How well will Vista run on my PC?

[aos101]

Just found out I've won a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate in a competition (and Office 2007 Pro, I'm still grinning ), so I'm wondering how well it would run on my current PC (approaching 3 years old, which I'll probably run it on). I know a few people on here have already played around with Vista so I'd be interested how they think it will run. The specs are:

Pentium 4 3.06GHz 533MHz FSB
1GB DDR333 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 128MB (pretty crappy, I know)
120GB SATA 7200RPM hard drive

The Vista upgrade advisor says it should run OK (including Aero) but I'd like to hear what people think who've actually run Vista. Will it be slow in general, or will it crawl running Aero? Thanks for any opinions on this.

[Justin]

Should be fine, I have Vista Ultimate on my desktop with a 2.93ghz Celeron CPU and 768MB RAM with a 256MB ATI 9550 Graphics card with a 80GB HD and a 160GB HD. Games are a little slower (but not that noticeable) but everything else is at least as good as XP Pro if not better.

My Laptop has Geforce Go 7100 Graphics, AMD Turion 64 X2 1.73ghz Duel Core CPU and 1GB RAM with a 120GB HD and is a little faster than the desktop, with no slowdowns anywhere over the previous XP MCE, in fact I'd say Vista gets better peformance out of my hardware than XP did - probbably due to the extra ram over the Desktop - Aero isi not qutie as good, can get a little stuttery with a dozen or so windows open on screen with nothing maximised but I don't really need that on a laptop, otherwise flawless!

Anyone who says you need 2 gig ram minimum is talking out their ass.

[stephen_ex-f2s]

But that's not to say 2GB isn't good. I think for the price it's probably the single best thing that will give you such a boost for the price.

Congrats on winning, by the way. I once came 2nd in a cartography competition when I was about 7. It felt fricken' awesome.

[NewsreadeR]

I won £80 on the lottery last week

[aos101]

Thanks for the info guys. I think in theory Aero (well the transparent window borders at least) should work fine as I've used that effect on XP with WindowBlinds and it was actually quicker than XP's normal styles engine, because it makes better use of the graphics hardware.

Originally Posted by NewsreadeR

I won £80 on the lottery last week

Doing better than me. I've only ever won £8 on Euromillions, and nothing on the normal lottery.

[RND]

You'll want to replace that graphics card if you want to take advantage of aero interface and the upcoming DirectX10.

I had the FX5200 card like 3 cards ago hehe.

[aos101]

I'm not too fussed about DirectX 10 as I don't really do gaming. I might upgrade the graphics card if Aero does run horribly, as I should be able to get something quite a bit better for not too much money.

[stephenc]

both your vista and aero will run fine Adam and it doesn't need dx10 as a prerequisite. In fact it only needs dx9, a GPU that supports WDDM and for your card to be pixel shader 2.0 compliant with 32 bpp. The FX5200 qualifies on all counts although you'll need to update the driver in the RTM to 96.85 for better performance.

With your version of Vista though, depending on your motherboard, you might not get to use BitLocker as it needs a TP module on the board. You can get at it via a USB 2.0 external drive if you really want it though.

Apart from that you will be good to go and if you are like me you'll start switching off all the bells and whistles to increase performance anyway. Is your processor a S775 one? 519K or 524 are the only 3.06 on Pentium 4 I believe?

[aos101]

I don't want to use Bitlocker as I want to be able to read the Windows partition from Linux and I guess Bitlocker would prevent that. Encrypting the whole drive I think is a bit over the top for my needs.

Originally Posted by stephenc

Apart from that you will be good to go and if you are like me you'll start switching off all the bells and whistles to increase performance anyway. Is your processor a S775 one? 519K or 524 are the only 3.06 on Pentium 4 I believe?

I don't think so. These are the specs reported by some software I've got:

    CPU Properties:
      CPU Type                                          Intel Pentium 4, 3066 MHz (23 x 133)
      CPU Alias                                         Northwood HyperThreading
      CPU Stepping                                      D1
      Instruction Set                                   x86, MMX, SSE, SSE2
      Original Clock                                    3066 MHz
      Min / Max CPU Multiplier                          23x / 23x
      Engineering Sample                                No
      L1 Trace Cache                                    12K Instructions
      L1 Data Cache                                     8 KB
      L2 Cache                                          512 KB  (On-Die, ECC, ATC, Full-Speed)

    Multi CPU:
      Motherboard ID                                    DELL Dim 4600i
      CPU #0                                            Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.06GHz, 3059 MHz
      CPU #1                                            Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.06GHz, 3059 MHz

    CPU Physical Info:
      Package Type                                      478 Pin uPGA
      Package Size                                      3.50 cm x 3.50 cm
      Transistors                                       55 million
      Process Technology                                6M, 0.13 um, CMOS, Cu, Low-K
      Die Size                                          131 mm2
      Core Voltage                                      1.475 - 1.55 V
      I/O Voltage                                       1.475 - 1.55 V
      Typical Power                                     38.7 - 89.0 W  (depending on clock speed)
      Maximum Power                                     49 - 109 W  (depending on clock speed)

[stephenc]

indeed, as is currently understood, it should be be close to impossible for Linux users to get to the partition even though, even with BitLocker installed, Vista still needs an unencrypted partition to boot from, so dual-booting should still work. A bit of a strange set up tbh but yes, i suppose for the home user it don't matter although might be helpful even on a home lappy if you are out and about with it. Just thought I'd point out the only other major diff on Ultimate

Re your proc...spotted my mistake....you have a S478 P4 (SL6PG to be exact) released before the numbering switch....Schoolboy error TBH. Should have spotted the clue in your original post.

[aos101]

Yeah I agree Bitlocker might be useful if you have a laptop, and I bet businesses like it so it's not quite so bad when one of their laptops goes missing with important information on.

I think I did read somewhere that someone was running Vista with Aero on a FX5200 128MB and they said it ran fine. I'll try Aero when it arrives and see what it is like. Thanks for the info