Vista Performance

[Pemalite]

Alright, I went out and bought myself a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate.
To me it seems like, a prettier version of Windows XP,
I have no performance problems what so ever,
And my system specs are as follows:

Intel Pentium M (Dothan) 2.0ghz
1024Mb of ram
Mobility Radeon 9700 Pro 64Mb. (Vista Reports it as 320Mb - So some form of turbo cache thing may be going on?).

My games etc, don't really seem to have suffered as much, but I'll be doing a 3D Mark test later on to determine this.
One thing of note, I got a 4Gb Sandisk Flash drive, And using it as a ready boost, to me it seems as if windows has become "Snappier". Things are more responsive, large programs and games load up faster, And over all the performance has been good, I intend to do a benchmark later on and post it here to show the true differences, But If you have 1gb of ram or less, I recommend you get a Vista' Ready flash drive
You wont believe the difference.

Vista Ultimate, Took about 45 Minuit's to install, Where as Windows XP took about half an hour, Boot time for me is probably slightly longer, Flip 3D is a cool feature, But has an annoying thing to it, When you enter "Flip 3D mode" and start cycling through the windows that are open then click etc. It goes back to the Window you had open, Not the one you cycled through towards.
Which kinda makes flip 3D a useless feature except to show off to friends etc.

And one more annoying thing! What ever you do you are greeted with warning messages. And because allot of the layout is different it took me an hour to turn all the unnecessary stuff off.

And I found a glitch with standby every time I entered standby with my laptop, It was impossible to bring it out of that state, unless I unplugged the power cord, And took the battery out, The Off/On button was un-responsive.
So were all the other keys and buttons on the machine.

Vista' Voice recognition has improved dramatically, And is enjoyable to use, You can tell it to open certain programs, Minimize, Maximize etc. As well as Speech to Text and Text to Speech.

To anyone I recommend at least 1gb of ram and at least a 2Gb flash drive for ready boost. It does make a difference.

Anyone else had any experiences with Vista? Any benchmarks? system configurations etc?

Who is Upgrading or building a new system to use Vista?

 

[Smith]

For anyone else looking for a second review: Click Here.

To anyone I recommend at least 1gb of ram and at least a 2Gb flash drive for ready boost. It does make a difference.

That's what I've been hearing, although no so much the "Ready Boost" after you already have 1GB of RAM.

 

[Pemalite]

It just makes things seem snappier, Ready boost is just a flash drive, where it stores frequently used pieces of small Data (Its a cache), So your HDD doesn't have to do so much work, And because of my HDD in this laptop is only 4200 RPM, I saw a huge difference. I've heard others over on the laptop forum had similar results.

 

[Smith]

It just makes things seem snappier, Ready boost is just a flash drive, where it stores frequently used pieces of small Data (Its a cache).

Oh indeed! That's why I said more RAM cancels it out, because that's basically what it is: secondary RAM. But hey, if you like the results, by no means will I tell you not to use it. I'm just saying that if you were to decide between an extra 512 (or 1GB) of RAM or a 2-4GB flash stick, I'd go with the RAM.

 

[Pemalite]

For a laptop, RAM can be expensive, My 2x 512Mb sticks of Sodimm DDR 266 cost me 300 bucks. The old 256Mb stick that was in it originally was given to a mates Acer laptop, which upgraded his system to 512Mb.
Sometimes people cant afford that, And thats where the flash drive makes sense. If you have one lying around, well its a free performance boost!

Or if you already have 1gb of SDRAM, And a slow HDD I can gather it would help out allot also, Being the RAM is slow as well as the HDD.

 

[Smith]

SDRAM is still multitudes faster than any flash memory. I can see where you're coming from, though. And Jeez, 300 for a gig of DDR266 laptop memory? Australia sucks at pricing.

 

[Pemalite]

Indeed it does, And that was relatively cheap. (I knew the guy, so I got a discount).
Looking into buying 2x 1gb sticks after I get Office 2007.

 

[KidMan]

How different is the interface compared to XP? Like the start menu, network place, my computer... Things that get frequently used by LANers and gamers.

 

[Pemalite]

Instead of explaining I'll post some screen shots of everything.

Desktop using Flip 3D:
http://img251.imageshack.us/my.php?image=desktoptt7.jpg

Control Panel:
http://img251.imageshack.us/my.php?image=controlpaneltp8.jpg

My Computer:
http://img411.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mycomputerqa6.jpg

Network Properties:
http://img181.imageshack.us/my.php?image=networkpropertiesdt3.jpg

Start Menu:
http://img411.imageshack.us/my.php?image=startmenuqp7.jpg

That should explain most of it

Everything else is pretty much identical to Windoze XP from a GUI perspective.
I still use my Firefox etc.

Edit: Dxdiag has been cut down, there is no Test Direct 3D or anything anymore, just information.
And so far the only thing that I can use to over clock the graphics card with Vista is power strip.

 

[KidMan]

Wow, Vista looks fancy for sure. Can vista run directx9 games better then xp can?

 

[Skyrider]

I have tried Vista, and I must say. It works and looks better then I expected. There are really some good parts about vista and bad things.

The good part is that Vista has hella lot of drivers in the operation system, meaning. It'll even install motherboard drivers (sound cards, video cards, network cards, etc) for you that XP barely could even do. Plus, it can even find drivers on the Internet if Vista doesn't has it. Even though XP had the same option, Vista's Online Driver Search actually works!

Bad side is of course the software. It runs fine with some software, but a lot of software doesn't work with Vista, such as Partition Magic (which also doesn't work through dos, because it can't find the partition), driver installations from CD (Might be caused by the setup that is old or something), and a lot more software. If you are a gamer, do not get Vista just yet. If you do, you will get a lot of problems.

Even though, as said above. Vista is more then I really expected, It is a big improvement. Even though, they could have done more about the Software compatibility. But that'll come in time, just wait when Vista has tons of updates, aka Service Pack.

 

[Pemalite]

I lost a slight bit of performance in Direct X 9.0 games with the move to vista, But that loss was made up with a bit of over clocking.
With every new windows release you always loose a little bit of performance, When you launch a 3D application or a very intensive application Vista automatically shuts off the Aero Glass feature, And as you use a program the better the performance gets, (I noticed this with Oblivion), I think that comes down to Vista remembering your favorite games and programs and "Caches" it in a way to improve performance.

I did have issues with StarCraft Brood war for awhile where the colours were all funkey, But that seems to have sorted itself out, on its own.