[starbug]

i am not sure if this should be posted here but it does have something to do with gaming, so the other day i was thinking of upgrading my processor from a athlon 3200 64, to a  AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Socket 939 512KB Inc Fan at £54, for the purpose of getting a semi-smooth game of Supreme Commander and for when i event get Vista, now i hear on the radio and various sources stating that Vista wont run on anything below a core-duo system with certian speed SATA HD can't rem the speed, is that true? Is all the upgrading i've done, well getting a extra 2 gig mem(at the price of £45 for both!), to get Oblivion, fear and X3 to run smoothly been well a waste of money and time? because i don't earn enough to afford a complete new base unit with Core-duo, and my motherboard wont take them, i think, So what i am asking is am i gonna have to spend this year saving for a complete new gaming unit for when games go vista or go for my processor upgrade?

[ChronoReverse]

Waste of time unless you meant a 3800+ X2.  You want a dual-core for Supreme Commander since it's built to support that.

The things you've "heard" about Vista is utterly false though.

[Taristin]

Vista is a step up from XP no matter all the utter pish you hear from people who have yet to try it. Ive been running it since October. I *own* Vista Ultimate x64. I can attest to it being 40% atleast better than XP was.
And no, that's not just its appearance.

Vista will run on your system just fine. And especially with that 2 gb of ram, you'll eliminate the hard drive swap file completely, so performance will be just fine.

[starbug]

Thank god, i was dreading the fact i was goning to have to spend another 1000-2000 on a base unit, seeing as my machine is only just over a year old. i think my motherboard A8N-E nvidia Nforce4 ultra can support X2, has the AMD 64 athlon X2 sticker on the box, never new what x2 meant. is that AMDs version of the core-duo

[redsniper]

Yeah, they're AMD's dual core line. I've been eyeing a 3800 X2 for a while now as well and I've got the exact same mobo as you.

[Ulala]

They fit socket 939? How much do they run?

[phatosealpha]

Yeppers.  There's a bunch of 939 X2s, and well as some dual core 939 opterons.  Cheapest X2 at newegg is the 4400+ for $180.   Can get an Opty 165 dual core for $153.  The opteron is only 1.8 Ghz, but it's just begging to be OCed.

Got an opty 165 dual core in my current rig, OCed to 2.5Ghz.  Wasn't considered an especially stellar OC back when I got it, but wasn't bad.  Not sure how the optys are doing for OCing any more.

[CP5670]

They've gotten better over time. I can get 2.85-2.9 on mine, which was near the best you could get back then, but it's considered only slightly above average these days. Although they aren't popular anymore, ever since the emergence of C2D.

However, he said he mainly wants improved game performance, in which case a new video card will give a far bigger improvement than any processor upgrade 99% of the time.

[ChronoReverse]

Yeah, but assuming he has a mid-ranged video card (7600 class), Supreme Commander is actually heavier on the CPU and particularly likes multiple cores.  I guess it's all the physics calculations it has to do for 500 artillery shells =X

[aldo_14]

I'd step off Vista for at least 6 months, myself; the drivers are still immature, so DX9 games are suffering a small degree of slowdown (granted, not to unplayable levels because all the benchmarks I've seen are for high-spec systems; say 100FPS in HL2 instead of 120, etc) and there's a wee risk of conflict.  Me, I'm waiting for affordable DX10 cards before even considering upgrading (see no pressing reason to do so, admittedly, I'm not really a gamer nowadays).

[Fineus]

I think I'm with aldo on this one. Vista may be shiny, new and even better but since the OS is so important, I'm not happy with moving over to it untill it's established and all the holes that inevitably seem to get found at release are ironed out. If there aren't any holes - so much the better.

Also, yes, I can't afford to upgrade to a DX10 card just yet and the only immediate reason I can see to do so would be Crysis which does take advantage of DX10 trickery. Since it's not out yet - I don't much care for changing my perfectly capable system.

[aldo_14]

I think I'm with aldo on this one. Vista may be shiny, new and even better but since the OS is so important, I'm not happy with moving over to it untill it's established and all the holes that inevitably seem to get found at release are ironed out. If there aren't any holes - so much the better.

Also, yes, I can't afford to upgrade to a DX10 card just yet and the only immediate reason I can see to do so would be Crysis which does take advantage of DX10 trickery. Since it's not out yet - I don't much care for changing my perfectly capable system.

Plus, Crysis does support DX9 on 2-3 year old machines, so you don't even need to upgrade to play it (it's probably still look pretty damn gorgeous sans DX-10, after all).

[neoterran]

Vista wont run on anything below a core-duo system with certian speed SATA HD can't rem the speed, is that true?

No.

[starbug]

We'll i wasn't planning to get Vista until something like november/december, wait for them to sort the bugs, and like aldo i was wanting to wait for the DX10 cards to some down in price, at the mo i have an ATI X800 which seems to be doing ok, but i wanted to get my processor up abit for that main reason of supreme commander's like of the dual core, but i was unsure at the time if  my A8N-E nvidia Nforce4 ultra motherboard could support the Dual core which i found out it can.

One thing i don't get is why all these PC experts in mags/tv/radio and even in an article PCgamer did, say the that you need a £3000 pound high-tech rig to get Vista to work, when my work mate told me the day he has it running on a 1.8 athlon.

[Fineus]

One thing i don't get is why all these PC experts in mags/tv/radio and even in an article PCgamer did, say the that you need a £3000 pound high-tech rig to get Vista to work, when my work mate told me the day he has it running on a 1.8 athlon.

Depends on whether the experts are pro-consumer or pro-manufacturer.

If it's the second option, they'll say it because they want to rinse (the consumer) out of as much money as possible by telling them they "need" high spec rigs to even get Vista running.

I'm guessing this is their motive. It'd be interesting to see the statistics in hardware sales during a six month period before/after Vistas sale. I'm guessing you'd see a rising trend in DX10 compliant graphics cards and other high-spec hardware as Joe Public falls for the myth that you need top-notch electronics to get Vista working.

[aldo_14]

We'll i wasn't planning to get Vista until something like november/december, wait for them to sort the bugs, and like aldo i was wanting to wait for the DX10 cards to some down in price, at the mo i have an ATI X800 which seems to be doing ok, but i wanted to get my processor up abit for that main reason of supreme commander's like of the dual core, but i was unsure at the time if  my A8N-E nvidia Nforce4 ultra motherboard could support the Dual core which i found out it can.

One thing i don't get is why all these PC experts in mags/tv/radio and even in an article PCgamer did, say the that you need a £3000 pound high-tech rig to get Vista to work, when my work mate told me the day he has it running on a 1.8 athlon.

I think it depends largely what you're using it for and what sort of bells and whistles you want with it.  MS offering about 7(?) different flavours adds a lot to the FUD over whether it'll run and, indeed, what it'll run.  I think some of the basic requirements - 15GB HD in particular - are kind of bonkers for an OS.  I'm sort of at the stage where I think they should have 2 things; the actual thing that allows access to the PC (low requirements, very tightly controlled) and then some ancillery application that provides all the fancy user bodgins like a UI or securtiy features.  So splitting it into a small, tight kernel facilitating access, and then something that controls that access.  Of course, that'd never happen, because there's not a single OS manufacturer who'd want to give up control and actually say 'hey, this is just an Operating System - it lets you control the computer, but it leaves you free to determine the controls'

As an aside, Vista min specs - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/systemrequirements.mspx - bearing in mind min specs are usually complete bollocks, of course.

[neoterran]

We'll i wasn't planning to get Vista until something like november/december, wait for them to sort the bugs, and like aldo i was wanting to wait for the DX10 cards to some down in price, at the mo i have an ATI X800 which seems to be doing ok, but i wanted to get my processor up abit for that main reason of supreme commander's like of the dual core, but i was unsure at the time if  my A8N-E nvidia Nforce4 ultra motherboard could support the Dual core which i found out it can.

One thing i don't get is why all these PC experts in mags/tv/radio and even in an article PCgamer did, say the that you need a £3000 pound high-tech rig to get Vista to work, when my work mate told me the day he has it running on a 1.8 athlon.

I think it depends largely what you're using it for and what sort of bells and whistles you want with it.  MS offering about 7(?) different flavours adds a lot to the FUD over whether it'll run and, indeed, what it'll run.  I think some of the basic requirements - 15GB HD in particular - are kind of bonkers for an OS.  I'm sort of at the stage where I think they should have 2 things; the actual thing that allows access to the PC (low requirements, very tightly controlled) and then some ancillery application that provides all the fancy user bodgins like a UI or securtiy features.  So splitting it into a small, tight kernel facilitating access, and then something that controls that access.  Of course, that'd never happen, because there's not a single OS manufacturer who'd want to give up control and actually say 'hey, this is just an Operating System - it lets you control the computer, but it leaves you free to determine the controls'

As an aside, Vista min specs - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/systemrequirements.mspx - bearing in mind min specs are usually complete bollocks, of course.

15GB specs - the reason for this is because vista installs images of all versions of vista at once - this is because now you can use vista anytime upgrade to upgrade at any time to any version of vista. So if you buy home basic, you can upgrade it to ultimate without having to go out and buy a new disc. That's why so much space is required.

My opinion about vista is 1.) the drivers for graphics cards are immature and will probably be that way for another 6 months.  2.)Explorer.exe is less buggy than it is in xp, even if it is a tad slower 3.)Security is far beyond XP 4.)The Networking, Graphics, and Sound are much nicer

[aldo_14]

It's still ludicrous to need 15GB; that's hideous bloatware IMO (not least because it'd take up over 50% of my master HD)

As an aside, the Vista adverts on the TV are just weird; it's amusing how they don't actually advertise anything about the product (not that that tactic is unusual, of course) whilst promising it to be the best thing since toast.

[Taristin]

We'll i wasn't planning to get Vista until something like november/december, wait for them to sort the bugs, and like aldo i was wanting to wait for the DX10 cards to some down in price, at the mo i have an ATI X800 which seems to be doing ok, but i wanted to get my processor up abit for that main reason of supreme commander's like of the dual core, but i was unsure at the time if  my A8N-E nvidia Nforce4 ultra motherboard could support the Dual core which i found out it can.

One thing i don't get is why all these PC experts in mags/tv/radio and even in an article PCgamer did, say the that you need a £3000 pound high-tech rig to get Vista to work, when my work mate told me the day he has it running on a 1.8 athlon.

I think it depends largely what you're using it for and what sort of bells and whistles you want with it.  MS offering about 7(?) different flavours adds a lot to the FUD over whether it'll run and, indeed, what it'll run.  I think some of the basic requirements - 15GB HD in particular - are kind of bonkers for an OS.  I'm sort of at the stage where I think they should have 2 things; the actual thing that allows access to the PC (low requirements, very tightly controlled) and then some ancillery application that provides all the fancy user bodgins like a UI or securtiy features.  So splitting it into a small, tight kernel facilitating access, and then something that controls that access.  Of course, that'd never happen, because there's not a single OS manufacturer who'd want to give up control and actually say 'hey, this is just an Operating System - it lets you control the computer, but it leaves you free to determine the controls'

As an aside, Vista min specs - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/systemrequirements.mspx - bearing in mind min specs are usually complete bollocks, of course.

I have a core 2 duo 6800, 2 gb ram, a 380w psu, on a p5b-vm, with a x1950xt. Cost of system, with case, speakers, keyboard, monitor = $~1500.00

I am running Vista Ultimate x64. (It ran fine with 1gb, but 2 eliminates the hard drive swap completely).
It's not uber by any measure. The cheapest C2D. A moderate mobo. 2gb of the cheapest value ram. But it runs like a champ.

[CP5670]

Yeah, but assuming he has a mid-ranged video card (7600 class), Supreme Commander is actually heavier on the CPU and particularly likes multiple cores.  I guess it's all the physics calculations it has to do for 500 artillery shells =X

I think the video card will still dominate though, from what I've seen of the demo. The big drop in performance when you increase the resolution points to just that.

As for Vista, I will switch to it once there is a program I want to run that requires it. I don't care about an OS's features except for how well it runs programs, which XP already does fine (slightly better at the moment, actually).

core 2 duo 6800

cheapest C2D