About a little project that I have going...

[Kanaye]

I'm planning to make an investment of parts to build a custom PC. I was looking into NovasLogic's thread on how to build a PC for gaming, which is really useful, but my question lies more within the operating system to use.

As some may recall, I mentioned that my main operating system is Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and I have, as well, Windows XP Pro SP2, Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows 7. I'm not willing to make a guinea pig out of this new machine so Win7 is discarded, and I really want to try DirectX 10 powered games, so XP ain't a choice, leaving me therefore with Vista.

I wanted to know some things about the operating system, as I'm not all too familiar with Vista, despite having used it several times.

I'm aiming more for pro and cons of using Vista (if someone can explain how exactly Vista being a memory hog afffects the PCs performance would greatly help), among other things I should know before deciding "ok, I'm going with Vista".

I'm not very literate in these sense of computer stuff although I do read some things on it...and I need you help. Onegaishimasu? Arigatou.

Ruki.

[Chicken Little]

Just create a dual boot on differing partitions, either that or you could actually emulate a windows environment within a MAC OS (although thus far I believe it's only an XP and prior emulation standard, could be wrong)

Pros and cons with Vista can be a varying thing, since a pro could be the increased security that it brang when compared to those of the previous iterations but at the same time that is also a con since the prompts and security treated you as an invalid (do you want to allow windows access to the internet? Are you sure? Do you want to see this message again? Are you sure?) Vista also encrypts hdds by default, Ip's & networking were changed where you effectively had 2 and varying protocols that originally caused problems but once worked around and understood gave added net security, patching and updating manually is problematic what with x64 or x32 versions with some unnamed so so you download the wrong one simply because through some obscurely small print (who really reads small print in the terms of service these days on like 40mb downloads?) it was the wrong version however the audio and media centre was overhauled, the stability was improved by separating the shell and kernel, of course DX10 but also playing past windows games (DOS based) is problematic and yeah I could go on and on but since I use XP most of it would be 2nd hand info anyway.

As for memory hog lets put it this way, games ultimately require 3 things to run properly after an install, graphics, speed and power. Vista being a memory hog is not so much a big deal in terms of translating actions since unless you're running basic minimum RAM you won't notice a difference, instead the problem will be with the Processor speed capping the game to run the OS, it's why things can run fine when you're using most of your ram allocation but as soon as the processor attempts to reallocate and that shoots up you lose functionality and things lag, hang and crash. Generally problems with gaming is actually because of the processor capping as opposed to the ram or gpu options.

Anyway, now is probably not the time to be upgrading since new processor batches are due out in about a month and a bit.

[Kanaye]

Nor I have the money to do so anytime soon. But this machine won't have not even a bit of Apple. It's meant to run Windows. Because that environment you talk about I have with my Mac, but it's not very good for games per se.

[NovasLogic]

Nor I have the money to do so anytime soon. But this machine won't have not even a bit of Apple. It's meant to run Windows. Because that environment you talk about I have with my Mac, but it's not very good for games per se.

Lancet messaged me last night about this thread cause I visit the forums on rare occasions. If you like MacOSX then I can tell you from a buddy who runs hackintosh that you can dual boot both xp/vista and OSX if you desire. Just remember for gaming if you're running vista you want 2gb minimum but a safe bet is to go with 3gb. Also Fly is right, Vista caps the processor but if you decide to get a faster processor you're in the clear. Also since the new batch is coming out you'll get smoking deals on the older cpu which run almost aswell as the new batch. You're call amigo. Got anyquestions ask lancet for my aim name or ask in here. FLY knows a hell of a lot more about pcs then I do and I know more then most.

edit: I also forgot, if you decide to order parts don't be stupid like me and order them separately online over the course of a few months. Save and get them all at once because if the part is bad instead of shipping back to the website you ordered from and getting it back in a speedy manner you'll have to send it to the manufacture and I can tell you from having a bad motherboard, that takes 3-4 weeks.