was released (I know, because I worked a contract job testing IE on Vista, and know people who were on the Vista test team).

It's true that some apps and drivers don't work properly (ie. the frame-rate problem people have with FFXI on nVidia cards), but none of those issues are due to a problem with the underlying operating system. It's like blaming the highway for the fact that your car breaks down every 10 miles.

Regarding performance, what kind of slowdowns are you experiencing? Yeah, Vista uses more RAM, but if you've got 2gb (which is the recommended amount, if I'm not mistaken), it's generally faster than XP. Most of the benchmarks I've seen of various apps and games run on Vista are either very close to XP's performance, or faster. I know there are specific games that have performance issues (like the FFXI issue I have), but again, that isn't the fault of the operating system.

It just really irks me when people bitch and moan about how such-and-such sucks (replace such-and-such with Vista, XP, Macs, PS3s, whatever) when the problem they're actually having is caused by something unrelated. Just look at Juma's post about his computer problem. He blamed Windows Update and Microsoft in his first post. Did the problem have anything to do with security patches or Windows? No. There are plenty of things people can bitch at Microsoft about... I just really wish people would bitch about the things MS is actually responsible for and can do something about.

[thelegendarycravy]

Sci play Starcraft sometime with me... Also even though Suji is recommending Supreme Commander I would highly recommend NOT getting it. 15FPS might sound nice but it still chugs along so bad that it makes the game almost unplayable. Even at a supposed 23~24 FPS on my computer the game slows down to a absolute crawl past mid game, turning someone building process's into a 1hour+ wait time... Command & Conquer 3 is a pretty good game but pretty fast paced... games are over quick online... so I dunno, I still prefer old school RTS over the new gen ones ?_?

Also next weekend I start another great upgrade project to my PC... have to re tube the water cooling system and clean it all out. And I'm upgrading my CPU to a Socket AM2 AMD Athlon X2 6000+ @ 3.0ghz, new mobo, and new ram... trying to stop the bottleneck problem I'm currently having with my CPU. I scored a 8000 in 3D Mark 2006, but my CPU averaged 1-3FPS during the CPU pressure test. Horrible...

[suji]

I must have missed the memo about 15 fps sounding good because it sounds like shit to me.

[thelegendarycravy]

I must have missed the memo about 15 fps sounding good because it sounds like shit to me.

HEY 15FPS is ok... only half of 30... you just made it sound like it was semi-playable once you got it to 15... its good for like 10minutes.

[Zumi]

I had a tech run microsofts debugger on the memory dumps from the blue screens. The results ended up all the crashs were due to windows vista dlls. All the 3rd party drivers were up to date, sound card and video card, ethernet ect. Which were all the current release. The debugger always came up with Vista dlls as casueing the crashes. Usually crashed when using internet explorer most of the time. Whats funny is that IE is what made it crash 90% of the time for me. Other crashs were in the explorer interface where it would index all my files, I had a bunch of anime in one folder, and in vista it will change all those icons to the first frame of the video. Indexing seemed to crash it a lot. If i opened a folder that had a large amount of files in it, it would crash.

I ran extensive diagnostic tests, memtest overnight no memory errors, and Dells own diagnostic program which checks everything in the computer. All the hardware tests came back fine. You can google it stop 0x0000001a or memory management blue screen vista and get several results. I already know during diagnostic tests its best to unplug all USB devices, so a USB device wasn't my problem.

I am not the only one with the issue I found other people that got it.

http://www.vista64.net/forums/vista-general/46318-stop-0x0000001a-memory_management-bsod.html

and

http://www.vista64.net/forums/vista-general/17417-bsod-stop-0x0000001a-before-logon.html

It seems to be some kind of hardware conflict with vistas own drivers due to the having of certain hardware. They did stuff like run mem test and turns out their ram is fine.

Upon reinstalling Windows XP my computer has been working great no blue screens what so ever.

After going through all this I think I know what might of been my problem.

I have narrowed it down to 2 things that I really think it is based on what problems other people have had.

Vista seems to have some kind of conflict when 2 Geforce 7900 GS running in SLI are hooked up to the pc. Even with the newest nvidia vista drivers that support SLI. In online forums people seem to have a lot of problems with this card in vista and SLI. It seems to be the only card where the fan controls are out of wack too in vista, but run fine in XP

The other thing that cuase my problem is I don't think Vista installed itself correctly. It froze up at least 5 times intially when installing vista at the loading bar, and blue screned during the install twice. This really isn't my fault if it doesn't install correctly. Which may have caused some dlls to become croupted. - I really don't think this cause my problems its probably more related to the video card. But I had to install it over XP becuase it was an upgrade version which dell gave me. When I install a OS I always like to do a clean install and not over another OS. If I did a clean install with the Vista CD, MS server wouldn't accept the COA key cause it was ment for an upgrade from XP.

My experience was the exact oppsite of yours. Lots of programs became unstable and unresponsive in vista and needed to crash, this happened more more then in XP. To me XP seemed rock solid, almost never crashed. Like I said I did like Vista and the features seemed nice. If it didn't crash my PC all the time I would be using it.

You got to remember since computers have all sorts of differnt hardware configurations what works good on one, may not work good on another.

In the end I have to use XP. I am pretty sure there is no way that this PC can take Vista unless I replace the video card with something else. Dell asked me if I wish to try vista again but I would rather save myself the headache of trying to fix all these problems if they were to come up again.

[Scionith]

Well, I found out something annoying with FFXI last night. Occasionally, my FPS would drop to 0, and then ramp right back up. But effectively lagging me for about a second. Which could be really really bad. It happened more often when running around and lots of characters on the screen, but I could get it to happen when staring at a static wall, and just typing text. I'm guessing it's the video card drivers, but I can't find a utility or settings for the card to try and tweak a bit. It's also annoying that its running at a solid 30 FPS, but when maybe 10 monsters/PCs are in my line of sight, the FPS drops to around 10, all the way to 5 like in whitegate. Even my old PC handled that kind of situation better, but I guess I had much lower graphics settings.

Oh, and I tried Guild Wars as well but I couldn't get the 0 FPS hiccup to happen, even with a crap ton of monsters on the screen. So it seems specific to something FFXI is doing.

[Zumi]

I think thats an issue with your video card and FFXI. SE even said that FFXI doesn't work right with the 8000 card series. Who knows if or when they would support those cards.

[Trynn]

Zumi, I have the same hardware as the person in your first link and have no problems, and your second link is from 4 months before retail launch... considering there weren't really even any non-beta drivers until about 2 months after retail launch, the fact that someone had BSODs during beta doesn't surprise me. You're still not convincing me that the blue-screens are the fault of Vista and not some third party driver, app or piece of hardware.


Vista seems to have some kind of conflict when 2 Geforce 7900 GS running in SLI are hooked up to the pc. Even with the newest nvidia vista drivers that support SLI. In online forums people seem to have a lot of problems with this card in vista and SLI. It seems to be the only card where the fan controls are out of wack too in vista, but run fine in XP
I'm sure there are conflicts here... as I've said several times though, this is not a Vista problem... it's an nVidia problem. Blame the right company.


The other thing that cuase my problem is I don't think Vista installed itself correctly. It froze up at least 5 times intially when installing vista at the loading bar, and blue screned during the install twice. This really isn't my fault if it doesn't install correctly. Which may have caused some dlls to become croupted. - I really don't think this cause my problems its probably more related to the video card. But I had to install it over XP becuase it was an upgrade version which dell gave me. When I install a OS I always like to do a clean install and not over another OS. If I did a clean install with the Vista CD, MS server wouldn't accept the COA key cause it was ment for an upgrade from XP.
Okay, now that's messed up. Freezing during install is usually caused by faulty hardware, or if the OS you're upgrading from is corrupted. Regardless, blue-screens during install can certainly be the cause of blue-screens during normal usage post-install.


You got to remember since computers have all sorts of differnt hardware configurations what works good on one, may not work good on another.

This is exactly my point, actually. Considering the number of hardware variations out there, it's impossible for an OS manufacturer to be able to deal with every single little quirk. So what they all do (well, except Apple, since they also make their own hardware) is have generic drivers that work for all necessary devices to a limited degree (ie. video cards in low-res modes, with no 3d-support, keyboard/mouse, data storage devices and network devices) to get you up and running. After the OS is on there, it's up to the third party hardware vendors to provide drivers that add functionality for their specific hardware devices. So like I've been saying, if your system is blue-screening due to SLI, don't bitch at Microsoft, 'cause the default video driver for Vista doesn't even know you have a second video card installed. Bitch at nVidia for not making a driver that works properly.

[Trynn]

Well, I found out something annoying with FFXI last night. Occasionally, my FPS would drop to 0, and then ramp right back up. But effectively lagging me for about a second. Which could be really really bad. It happened more often when running around and lots of characters on the screen, but I could get it to happen when staring at a static wall, and just typing text. I'm guessing it's the video card drivers, but I can't find a utility or settings for the card to try and tweak a bit. It's also annoying that its running at a solid 30 FPS, but when maybe 10 monsters/PCs are in my line of sight, the FPS drops to around 10, all the way to 5 like in whitegate. Even my old PC handled that kind of situation better, but I guess I had much lower graphics settings.

Oh, and I tried Guild Wars as well but I couldn't get the 0 FPS hiccup to happen, even with a crap ton of monsters on the screen. So it seems specific to something FFXI is doing.
This is the same problem I have with FFXI and Vista using my 8800GTX. There's a nice 9-page thread about it on the nVidia support forums, and it affects all 8xxx-series cards on Vista. So far there's no resolution... even changing various settings in the driver doesn't fix it. The only thing we can do is use XP or wait until nVidia comes out with a driver that fixes the issue.

[Scionith]

And that's what I was thinking. Guess I'll go ahead and install XP, and try Vista again in a while. Not really going to miss it, just didn't want to go through the hassle. UAC can just die for all I care. It's a good idea to set the computer safe by default, but not letting the user setup trusted applications invalidates the whole thing. Because the only thing people are going to do is get used to allowing everything.

[Scionith]

Oh, and just ordered Supreme Commander, I'll get it sometime next week.

[Halon50]

Bring your DS!

[Scionith]

So, I had no luck installing XP at all last night and so today at work was spent surfing the webs to figure out why. Zumi had mentioned that I needed to delete a partition to install another OS with Vista around, but I'm not sure that's my issue. Looking at the partitions, there was a small unlabeled partition, the large C partition where Vista sat, and a backup partition taking D. So I hacked off a large chunk off C, and made a partition E that I wanted to install XP on. Kind of a dual boot, without the dual booting for the time being. I figure it'll be easier to do this, and just blow away one of the OSs if I ever feel the need to do so.

So my real issue lies when trying to install XP. I have an old upgrade version of XP to install with, and I get it starting booting from the CD with no problem. It does its thing and loads a bunch of drivers, and then attempts to start the Windows Setup, then bam. BSOD. From what I've figured out, it seems I'm missing proper drivers for the RAID setup Dell has going for the hard drive. And I know when loading the drivers from the XP CD, it gives me the chance to hit F6 and load some of my own drivers. So I guess my question is, where do I find these sorts of drivers, and what do I do when I find them? I'm guessing I burn them onto a CD, and insert that into the drive, since I don't have a floppy. Or I guess, I could take another approach. I forget the BIOS settings I could screw with, but I would imagine I could turn the RAID off and just access the Harddrive in a normal IDE manner. But I'm not sure of the side effects of trying to mess around with that on a HD that's already formatted for a Striped RAID 0 configuration. I always end up learning so many things I didn't care to know about computers when I do crap like this. :coffee:

[Trynn]

In order to install XP on a RAID array (or even just a normal SATA drive), you *have* to have a floppy drive. That F6 prompt will make the computer look at the floppy for RAID/SATA drivers, and nothing else (you can't swap in a CD with the drivers, 'cause it won't look there). If you don't have a floppy drive, it may be worth it to spend $10 and get a USB floppy drive, just for stuff like this, or for emergencies.

Vista also does screwy things with the MBR (all in the name of security), so I'm not even sure it's possible to install XP on a seperate partition after Vista's already installed on the first partition. I know that I fucked up my system when I tried awhile back, and had to repartition/reformat/reinstall the whole thing afterwards. The only thing I've had work successfully is to install XP first, using the XP installer to partition and format, and then install Vista in the other partition afterwards. It'll still use Vista's boot selector, but will allow you to select XP from the menu.