1gb+vista=suck???

[lewbaseball07]

will a gig of ram be enough to run vista ultimate good?

Cuz i have 2gb and it runs without a hitch and my friend wants to build a computer. He doesnt wanna spend that much so will a gig do?

 

[Featherstone]

I believe its minimum Req. is 1 Gig. Which means it will run, but not very well as with all "minimum Requirements" when it comes to software.

I would recommend the 2GB

 

[croc]

Run, yes... Good, no.

 

[jnjkele]

I ran the vista ultimate betas, the only one I didn't get was the final RC. I have an AMD64 3700+ with 1Gb DDR400 and a 7800GT and it ran fine with all of the eye candy turned on. Game performance wasn't as good, but I chalk that up to poorly optimized vista drivers. 1Gb should run it fine (unless you're doing major video editing, software compiling or enterprise CAD work) for normal tasks and not too bad for games either.

I would still highly recommend 2Gb, but is it needed? I'd have to say no.

my $.02

I'm no M$ fan, but I do have to admit they seem to have the minimum pegged about right for RAM this time.

-J

 

[skittle]

I ran RC2 on a celeron 410@1.46ghz
512mb of ram
40gb hard drive
Intel GMA950 graphics
Aero Glass was enabled

It ran very smoothly, i wouldnt suggest trying to game on it though but for normal operation 1gb woud be more than enough.

 

[guy_k]

Minimum requirement is ONLY 512 megabytes though. But they seem to be advertising vista for 2gigs requirement and 4gigs recommended......

 

[Dahak]

It'll run,but you'll have all kinds of probs with slow reaction times.Meaning when you open a window it will take somewhat longer than having 2 gigs of ram.I would recommend a minimum of 2gigs for proper operating performance.Maybe even 3 for lots of reserve.Goodluck.

Dahak

AMD X2-4400+@2.644 S-939
EVGA NF4 SLI MB
2X EVGA 7800GT IN SLI
2X1GIG DDR IN DC MODE
WD300GIG HD
EXTREME 19IN.MONITOR 1280X1024
THERMALTAKE TOUGHPOWER 850WATT PSU
COOLERMASTER MINI R120

 

[skittle]

slow reaction times? i dont think so
Aero ran just fine on my bottom barrel laptop
1gb will be enough to get solid preformance
just makes sure that he has a DX9 capable graphics card... a 7300 series would do just fine.

 

[croc]

Run, yes... Good, no.

OP asked, I answered. To expand...

RC2 load that I currently have running uses 716 MB ram just doing this. I open up a word 2007 doc, blank, and it goes up to ~ 760 MB. An excel 2007, ~ 780 MB... So it won't take long with 1 GB, doing several tasks, and you are into pagefile. Or even 1 memory intensive program. Will it run? 512 will run it. Will it run good???? Suck it and see. I have, and am glad I have 2 GB. Wish I had 4. (and don't get started on 64 bit...)

 

[Statross]

It'll run,but you'll have all kinds of probs with slow reaction times.Meaning when you open a window it will take somewhat longer than having 2 gigs of ram.I would recommend a minimum of 2gigs for proper operating performance.Maybe even 3 for lots of reserve.Goodluck.

Dahak

AMD X2-4400+@2.644 S-939
EVGA NF4 SLI MB
2X EVGA 7800GT IN SLI
2X1GIG DDR IN DC MODE
WD300GIG HD
EXTREME 19IN.MONITOR 1280X1024
THERMALTAKE TOUGHPOWER 850WATT PSU
COOLERMASTER MINI R120

lol, what crap...i even looked at that guys signature to see if he wsa Microsoft or corsair rep

 

[redwing]

Is your friend building a gaming rig, or a simple office/whatnot machine?
In the case of the latter, he's fine with 1gig.

However most games will not run nearly as well on Vista with 1GB ram, as they do (all other hardware being equal) on XP Pro, no matter how much you try to optimize it for performance. Speaking from experience with the beta (not RC2).
Maybe they miraculously made it use 100+mb less memory for system usage for their final version, you never know

This is to be expected however ... thats the price to pay for fancy visual effects that'll keep you entertained for a whole of 2 minutes when you first boot into it. Kinda akin to going from a Win98 machine to a Xp Pro system and realizing that your 256mb is just not going to cut it for smooth sailing.


Cheers

 

[CairnGorm]

it will suck...those that are saying differently aren't running it. Will it run? Sure...but it will suck. I am building a new rig right now and I am putting in 4GB. I am being laughed at in several boards but I remember when I was told "ohhhhhh 32 MB ...you will never need that much" Whatever. Dual/quad cores, new OSs, new programs coming out...look at how much more memory you needed for XP over 98...that is how much more you will need this time too.

 

[Syntonic]

I would imagine by the time Vista has enough market penetration for them to only release DX10 games, ddr3 will be the system memory flavour of choice and your friend might consider a further upgrade then (new cpus and all then too.) That's something to keep in mind before you use a lot of money on ddr2. If your friend needs a machine right now, I think it's best to get something at the c2d entry level to hold down the fort with XP till later but that was just my way of thinking. Otherwise, s/he could play the wait and see game till s/he just can't wait any longer (always new tech just around the corner.) You could, however, splurge on peripherals as those are normally used from one comp to the next.

As someone mentioned earlier, it wasn't really mentioned what your friend was going to do with Vista Ultimate... I mean, if he just wants to play Chess Titans and Minesweeper (with spiffy new animation!), I'm not really sure you need all that much in the first place.

 

[xlfirstclass]

1 gig will be enough to run it okay. Best thing to do is to disable any services running in the background that you don't need.

 

[michaelahess]

1GB will run fine as long as you don't run a bunch of things at once. I've run it without issue on a 1GB system with an athlon xp 2600 and radeon 9700pro. I was using office 2k7, adobe elements, even farcry. Not a problem at all. Sure it won't be as fast as a high end system with 2-4GB, but it will be more than fast enough for the light to average user (gamer included).

 

[mitch074]

1 Gb should be enough, right.

I however find hardly acceptable that with no app launched, interface reverted to Windows Classic (win2k - like) and most unused services disabled, the 32-bit Vista system still takes up more than 400 Mb of RAM.

That's not an OS, that's a RAM hog.

To give you an idea, on a Linux system with a browser (and 8 tabs), a mail client, a messenger, a fancy 3D interface and a Web server running, I have only 350 Mb in use. The system is 64-bit (makes machine code twice as large).

To answer the question, yes, 1 Gb should run Vista fine. Anything goes past 300 Mb of RAM requirements, expect a lot of swapping.

 

[The_Abyss]

Minimum requirement is ONLY 512 megabytes though. But they seem to be advertising vista for 2gigs requirement and 4gigs recommended......

They are comanies like Dell who of course have a vested interest in ensuring that you buy systems with more components in.

 

[Harrisson]

will a gig of ram be enough to run vista ultimate good?
Cuz i have 2gb and it runs without a hitch and my friend wants to build a computer. He doesnt wanna spend that much so will a gig do?

One important note I havent seen yet in this thread - nice and cheap Vista speed boost is USB Flash drives, 1 GB costs 10 euros, 2 GB ~20 euros. Pick with "ready boost" ofc.

 

[michaelahess]

Yes Vista "scales" memory use. It's a much smarter OS than XP, it will actually USE all the RAM it needs for what it's doing, if it can load itself in memory while other apps aren't running, it will just to make itself quicker. This is irritating me how people keep saying it's a memory hog. Compare it to games, 100% cpu utilization on a game? Of course, it's programmed to use all it can even if it's not "necessary". Play Broken Sword 3 for example, no way does it need 100% but it will use it just to make sure you get the best experience.

Linux does the same thing, code is just much less bloated so it doesn't need as much. But it will use it if it needs it.

If you watch Vista's memory while starting larger apps (Photoshop CS2) you'll notice various services reduce memory consumption. It's quite neat if you pay attention, actually.

 

[CairnGorm]

here don't take my word for it....4 GB for VISTA

Maybe you will believe Anandtech: "However, the bigger news in memory over the coming quarters will be the release of 2GB modules with low latencies. This will benefit those users switching over to Vista as the operating system recommends (and almost requires) additional memory relative to XP. Recommendations for a general user that does a variety of tasks from video editing to gaming will be 2GB, and enthusiasts or heavy gamer will need 4GB in our opinion. "

Will 1 GB work? yes. Will it suck? Yes.

 

[michaelahess]

I don't care about reviews, I'm telling you what I've seen on my own vista boxes. It works fine with todays software. In the next year or two software may change drastically enough that you will need 2GB minimun, that's expected. I'm just saying that right now, in this world, a system with 1GB will be enough for all but gaming and high end media creation.

As you said before, you are building a new rig, and you are probably not the "average" user, so yes by all means go to 4GB. But saying Vista will suck with only 1GB is completely inaccurate.

Hell a P4 2.0Ghz with 512MB Ram is still good enough for 80% of consumers who only listen to music and use the web, Vista isn't a much bigger drag than XP for these people.

 

[jrivera04]

I was running Vista Ultimate on a P4 3.4 HT with 1 GB and it ran fine. I could only have a few apps open before RAM ran low but it ran good until then. Even with 1GB of RAM the Media Center portion ran smooth.

A few weeks later I installed another 1GB for a total of 2GB and the basic operation of Vista was still the same. I am now able to run Virtual Machines along with other programs. I am running Office 2007 as well.