so ive got my hands on Vista RTM legitimatly. Ive got it installed and using the winbeta iso suite and a business premium key i start at 930pm on a sacraficial harddrive. praying that this wouldnt be the drm saggy man boobed third cousin of windows ME with a mac like sinlge mouse button bad aftertaste.

by a bit before 10 pm im into vista. and starting to pull all my xp programs and drivers in and laod them .

by 1130 im totally done. with allt he vista and older xp drivers i needed and its stable.

now i did alot of testing. I ran a few games. I watched a movie. searched the harddrives. intentionally tried o install software that was incompatible. tried to force it to take wrong drivers. I threw the book at it and then some. and guess what. this is some serious muscle under this hood.

of course the constant popups at first while i trained the pc to what i wanted to do, and what i should be allowed to do,was not all that fun. and the two activations i had to go through when it felt i added new hardware after i just reinstalled drivers was a bit annoying, but overall this OS is a keeper.

A word of caution. Everyone and their grandmother online wants the ultimate version of Vista. the one with everythign nice in it. well i have business premium and other than the media center stuff which is a software tv tuner and pvr setup and advanced windows encryption i have it all. there is a big preformance difference as well without that added media os package. vista isnt as big of bloatware. I use PGP for encryption and bit locker is not any better than PGP.

Back to the meat of the issue. load times and speed.

the constant system benchmarking system wasnt a joke. RC1 and Rc2 it was a joke. but they got it right in the RTM. vista is faster than my XP install in laoding up and shutting down. faster to the data and into programs. and more stable within them if i flash in and out using alt tab or winkey and tab. programs dont hang then take a couple of seconds to let you back in. i was literally jumping out of a counterstrike game into a demo of warhammer 40k mark of chaos and into ie and firefox webbrowsers and explorer pages then back to the games.

alot of ppl worried that games and other more intensive apps would be bogged by windows. to the contrary, my opty at 3ghz is actually able to run games faster in my subjective opinion as well as my pings were more stable and lower to boot (ms said they were reorganising the network stack to better optimize high priority traffic.) . i tested this by restarting into my xp install on the other hdd and reconnecting to the same server total time between connects no more than 4 -5 minutes.

while i am able to run aero and full effects without issue. I do have 2 gigs of ram. one potential issue is all the fancy 3d work with only a gig. im going to retest tomorrow with only a gig and see what happenes.


overall its a very stable OS. its NOT a massive resource hog. (i have 35% of my mem used and cpu at 3% for well over 90% of the time )

I certainly like it compared to the mac osx tiger and xp. though its enough of a blend of both that i almost feel the turtle neck and the iVista logo is hidden somewhere. its easy to use and isnt as combative user wise with the popups and demands as the betas were.


overall a damn good os. and one ill continue to use now that itll take xp drivers 99% opf the time while the manufacturers are gettign ready.


word of caution. DO NOT USE X64 edition. for now the x64 drivers all have to be microsoft approved or they cannot be used. that and the lack of 64 bit drivers is still plaguing the install.

overall things ive taken from this.

vista loves big harddrives (business is 10 gigs ultimate is 15)
vista business is allt he muscle of ultimate without alot of the fluff. (i can make my own damn pvr if i want. i dont need to waste another 100 bucks on it in software form.)
vista isnt a gaming nightmare its actually a gift.
vista comes with the microsoft anti virus and spyware standard so no rapage by viruses and spyware while your initially grabbing drivers.


winbeta has the official release ISO of all the packages (4.5 gigs to dl 8 some gigs unpackaged) that you can run for 30 days, or use any legit key to install any version. i highly recommend anyone wanting to play with it to grab that iso.

even MS themselves says its not a bad idea. and it is officially sanctioned sorta. its not a cracked version that will fail.


ill post more as i delve deeper into vista.

Great to hear Jager. My experiences so far have been good, but I appreciate the tip on going with the Business version.

I couldn't agree more, I love working with Vista and as soon as the drivers are all sorted i'm gunna be making the move to Vista Ultimate. Just gotta get myslef another 1GB stick of memory and i'll be all set.

Yup. I've also been using Vista Ultimate RTM for a while now as well. It is without a doubt much better than XP. I'm running it on a 2GHz Sempron, 468mb DDR2-533, 64mb 6100 and a 250GB hard drive. It only slows down when I've got a ton of stuff open--- i.e 5 or 6 tabs in Firefox, Photoshop & WMP. I'm able to run all the graphical effects without a problem(Flip3D is incredibly addicting--you can sit for hours flipping through the windows.) The new media center is a lot nicer though its nothing special. I prefer it to BeyondTV or snapstream which is why I'll probably stick with it.

About the only thing it needs are better drivers. Nvidia's drivers are still iffy and theres a lot of hardware thats still unsuported. Thats not a fault of Microsoft though. Also with the new solitare save function is incredibly annoying. I wish there was a way to turn it off. Secondly initializing the zipping/unzipping of files seems to take a very long time. I would suggest a third party program like WinRar.

I really like the new direction Microsoft is going in. Things are prettier, they're faster, and they simply work.

I'll post some more tommorow if I've got time.

ADD: The new file system is wonderful too--much much more convient and faster.

sounds alright, kinda surprising, so why where the betas and RC packages so well just like windblows.

I don't like the cartoon looks, its kinda like

"Microsoft and Fisher Price teamed up to present Cartoondows, have fun and dont miss the over used cartoonish looks , codenamed "Vista" the critics see this as the next and last M$ OS to boot. Since they've teamed up with Fisher Price, expect more parental controls, and kid oriented pop ups, only when allowed through M$ antispyware (non-microsoft signed at least)."

Wish they would have went simple, i kinda likeing how thigs are going back to that"simple" time
Such as Openoffice, what doesnt it have, that you actually need, that word does?? and wait how simple is it now??

Hope i can actually find a whatever there calling legal copy these days, I'm sure my local PC shop manager bought at least 20 copys of "Ultimate" cause hes a fricken idiot, and never signed up for corporate offers, and runs a "cybercafe" (that is when there actually someone who has interestin using the internet in our little hick wannabe town).

Anyhow, glad to see the blowing less, hope they stop the DRM B$ soon too,

"Microsoft taking over the world one house at a time"

Good post Jager, very informative. It's good to hear that we'll have a few less things to curse Mirco$oft for!

I have also had a chance to test out RTM and I loved it apart from one thing (that is the only thing keeping me from using it)

Vista will not stay connected to the net no matter what I do. I have a motorola wireless router along with a motorola wireless PCI card and they both work wonderfully in XP. As soon as I loaded up Vista she
recognized the wireless card and I was able to connect to my network. However as soon as I start to use the network vista can not hold onto the connection. As long as I dont use the connection it is fine lol but as soon as I put traffic on it she goes down.....mabe one of you can suggest something. I have tried to use the XP drivers for the card but half way into the install vista just freezes and does nothing......

Any one got any ideas?

Other than that Vista really moves on my system.

EDIT this problem also happend with RC1 and RC2

Good write up. I have to agree with, so far it's great. I am currently running Vista Ultimate RTM. I don't use the media center tools, but wanted them just in case. Through my MSDN subscription I had the option of any of the versions, Home, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate.

My thoughts, I was surprised at how little resources it uses. RC1 seemed to be a resource hog while using areo and other goodies. Currently, at idle, Vista is using about 50mb less RAM than XP was and about 3% CPU. I also and using 2 gigs of RAM so that does help. Evil Clowns Vista tweak guide was really useful as well. Those annoying warnings and stuff had to go.

As of now, I have only had a few things that it did not like. It will not run Rivatuner, drivers just don't work. Before I installed, I just upgraded XP pro, I had to uninstall Nero 7 and Daemon tools. Nero has a free upgrade for version 7 that is Vista compatible, and the newer Daemon tools is as well, I just wasn't running it.

The only driver that would not work was for my onboard NIC. I'm using an Abit IS7 board, and I believe the NIC is realtek. This wasn't an issue, I use a 3com PCI Nic anyway.

I love the way Vista index's all of your drives and folders. Searching is fast and easy. Graphically, I like the fisher price look. There is some flexibility with the look, you can revert to Windows XP style, Windows Classic or Vista. The sidebar is great, and if you know XML and HTML, you can create your own sidebar gadgets. Another feature and MS provides is the Windows Live Gallery. There are tons of already made sidebar gadgets, desktop gadgets, toolbars, you name it.

Also, every game on my PC and run fine with no graphical issue at all. Here is the list of Games I have played on Vista that all work! See specs in sig.

HL2
Halo
Battlefield2
Battlefield 2142
Soldier of Fortune 2
Tiger Woods golf 2004
Medal of Honor AA
Oblivion
Prey

Am going to get Neverwinter Nights 2 and test it out soon. A friend of mine is having graphics issues with this game due to driver issues with Nvidia.

Quote: Originally Posted by hikarugo Good write up. I have to agree with, so far it's great. I am currently running Vista Ultimate RTM. I don't use the media center tools, but wanted them just in case. Through my MSDN subscription I had the option of any of the versions, Home, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate. My thoughts, I was surprised at how little resources it uses. RC1 seemed to be a resource hog while using areo and other goodies. Currently, at idle, Vista is using about 50mb less RAM than XP was and about 3% CPU. I also and using 2 gigs of RAM so that does help. Evil Clowns Vista tweak guide was really useful as well. Those annoying warnings and stuff had to go. As of now, I have only had a few things that it did not like. It will not run Rivatuner, drivers just don't work. Before I installed, I just upgraded XP pro, I had to uninstall Nero 7 and Daemon tools. Nero has a free upgrade for version 7 that is Vista compatible, and the newer Daemon tools is as well, I just wasn't running it. The only driver that would not work was for my onboard NIC. I'm using an Abit IS7 board, and I believe the NIC is realtek. This wasn't an issue, I use a 3com PCI Nic anyway. I love the way Vista index's all of your drives and folders. Searching is fast and easy. Graphically, I like the fisher price look. There is some flexibility with the look, you can revert to Windows XP style, Windows Classic or Vista. The sidebar is great, and if you know XML and HTML, you can create your own sidebar gadgets. Another feature and MS provides is the Windows Live Gallery. There are tons of already made sidebar gadgets, desktop gadgets, toolbars, you name it. Also, every game on my PC and run fine with no graphical issue at all. Here is the list of Games I have played on Vista that all work! See specs in sig. HL2 Halo Battlefield2 Battlefield 2142 Soldier of Fortune 2 Tiger Woods golf 2004 Medal of Honor AA Oblivion Prey Am going to get Neverwinter Nights 2 and test it out soon. A friend of mine is having graphics issues with this game due to driver issues with Nvidia.

I could not get Need For Speed Carbon to instal on Vista.......

How well do they perform compared to xp? The games that is.

I didn't see any "Scores" posted, just "Subjective" opinions...not that that is a bad thing, lol

Have you had time to run Super Pi 1MB, PCMARK 05 and 3D-06 or 06? (There are Vista patches for them)

How about running FRAPS or one of the built in timedemo's from any of the games?

Those are realy the only things I am waiting to see before I bother with it

I'm personally going to hold off til nlite or simular is developed for it so I can gut it.

Yeah, I'm not running any true benchmarks or anything. Just loading, playing and comparing that way. But, for what it's worth, just ran AquaMark3, my results are just as crappy as before.

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as far as gaming ther FPS between XP and Vista is the same.

benchies well ill fire up super pi and one of the 3dmarks if i can find it.

not terribly worried as far as benchy times yet, drivers are not out for the nforce mobos that are not betas so its rather pointless to expect better numbers than xp.

ill give a shot when its not 2am here.

heres the super pi times. the left is xp the right is vista

this is with both xp and vista full on, no real tweaking , no turning off services etc etc. just the standard installs of both.

Attached Thumbnails

 

I had a feeling that Vista would be slower for benching, it may change over time as drivers mature, .719 seconds slower is significant in a 1MB test, if you had run the 32MB Pi test, the gap would have been startlingly noticable.

I have always been a fan of Pi, though it is still just a "Benchmark" it is very sensative to CPU and Memory speed (FSB and timings) and every time I can see an improvement in this test, gaming framerates have gone up.

Good to hear there is no "Apreciable" difference in gaming subjectively , but I would still like to see some Fraps testing to verify it.

Though once DX-10 games hit the street, any arguments about gaming will be pointless if MS sticks to not making a version of DX-10 for XP.

I still have the feeling that there is just more "Bloatware" under the hood, that even after it's been given time to mature, it still won't match XP for the benchmarking crowd, just as Linux shows improvements over XP cause it just does not have "Crap" from MS sucking up CPU cycles

Hmm..now I am wondering if Linux will be able to play DX-10 games down the road a bit

actually i reran super pi on my xp drive cause subsequent runs couldnt finish i got a 29.812 sec.

ill get fraps, but its not subjective pat, ive got ingame fps graphs running in all the HL2 mods, there is no difference.

ill dl fraps and try and see what happens.

heres the super pi checksum B83EB785

Hey guys, my dad brought home a copy of Vista and an enterprise key, so it's legal,and activated.

And so far, I'm clapping my hands.

It is a lot faster than ym xp install, and all my programs and drivers have installed w/out a hitch.

Benchmarks wern't off by too much, my 3dm05 score was actually a little higher.

I'm going to keep messing around.

I think M$ actually made something that doesnt piss me off.

well pat and i have talked about this, and waffles i dont think its easy in any circumstance to bench xp versus vista. especially with 3dmark. vista having dx10 there is an improvement that you cannot replicate in xp with dx9.

even with super pi and others, i tried to be the same wuith the same progs. the same settings etc. but vista is an entirely different architecture, so out of the box its neigh impossible to say 100% that ones faster.

then you run into the fact that my vista doesnt have nforce drivers for it, only the microsoft ones since im awaiting whql certs from nvidia, and the numbers change again.

the super pis i ran were just to show that they are close to each other. not to declare a victor. probably in january or feb we wil see enough to know which is truely faster. im just happy that vista isnt lagging terribly behind.

Quote: Originally Posted by Iateronmly I'm personally going to hold off til nlite or simular is developed for it so I can gut it.

Microsofts allready got a version. It's pretty big(~830mb) but it people have allready got it working.