How much better will I need to be to run Vista?

[snowdrift]

With the advent of Vista (not that I'll jump immediately to it when it's out), I have started thinking about configuring a new machine. It's been 2 years this month since I put my last machine together:

Micro-Star International (MSI) K8N Neo Platinum MS-7030 Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Central Processing Unit (Newcastle AX Revision)
(Retail Version) Aluminum Heat Sink and Fan
Two Corsair VS512MB400 512MB DDR400 PC3200 CAS2.5 Value Select Memory Chips
Sapphire (ATI) Radeon 9800 Pro Atlantis AGP Video Card (128M, 8X)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (Perpendicular Recording) 320GB Hard Drive [ST3320620A]
Vantec NST-360U2-SG 3.5" Silver Nexstar 3 USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure
Seagate 200GB ATA Hard Drive [ST3200822A-RK ULTRA DMA100]
Two Western Digital 160GB IDE HDDs (8MB Cache)
BenQ 1640 DVD-ROM Drive
Plextor 708A DVD-ROM Drive
3.5-Inch Floppy Disk Drive
Enermax EG465P-VE 460W Power Supply (+3.3V@35A; +5V@35A; -5V@1A; +12V@33A; -12V@1A; +5VSB@2.2A)
Kingwin KT-424-S SL RT Aluminum Case
Windows XP Professional Operating System (Service Pack 2 with All Patches Current)
D-Link DI-604 Router

I am wondering if I should wait some more before diving in and buying a new system I make, and even if my current configuration will itself be "good enough" to run Vista.

I don't want to spend much more than $1K (maybe $1,500) when I do it again.

Any suggestions? (Aside from switching to *nix). ;-)

 

[GMtheBest]

That system will run vista, but you won't be able to run it at its fullers (aero theme) An upgrade to 2 GB of ram and new video card would be recommended.

 

[Bobthelost]

Don't switch to vista?

Serriously, it's not going to revolutionise how i use my computer, it's not going to offer anything i need for a while, why blow money on an OS that judging by past performance from microsoft will need a year + to get to something approaching a mature state?

 

[snowdrift]

I agree on the Vista comments... note I said "(not that I'll jump immediately to it when it's out)." It's a shame on the 2 GB thing. Is the 64-bit version of XP tweaked to provide me anything better performancewise, or am I better off sticking with the 32-bit version of XP I use now?

 

[Bobthelost]

64 Bit means you get to use more than 3.2GB (?) of RAM (and use it more efficently due to a larger virutal space). That's about it. Since you're only considering about going up to 2GB it's not really going to rock your world

The 64 bit version is a bit more fiddly about stuff like drivers. It's not a good idea for home users.

 

[snowdrift]

Thanks for confirming what I suspected, Bobthelost.

So... you use Linux don't you? I put SUSE 10.1 on a 20 GB partition this week. Seems snappy but my having SO MUCH legacy data under XP makes me think I could never really fully embrace it.

 

[CSMR]

The system is more than enough to run Vista. Aero needs a DX9 card with enough graphics memory; that's all. Your PC according to Microsoft is "Vista Premium Ready". (A nonsense combination of words but you get their gist!)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/evaluate/hardware/vistarpc.mspx

 

[Atheus]

LOL, seriously? That box will run any operating system you can think of and will do so for many more years. The suggestion to upgrade to 2GB(!) of main memory to run a flat desktop nearly made me spit my coffee.

 

[snowdrift]

OK. But will the system be snappy with what I have?

 

[CSMR]

Originally posted by: snowdrift
I agree on the Vista comments... note I said "(not that I'll jump immediately to it when it's out)." It's a shame on the 2 GB thing. Is the 64-bit version of XP tweaked to provide me anything better performancewise, or am I better off sticking with the 32-bit version of XP I use now?

It is tweaked, but will be more fiddly as bobthelost said.

 

[CSMR]

Originally posted by: snowdrift
OK. But will the system be snappy with what I have?

It should be snappier than XP because Vista contains some performance improvements: allocating memory better to speed things up mainly I think. Plus the 64 bit capability.