G
Guest
Pure marketing at its worse. A message intended to mislead. You couldn't
run Vista in the minimum requirements and get any work done. Oh, maybe you
could boot it up and just let it sit there. Maybe. But actually run
applications and do something? Hardly.
My system is well above the minimum: Athlon x64 Dual Core 4400+, 2GB DDR
memory, WD SATA II hard-drive with 16MB buffer spinning at 7600rpm, ATI X700
display adapter with 256MB DDR3 memory, Soundblaster Audigy ZS, Antec
Truepower TPII 550 watt power supply.
Plus several fans pulling air from the front and pushing it out the back to
try and keep things cool. Fans blowing directly on the drives, the
southbridge, the CPU, the power supply, the memory, and the motherboard's
power rectifiers/capacitors/whatever they are, but they get hot and they need
a fan, sucking in air from the front, and blowing it out the back.
Initially I ran stock timing on the CPU at 2.2Ghz. Later I overclocked to
2.5Ghz in an effort to "enhance the user experience." Admittedly, the memory
is "only" DDR, but its good DDR memory, matched Corsair XMS sticks running in
128bit mode. Initially I also ran the memory at stock speeds and voltages,
but later on overclocked and tightened up the latencies in an effort to get
some extra performance out of my hardware with the goal of being able to
actually use Vista to do something.
On that system, oh how shall I say it, Vista ran slowly. I cannot
underscore the "slowly" enough. Just sitting there, Vista seemed fine. As
soon as I tried to do any work, the real pain begins.
For example, editing a few photos in GIMP. Not big photos, little 1024x768
photos. Not terrible, okay so far. Now run WMP to "crank out some tunes"
and watch the system melt. Playback stutters, then stops. GIMP has trouble
changing to the window you've selected. The mouse cursor freezes for 30 to
90 seconds at a time. Give the PC a three-fingered-salute ctl-alt-del to
bring up Task Manager and be prepared to wait up to 5 minutes. That is if it
will load at all. Often it said it couldn't load some sort of security
profile and Task Manager failed.
Okay, so maybe that test wasn't fair. Audio, afterall, requires a near
real-time decoding for playback. How about something simpler, say, like
allowing anti-virus to run like it normally does, in the background, not
running a task, just doing what resident protection does scanning a subset of
files that are executed. In this case McAfee Enterprise 8.5. Then try to
do, oh anything. How about run the included Photo Management software. The
experience causes me to ponder the idea that perhaps I am a massochist.
Or, I know. Have indexer be doing its thing, indexing on low priority while
you go and get into Control Panel to change some settings. Ooops. And the
AV is running. And so is Defender. And the built-in firewall. And a whole
bunch of other background processes configured by default. Definitely need
to consider the possibility that I have massochistic tendencies, because I'm
experiencing nothing but pain and I'm doing it to myself. Sorta.
That's the Vista experience on a machine well above the minimum. So I run
the very cool built-in diagnostics. Those tests told me that:
1) I didn't have enough memory. It said memory was typically around 100%
used and that the O.S. was therefore required to use the virtual memory
swapfile constantly. Diagnostics also told me:
2) That the Average Disk Queue length was too long. "Too long" was
variable, but at 5 it was too long and at 19 it was too long.
So, my hardware is well above the minimum. I try to do a minimum modicum of
work. Very minor amount, and Vista tells me this hardware is inadequate.
As near as I can tell, the proper system "minimums" should be listed as fast
Dual-core Duo processor (minimum), Quad-core preferred. WD Raptor 10Krpm
hard-drive minimum, SCSI 320 Hard-drive preferred. I would say RAID but of
course my RAID would never work under Vista. So scratch RAID. 8GB memory.
I was constantly maxed out with my 2GB. Did I need 50% more memory? Let's
say 50%, the system wanted 3GB. That would mean I was precariously close to
hitting that memory ceiling again. Best to go with 8GB. Video. I don't
know there. Whatever the hottest, power-sucking, heat producing multiple GPU
graphics processor costing $500 you can get. You can forget your little $300
display adapter. That hardware is too "yesterday" for such an advanced O.S.
as Vista. No, it needs the widest memory path, the most memory, the fastest
processor, the fastest bus ever implemented in a PC to score decently on the
experience index.
Of course there's the sound card. You know what? Skip the sound. Hearing
is over-rated. Forget music and text to speech. All the cool people have
gotten past the whole "auditory" thing. It's just too pedestrian, too
mainstream. No sound.
Then, of course, there is the issue of power. 550 watts? Probably not
enough. I mean, that big graphics card alone is going to want a couple
hundred watts. No, best to stick with something in the 650 watt and up range.
THAT'S the system minimum. Not that marketing baloney, bait and switch crud
MS' over-worked PR firm came up with. That's what I figure you'll need if
you want to do something other than sit there gazing lovingly at the pretty
O.S. while being sure not to touch the mouse or keyboard as you might
accidently load an application, and then all bets are off.
run Vista in the minimum requirements and get any work done. Oh, maybe you
could boot it up and just let it sit there. Maybe. But actually run
applications and do something? Hardly.
My system is well above the minimum: Athlon x64 Dual Core 4400+, 2GB DDR
memory, WD SATA II hard-drive with 16MB buffer spinning at 7600rpm, ATI X700
display adapter with 256MB DDR3 memory, Soundblaster Audigy ZS, Antec
Truepower TPII 550 watt power supply.
Plus several fans pulling air from the front and pushing it out the back to
try and keep things cool. Fans blowing directly on the drives, the
southbridge, the CPU, the power supply, the memory, and the motherboard's
power rectifiers/capacitors/whatever they are, but they get hot and they need
a fan, sucking in air from the front, and blowing it out the back.
Initially I ran stock timing on the CPU at 2.2Ghz. Later I overclocked to
2.5Ghz in an effort to "enhance the user experience." Admittedly, the memory
is "only" DDR, but its good DDR memory, matched Corsair XMS sticks running in
128bit mode. Initially I also ran the memory at stock speeds and voltages,
but later on overclocked and tightened up the latencies in an effort to get
some extra performance out of my hardware with the goal of being able to
actually use Vista to do something.
On that system, oh how shall I say it, Vista ran slowly. I cannot
underscore the "slowly" enough. Just sitting there, Vista seemed fine. As
soon as I tried to do any work, the real pain begins.
For example, editing a few photos in GIMP. Not big photos, little 1024x768
photos. Not terrible, okay so far. Now run WMP to "crank out some tunes"
and watch the system melt. Playback stutters, then stops. GIMP has trouble
changing to the window you've selected. The mouse cursor freezes for 30 to
90 seconds at a time. Give the PC a three-fingered-salute ctl-alt-del to
bring up Task Manager and be prepared to wait up to 5 minutes. That is if it
will load at all. Often it said it couldn't load some sort of security
profile and Task Manager failed.
Okay, so maybe that test wasn't fair. Audio, afterall, requires a near
real-time decoding for playback. How about something simpler, say, like
allowing anti-virus to run like it normally does, in the background, not
running a task, just doing what resident protection does scanning a subset of
files that are executed. In this case McAfee Enterprise 8.5. Then try to
do, oh anything. How about run the included Photo Management software. The
experience causes me to ponder the idea that perhaps I am a massochist.
Or, I know. Have indexer be doing its thing, indexing on low priority while
you go and get into Control Panel to change some settings. Ooops. And the
AV is running. And so is Defender. And the built-in firewall. And a whole
bunch of other background processes configured by default. Definitely need
to consider the possibility that I have massochistic tendencies, because I'm
experiencing nothing but pain and I'm doing it to myself. Sorta.
That's the Vista experience on a machine well above the minimum. So I run
the very cool built-in diagnostics. Those tests told me that:
1) I didn't have enough memory. It said memory was typically around 100%
used and that the O.S. was therefore required to use the virtual memory
swapfile constantly. Diagnostics also told me:
2) That the Average Disk Queue length was too long. "Too long" was
variable, but at 5 it was too long and at 19 it was too long.
So, my hardware is well above the minimum. I try to do a minimum modicum of
work. Very minor amount, and Vista tells me this hardware is inadequate.
As near as I can tell, the proper system "minimums" should be listed as fast
Dual-core Duo processor (minimum), Quad-core preferred. WD Raptor 10Krpm
hard-drive minimum, SCSI 320 Hard-drive preferred. I would say RAID but of
course my RAID would never work under Vista. So scratch RAID. 8GB memory.
I was constantly maxed out with my 2GB. Did I need 50% more memory? Let's
say 50%, the system wanted 3GB. That would mean I was precariously close to
hitting that memory ceiling again. Best to go with 8GB. Video. I don't
know there. Whatever the hottest, power-sucking, heat producing multiple GPU
graphics processor costing $500 you can get. You can forget your little $300
display adapter. That hardware is too "yesterday" for such an advanced O.S.
as Vista. No, it needs the widest memory path, the most memory, the fastest
processor, the fastest bus ever implemented in a PC to score decently on the
experience index.
Of course there's the sound card. You know what? Skip the sound. Hearing
is over-rated. Forget music and text to speech. All the cool people have
gotten past the whole "auditory" thing. It's just too pedestrian, too
mainstream. No sound.
Then, of course, there is the issue of power. 550 watts? Probably not
enough. I mean, that big graphics card alone is going to want a couple
hundred watts. No, best to stick with something in the 650 watt and up range.
THAT'S the system minimum. Not that marketing baloney, bait and switch crud
MS' over-worked PR firm came up with. That's what I figure you'll need if
you want to do something other than sit there gazing lovingly at the pretty
O.S. while being sure not to touch the mouse or keyboard as you might
accidently load an application, and then all bets are off.