A friend recently installed Windows Vista on a 3.2 GHz (single core) machine with 4 GB of RAM. The performance was initially extremely slow. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html talks about how Vista encrypts all of the data that flies around internally. One wonders if a dual-core machine is required to run Vista. One CPU core can serve the user while the other one encrypts and decrypts.
Anyone else out there running Vista? Experience?
You don’t need a dual core for Vista to run well. More memory is nice; your friend’s configuration (4GB) should easily suffice. In all probability the problem is with drivers; try updating to the latest release by the HW manufacturer. In my case updating a video driver made all the difference in the world.
Probably the first thing your friend should do is check the Windows Experience Index score for the system, that may give some indication of where the problem lies. I just got a brand new machine with a Core 2 1.8GHz and 1GB RAM, it runs Vista Home Basic just fine. Tonight I’ll be upgrading to 3GB and Ultimate.
I installed Home Premium a few days ago on a machine with these specs:
Athlon 64 3700+
2GB RAM
Geforce 7900 GTX video card
It runs quite well for me. There are a lot of little UI improvements that make it a good upgrade so far. I haven’t tried all my games yet (i.e. flight sims) but so far things look good. It will take some time to re-learn the location of network settings, etc. but not a big deal.
I am definitely happier with vista than XP – but you’d want a fairly modern machine for it.
I suggest firing up Task Manager and going into the “select columns” choice and adding all the IO columns. Then watch and you will be able to see what is chewing up performance.
Well, I am running Windows Vista Business on a Athlon XP 1700+ with 512 mb of RAM. I runs just as fast as XP but I have removed all the eyecandy and is running the basic interface.
Hi philg,
You mentioned that “the performance was initially very slow”. Did it improve eventually and could you tell us what you had tweak for performance gain?
As I understand it Vista doesn’t encrypt data all of the time. The only time that encryption actually takes place is when you are running applications that require it, such as high definition DVD playback software. The rest of the time data moves through the system unencrypted.
Back when Microsoft Windows Vista was still under the name Windows Longhorn I was running it on an AMD K6 Two. The processor was enough to power it but the release of the operating system was so horrid there would be a DUMPREP every other minute and the system would just run into a corner and die.
I actually attended the release meeting in Fort Wayne, Indiana about a month ago now for Microsoft Windows Vista and really was not impressed with the final release of the operating system. They were however kind enough to provide free copies of Microsoft Office 2007 though. If only I got a copy of Microsoft Windows Vista there. It would have been a fun time burning it on my way home.
I’ve been developing and testing on Vista since October. I just don’t see any compelling reason to install it (unless you have a DX10 video card and need DX10 support) and a lot of reasons not to. I don’t think the user interface is better looking, just different – once the new wears off, will anybody care? User Access Control is a pain in the rear and if you know what you’re doing in terms of avoiding malware I can’t see needing to have it on to protect your system.
That being said, I don’t see it as being any slower than XP. I have it on a hyperthreaded P4 box with 1GB of ram. No 3d video on that system so I don’t know what the 3d-enabled UI is like.
I guess one thing about Vista that is good is that it might force developers to stop ignoring some security and permissions aspects of their software.
I’m running Vista Business on an AMD 2500+ (Socket A) processor with 1.5 GB of RAM and an NVidia 6200 256 MB video card. Even though my hardware scores low on the “Windows Experience Index,” all the graphical eye candy is snappy and works as advertised. Subjectively Vista is about as responsive as XP and I haven’t noticed any operations I’d consider slow. Memory consumption is much higher than that of XP; with no applications running, the Vista operating system uses about 500 MB. I’m sure a dual core processor is unnecessary for the applications I run on Vista.
Bought a new laptop (Tosh dual core Intel)….Vista officially gets my “DOG” rating. This OS SUCKS. Just to compare, I’ve got an old Compaq 1 ghz laptop sitting here with XP Pro….runs CIRCLES around the new Tosh. Seriously considering reformatting the HD and putting XP on the Tosh. Who would actually BUY this thing? A friend has an old 500 mhz iBook (Mac) with OS 10.4.8….it, too, runs rings around the new notebook. Vista is not an ugrade…it is a DOWNGRADE. Been running MS products since PCDOS 3.0, so I do know a bit about computers….
I’ve tried Vista on my three year old notebook (IBM Thinkpad, 1.7 GHz single core, graphics not Aero Glass capable, 1 GByte RAM) and it run around as fast as XP. I didn’t use EFS encryption of folders or Bitlocker for full hard drive encryption. The indexer sometimes generated some unexpected I/O but otherwise it felt really “fast enough”. I can imagine that a Dual-Core will be very nice in many situations but a reasonable fast single core seems to be just fine.
I stood in line at Micro Center for an hour on a very cold President’s day morning to receive the last of 10 vouchers for a $299 Acer Aspire 3680-2022 laptop with Vista Home Basic. There were 11 people ahead of me in line but luckily 2 chose the $399 HDTV instead of a laptop. After another $100 off due to opening a new charge account for the purchase, the actual total for a new laptop with Vista was just $199. My wife has wanted a laptop for years and finally the price was right.
Vista (home edition – no BitLocker drive encryption) was initially very slow but became somewhat useable after adding 512MB for a 1GB (DDR2 5300) total. I then installed a test copy of Vista on my desktops to compare performance – strictly as an individual having a primarily single threaded brain and only a few open windows. Oddly, my old 2 GHz Celeron desktop with a single stick of 256 MB (DDR 3200) performed better than the new laptop did with 512MB. I can barely notice the difference on my newer (3GHz P4 630 , nForce4 SLI chipset with 7200 3Gbs SATA HD) desktop between 512MB and 1GB of DDR2 5300. For simple email and Internet browsing 512MB is quite satisfactory on my newest desktop. The new laptop and my old desktop are able to consistently peg the CPU gauge gadget in the red. Clicking ahead while pegged in the red usually starts a thrashing for which my impatient solution after 10 minutes was a reboot.
A perplexing feature of the included Vista install DVD is the ability to install any edition without specifying a product key resulting in a fully capable test system with no activation required updates during a 3 day grace period:
“Although you are not required to enter your product key now to install, failure to enter it may result in the loss of data, information, and programs. You may be required to purchase another edition of Windows Vista. We strongly advise that you enter your product identification key now.”
Can anyone explain why M$ Legal allowed such an easy bypass? Will any penguins use it to waddle out of Linux back into Windows?
I disagree with Drew’s “Dog” rating above and until my recent laptop purchase have never bought a PC, but have been using others or building my own going back to MS-DOS 1.1.
I also just purchased an Acer 3680 and added a 1 gig ram for a total of 1.5. When I have the internet open in the background and try to use Word 2007 it goes into autorecover immediately and locks up the machine? Any suggestions. Thanks.