The Shrine

I just built a new PC with Windows Vista.

Its an AMD Athlon64 6000+, 4GB DDR2 800, 7900GT 256MB

I bought the video card about a year and a half ago on Woot at the card's launch. It cost me 139 bucks. I was planning on building a new PC at the time with PCI-e capabilities. I never ended up doing it. So the card sat around. At the time it was an awesome deal. I had people at work offering me 200 bucks for it. I should have taken it. So, I will use this card for now, but I'm keeping an eye out for a good deal on a better card.

BTW, no beef with Vista so far. Installation was a little wonky but it sorted itself out and it runs great now.

LOTRO is taking FOREVER to update.

it'll be worth it, believe me DX10 is a different world

Tessian wrote:it'll be worth it, believe me DX10 is a different world

To bad it's a DX 9 card.

Any neat Vista things I should be aware of? Right now it doesnt seem to be much more than a prettier XP. I'm sure there's a lot under the hood that's different. And I've already disabled User Control, ugh..made LOTRO keep relaunching itself because it wasn't allowed to update it's own files.

LotR is so, like, last year. Isn't Age of Conan out soon? I don't know about anyone else, but I'll likely be there for that launch.

Also, I use Vista at the office on a few PCs...I don't "hate" it, but I'm still a ways off from wanting to upgrade my personal PC (mostly because of compatibility issues on a lot of games/apps still).

Gah you're right Barret, I didn't even notice!! Poor Seraph... I just got an 8600GT a few weeks ago so I'm just in awe at the difference.

Kali-- I have yet to run into any games that have trouble in Vista, but for those and/or apps you could always run a Virtual PC copy of XP to run them. Although as I've said before-- no bother upgrading to Vista from XP unless it's a new PC or you're a tech junkie like me.

poop

Also, the video card was OEM, so came with the card in bubble wrap. I noticed a plug on it which looked like a power plug, but I figured it was some kinda factory port. So I'm installing latest drivers, etc and get an NVidia trouble alert. My video card is reporting not enough power and I should make sure the additional power source is attached. Whoops! So the video card reduced its performance automatically to compensate for the lack of full power. My power supply doesnt have a 6pin molex, so I have to find an adapter. Good luck finding that in a store around here. I'll have to probably order one online and wait over a week to enjoy the full power of my card

Seraphina wrote:Any neat Vista things I should be aware of?

The only positive addition Vista brings is the gadgets. Take a look at them and see what you might or might not like. I personally love the Ebay one, it not only tells you what you're bidding on, winning, etc., but it'll even alert you if your feedback changes. I really love Nasa TV, it's pretty neat. And having a proper date/time gadget is much more useful than I thought.

Other than that gimmick, which I like, it's just a FUBARed GUI on XP to me.

I am finding Windows Vista to be possibly the most solid Microsoft OS I have ever used. I have yet to experience any problems with it. There are a number of features I quite like, for instance, dropping, dragging, and burning without the need for crappy 3rd party programs like Nero (was there ever a good one that was free?).


My preference is OS X.

Look for one of the many 8800GTS 512 deals. I just picked one up. Great card.

Why AMD, though? Intel has much better price performance right now.

I don't know. I've always gone with AMD, so I guess I'm just more familiar with them.

I really don't need anything Quad Core...

Zeus wrote:

Seraphina wrote:Any neat Vista things I should be aware of?

The only positive addition Vista brings is the gadgets. Take a look at them and see what you might or might not like. I personally love the Ebay one, it not only tells you what you're bidding on, winning, etc., but it'll even alert you if your feedback changes. I really love Nasa TV, it's pretty neat. And having a proper date/time gadget is much more useful than I thought.

Other than that gimmick, which I like, it's just a FUBARed GUI on XP to me.

I played around with the gadgets a bit. I think I may eventually disable the sidebar. I can do the same thing with iGoogle, and it's not constantly there.