I know you guys love this stuff: rook pc build

[LuckyTxGuy]

Vista is very nice. I spend 10+ hours a day in Vista Home Premium and love it. Are there a few kinks? Sure. Is it functional? Yes. Is it just fine for 95% of average computer users? Yes. Do the people who complain about it just like to complain? Yes.lol

Seriously, if you're worried about it, set up a dual boot with Vista and XP. You've got the best of both worlds.

[ADBjester]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

looks pretty sweet, except for the vista part.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was actually hoping for feedback on this, i was really weary about using vista and was being talked in to it a bit. If theres a good consensus to stick with xp ill happily go along.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why have two non-identical video cards? You can't run them in SLI (parallel, cooperative) mode unless they are identical... and you don't need a second card to run a second monitor, since the 8800 itself has two DVI outputs and can handle two monitors all on its own.

Jester

[ADBjester]

[ QUOTE ]
I'd recommend 4gb of memory cause it's cheap, and getting better HDD.

If you only need 160gb of storage, just get a raptor 10k 150GB drive.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you get 4 GB of RAM, get Vista x64 or you lose the upper 1.5 GB of RAM to video mapping (with the 768 MB vidoe card you've chosen). Otherwise, if you run Vista 32bit, you're only getting 2.5 GB or RAM total instead of 2.0 -- not worth the extra money.

Note that Vista x64 is light on drivers. You can't use 2-year-old hardware on a 64-bit system. There are no drivers.

Jester

[ADBjester]

[ QUOTE ]
Vista is very nice. I spend 10+ hours a day in Vista Home Premium and love it. Are there a few kinks? Sure. Is it functional? Yes. Is it just fine for 95% of average computer users? Yes. Do the people who complain about it just like to complain? Yes.lol

Seriously, if you're worried about it, set up a dual boot with Vista and XP. You've got the best of both worlds.

[/ QUOTE ]

Screw dual boot. That's for pussies. If you need/want to access multiple operating systems, choose a good "host" OS and then run VMWare or Virtual PC, and run your other OS's as "guest" OS's under the host.

My system: Vista x64 as host, 4 GB RAM

Under that I have VMWare 6.0 Workstation, and virtual machines available running everything from Win95 through WinXP and Vista 32 (sandboxed), plus a c
couple implementations of Linux (Ubuntu and openSUSE work best under VMWare).

One boot. Many virtual machines depending on the need.

It's the only way to fly.

Jester

[Transference]

Thanks for the great feedback.

Upgrades all sound nice but I want to stay on budget. Makes most sense to me to skimp on the most easily upgradeable items for now, i.e. HD, RAM.

Dual boot seems pretty excessive and not the way to get the most bang for my buck, sounds like the vista vs xp debate rages on, If xp was significantly cheaper this would be an easier decision.

As for the vid cards the 8800 is obv the workhorse, I just need another cheap pci-e in there to handle the 3rd monitor, it seems reasonable that I could save a few more bucks here if i search around.

[LuckyTxGuy]

[ QUOTE ]

Screw dual boot. That's for pussies. If you need/want to access multiple operating systems, choose a good "host" OS and then run VMWare or Virtual PC, and run your other OS's as "guest" OS's under the host.

[/ QUOTE ]

Opinionated aren't we?lol

Been there done that and didn't really like it that much. As nice as VMware & Virtual PC are, it wasn't the same experience for me as a full install. Besides, I rarely boot into XP anyway. If I'm helping a customer who's running XP I might boot into it or if I want to do a couple of the things that Vista has trouble with, then I'll boot into XP. Other than that, I stay in Vista.

[bigalt]

[ QUOTE ]

Dual boot seems pretty excessive and not the way to get the most bang for my buck, sounds like the vista vs xp debate rages on, If xp was significantly cheaper this would be an easier decision.


[/ QUOTE ]

i would make it based on the compatibility with the specific software you'll be using. i doubt anyone will develop any software incompatible with vista henceforth, and honestly you'll get used to whichever one you use. However, if you have an expensive software license already purchase or one you know you'll need, best make sure that it works in Vista before getting it.

[TheMetetron]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'd recommend 4gb of memory cause it's cheap, and getting better HDD.

If you only need 160gb of storage, just get a raptor 10k 150GB drive.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you get 4 GB of RAM, get Vista x64 or you lose the upper 1.5 GB of RAM to video mapping (with the 768 MB vidoe card you've chosen). Otherwise, if you run Vista 32bit, you're only getting 2.5 GB or RAM total instead of 2.0 -- not worth the extra money.

[/ QUOTE ]

Explain this to me plz. Why?

Edit:

I've looked into this more. Something to do with address space being maxed at 4 GB and other things taking up space. I have 2 x 128mb video cards so I'd lose a quarter gig right? I currently have a 2GB XP system that I am going to installing Vista on and I was planning on adding another 2 GB at that time. Currently I have 4 x 512 MB DDR2 and was going to replace them all with 4 x 1GB DDR2. Should I only replace half of them since the 2nd half isn't likely to yield me much more than 512 MB of usable memory?

[funkyworms]

If you're using a 64-bit version of Vista, this is not a problem. Otherwise, save your money.

[LuckyTxGuy]

Agree and 2 GB with Vista Home Premium and a good dual core processor is VERY fast.