I think it's generally good that Vista keeps you using a lot of RAM. You want your RAM to be full of things, things that then don't have to be pulled off of your slow-ass hard drive. As nice as it may be to see that "oh I have a lot of RAM free", well that means that crap that isn't in RAM needs to get there before you can do anything with it.


That aside, I'm gonna go ahead and hate Vista with you. Adds bloat that I don't need, removed support for networking over Firewire (which is the easiest way for me to pull stuff off of my laptop when I don't have a hub handy), and to top it off, there aren't even Vista drivers for my laptop's motherboard. At least there weren't when I tried Vista a few months ago (nVidia said they had no plans to make a driver so I'm not getting my hopes up).


tl;dr: XP works. I have no reason to use Vista.

[Edit: What spoco said. Loaded the page then waited 2 hours to post.]

Actually, you can pick one up for $150. Also, NVidia is developing a standalone card as well.

You might be right on the linux support, but then again DRM is in trouble now in spite of seeming to be the trend of the future just a couple or few years ago. If it survives it'll be a less intrusive form than they wanted and all it took to force the change was consumers saying no. I'm happy enough to do that. Lots of things have changed over time which seemed wishful thinking at some point.

If you're a gamer or need it for work you might be better off to stay with Windows but for me there was no reason not to make the move. Only thing that isn't 100% is flash, the rest of what I use daily I see no problems in. Some aspects are actually better, mplayer for example runs fullscreen quicktime instead of in that little box we're stuck with on Windows. Computer is a bit faster and I went from a real "I'm needing an upgrade soon" frame of mind to being able to wait a bit longer. When I do buy I'm planning to be as open source compliant as possible, no nvidia or other proprietary stuff to deal with. Intel cards and others work just fine, if the ones that insist on proprietary lose business they'll get the idea same as they did with DRM.

Ha! I didn't even know they made ads.

Oh, 3dfx, how amazing you were in the day... how quickly you actually fell. Quite sad.

But I thank you for the gaming world we have now and the Nvidia 8800 in my machine now

Oh yes... I think 'viral' is not correct for this, being that
a) it was made for tv
b) the company doesn't exist any more

So, how exactly would it be viral then?

LOL, Vista's running quite nicely for me too.

I just had the most elegant graphics card upgrade of all time - a couple of reboots and everything had essentially set itself up (extra reboot just b/c I insisted on getting a new driver for my 8800 from nvidia.

I might be gone for a while now... DX10 gaming beckons!

Rendering problems on slow machines.

On my old Athlon 64 3200+ (single core) with Debian/Linux, 1 GB of RAM, latest NVIDIA driver for 6800 AGP card, and SeaMonkey/IceApe v1.1.4, I noticed some really slow rendering issues. Logging in with the fade effects. VERY slow. CPU usage spike up for like five seconds.

Comment system with a lot of comments, slow too. Rendering took like 15 seconds for this SiftTalk.

Old VS v2.5 did not have this problem. We need to improve this for low-end computer users.

i wanna see the Marble NVIDIA GeForce 8800 rendering a frame from Enemy Territory: Quake Wars beta

Meh, wanted to give this a shot on my new server... After 5 hours of trying to get Ubuntu to be able to actually detect the right video card.. trying every single Nvidia driver on earth... I give up, I am sticking to Windows MCE.

You will need Vista and a NVIDIA 8800 card (for now) for DirectX 10!!

There are Vista drivers for Nvidia.. .but the are complete crap (1/3 FPS over XP). Check out latest "Beta" drivers.
Updated January 31, 2007: NVIDIA has a newer Beta driver for GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs that is available to download. "These NVIDA Windows Vista drivers are under development. This version is not fully optimized for full 3D performance and may not include all available features available on different operating systems. NVIDIA, along with the industry, is continuing to update its Windows Vista drivers to ensure maximum performance on 3D applications and add support for features."

No SLI support, and I'm not sure works well with Dual Core.

Unless you guys are talking about the 8800, there are Vista compatible nVidia drivers, FFS they're even available on Microsoft Update. I wouldn't do it with a tablet, but i had it working perfectly on my 40gb spare drive before the eval ran out and i installed Ubu. Having run both, I have to say I prefer Ubu over Windows any day, there just needs to be more support for games other than Wine or Cedega.
(Beryl is the greatest thing to happen to eyecandy since the GUI itself.)
Vista is, just like everything else MS makes, late to the party...

Mac's are good for certain people with certain habits and certain hobbies. PC's are good for everyone else who doesn't fall into that specific category. Easy as that.


(oh and just for the record, to change your res in Vista, it's 3 clicks, not 9. Right click desktop, Personalize, Display Settings... and not only display settings are there. Appearance settings, mouse control, sounds, pointers, theme, etc.)

I think Vista was the best thing to happen to OSX. (or at least Ubuntu)
I mean, how many people are going to buy new computers, get this sluggish brick, with all sorts of new annoying things (stuff can't get written in c:Program Files) and they haven't fixed a single thing that annoys you about Windows.

Dag is right, the stupid File-Open mini-menu never saves anything, Last Folder location, window size, Sort By Details... You have to fight with the same crap everytime (occasionally an app will remember previous dir, but that's it).

If Apple would realize the hardware isn't that important now that iPhone and iPod will be 70% of revenue... They SHOULD go for the jugular and remove the DRM stuff to lock OSX to apple hardware. I realize they don't support anything but a handful of devices/drviers. But if you have the right chipset/CPU/graphics... Then you should be able to buy OSX. They should have a big disclaimer about what hardware is supported. And the Chinese will go nuts producing boxen that are compatible. Hell, my Dell laptop ran OSX just fine when the first Intel OSX86 was leaked.

(BTW OSX is easy to upgrade... It's freakin BSD/Linux, so user files go here, OS goes here. Programs go here, configs for programs go some place logical.. Easy cheesy... Good luck with Vista upgrade over buggy XP)

I love how Microsoft is so insanely incompetent that you can't just install clean on your computer. You would have to wipe/ install XP (probably upgrade to SP2) / then upgrade to Vista. What happens with Office trojan wipes out you computer...

All I know is that I have a "Vista Capable" machine and a free copy of Vista Business, and there is no way I'm installing.. Maybe if I get a spare harddrive.. (No point installing into VMware cause you don't get the Aero glass with VMware graphics support) Also, Nvidia is still not supported in Vista YET....

I have to install about 1000 freeware programs before Windows is useable, and it is all stuff that comes with just about every for of Unix.. Try "ls *.txt | grep whatever" in Windows.

Has anyone pointed out that that isn't Opie? Thats Anthony.

And @ fiver2 he wasent over embelishing. He spent over 12 hours strait trying to install that rushed out, half baked, poor excuse for a beta on a top of the line dell that had "Vista ready" on the box.
The problem was his nVidia card and microsoft's complete inability to let 3rd party developers in on the driver specs

joedirt's comment concerning the change to the resolution switch troubles me most; I mean, I have the alternative of using the nvidia feature, but I always felt this was one thing that Windows got "right" ever since I could change resolutions without resetting my system.

My enthusiasm for an upgrade, although never particularly high, continues to fall.

What I do want, though, is a sweet 24" widescreen...

I had a 9800 PRO and I just couldn't stand the choppiness anymore and ditch it for a marginal upgrade with the ATI/AMD Radeon X800 GTO (I thought I bought the pipe unlockable version but alas no.)

If you are looking for something cheap and good from Nvidia, you can't go wrong with the 6600.