Which version of Vista considering my PC?

[dataDave]

Hi guys,

I'm having lots of problems playing games on XP pro at the minute, I'm wondering if upgrading my OS will help...

Here are my specs - I will be upping the RAM to 4gb at the end of November, as well as covering it all with a fan just to be sure.

GFX: GeForce 8800 GT 512MB PCI-E 2.0
RAM: Corsair 2GB PC3 10666 Dual Channel DDR3 XMS3-1333
CPU: Core 2 DUO E6850 3.0GHz 4MB Cache 1333FSB

I fair fancy Vista Ultimate, although I don't know the difference between 32bit and 64bit versions. Can someone point me in the right direction in time for payday tomorrow?

[gunrock]

Depends how often you junk your hardware and get a new box and new OS, I suppose. I went for 64bit home premium, but was annoyed to find that I couldn't mount my old Win2k disks under it (until I hacked the disk structure tables on them, risking losing my data), so Ultimate would be the one to go for if like me you have dynamic disks from XP pro or Win2k.

The reason I say about junking your old kit and starting again, is that, I hate having to wipe and reinstall from scratch every few years which is what I felt I'd be doing if I went 32 bit, as in a few years time surely everything will be 64bit...?

I will say that you probably don't have enough ram for 64bit Vista, as 64bit executables are much bigger (duh!) due to bigger instructions etc. so bung an extra 2gb in there first.

[dataDave]

Yeah, I heard I'd need the 4gb for 64bit Ultimate, which is only £50 or so... Paying for the OS is going to be a big fisting though weighing in at 1/3 the cost of all my hardware

If these Blue Screen of Death errors persist after going through all this I'll be pissed off. I just want to play Starcraft 2 in peace at the end of the day.

I also don't mind formatting my drives every year or so, I'm used to that by now... all my work documents are backed up to CD/DVD, everything else is expendable.

[NemesiS]

I also don't mind formatting my drives every year or so, I'm used to that by now... all my work documents are backed up to CD/DVD, everything else is expendable.

Point is though, you should'nt have to. If you keep your OS regularly maintained via a bit of housekeeping you should hardly if ever have to re-format during your PC's lifecycle unless you have major issues with hardware or Virus etc.

About once every 2-3 of months, i uninstall anything i don't use anymore, do a reg clean and run a complete scan then defrag. Happy days.

To your original question though i would go for Ultimate 32 with that build. 64 would be a no brainer if you were going to splash for 4GB (which i would) but you'll be fine with 32bit ultimate.

[Rick]

64Bit Vista has been far superior than 32Bit for me. I had no end of problems with the 32 bit version. Gaming was terrible, and most things used to crash after so long playing them. It was something to do with the way Vista Manages memory, but even with the patch it still did it.

I moved to the 64bit version and haven't looked back. Awesome OS. Rock Solid, Fast and easy to use.

[Hohum]

64-Bit is the only version worth considering in my opinion. Will run fine with 2GB, will run a little faster with 4GB, but there's not much in it.

If you're getting blue screens of death though I suggest you test your hardware first, as generally that's the reason they occur (that and poorly coded/buggy device drivers). Very unlikely that the operating system itself is to blame for them.

[abigsmurf]

Home premium 64bit.

you get extra ram capactity(can get you about 700megs more usage with 4gb than 32bit due to vram being addressed). .Also, turn off file indexing to stop hard drive thrashing. There's a lot of bad press about Vista but aside from network file transfer issues, I quite like it.

Windows 7 looks sexy indeed.

Also, Have a look at the Radeon 4850, it's an extremely good card for it's price range but I believe it's slightly more expensive. It runs cooler and it's more powerful. Alternatively there's a new 4830 which is slightly cheaper at around the same performance (but again is cooler).

[dataDave]

Looks like I'm upgrading to 4gb this month then. If it starts chugging after Ultimate 64bit goes on I can simply whip out the motherboard for an 8gb capacity one the month after considering the cheap prices of RAM at the moment.

I may be able to obtain an Ultimate license from work - so waiting to see how that unfolds.

It's crazy is all this rehashing of my hardware just to an up to date OS in the hope it rectifies my BsoD It's not like I'm after playing stupidly powerful games or anything, I just want a smooth system.

By the way Hohum - I've checked the memory with a memory checker twice now, took bloody hours each time and reported 0 probs.

[abigsmurf]

most common cause of BSODs :

Nvidia drivers
Netlimiter (main cause of tcpip.sys ones)
other bad drivers
overheating system (but you usually get warning signs before a BSOD)
insufficient power (usually results in a lock up or random sudden reboot but can BSOD)

[Hohum]

Try something such as Prime95's blend test (be sure to limit RAM usage value, else you'll just thrash the hard drive cache to hell and back), or the windows-based memtest app instead of the similarly named memtest86/86+.

http://hcidesign.com/memtest/

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

[mikewl]

As you know from my thread im having issues with Vista 64 but aside from that one issue I do like it alot, only real issue I have is that it takes quite a long time to boot up and become usable, its probably a case of having too many apps loading on startup, however once thats all done it super fast.

I do think 4gig ram is required though, im using 6gig and once the machines booted up its already used about 2gig.

[Hohum]

The more you add, the more it will use. Memory management is different under Vista in that it makes full use of what you have, instead of leaving the vast majority of it idle like XP does - thus going to waste.