ToolPackinMama said:
Please post details here if you have assembled a Vista-friendly PC. I'm
particularly interested in budget systems that are Vista-friendly.
Thank you.
Laura
Simple, really. Just remember two things as you are choosing your
components:
1) You need a Geforce 6200 -or later- graphics card with video RAM of 256MB
or more ON the video card.* Be careful here, because some video cards which
might otherwise be VERY vista capable are designed to use UP TO a certain
amount of RAM, meaning that they steal RAM from the system. You need to
make sure that the video card you choose has at least 256MB of RAM ON the
video card.
2) For RAM, you need 1.5GB - 2GB (no less, no more), and speed doesn't
matter. In this case, quantity is more important than speed. But as
always, it is in your best interest to buy a good name brand of RAM.* That
is, if you want your budget build to be stable and reliable.
Other components you don't really need to worry about, other than the usual
"what is a good budget choice?". For example, CPU . . . You'll need
something clocked around 1.5GHz or faster*. But, as long as you stick to
the usual AMD or Intel, and buy something that is still widely available in
the usual retail channels, you'll be fine. Same with hard drive. You will
want about 60GB or more of space, depending on what you want to do with the
system. But finding hard drives smaller than that is getting tougher.
There are some 40GB drives still available, but the cheap drives seem to
start around 80GB now, at roughly the same price as the 40GB drives. And so
on.
Building budget-friendly for Vista is like any other budget build, but you
just have to give a little more consideration to the video card you choose,
and make sure you end up with 1.5-2.0GB of system RAM. OH, but do NOT skimp
on the power supply. Depending on what other components you choose, newegg
carries an AMS Mercury 460W which is very high quality at a reasonable
price, if it will work with whatever you decide to build. Or at least they
did, last I checked.
Post here when you think you've got a good list of components, and you will
get plenty of helpful advice. If you want someone to choose the whole thing
for you (every component), there are people in this ng who will be happy to
do that, also.
-Dave
* Yes, the "system requirements" listed on the vista web site and retail
packages are slightly different, but I'm going by real-world experience, not
some fantasy written by a marketing team at Microsoft.
