Vista Sweetspot!

[Alsone]

Just thought I'd share thisa with you, I think I've just found the sweetspot for Vista Ultimate 64.

Ever since I put it on I've been disappointed with its speed on my E6600 C2D which was definately slower than my 4800+ X2 on XP.

Anyway, tonight I've overclocked the C2D from 2.4Ghz to 3Ghz (quite a modest OC that requires no extra voltage).

Wow, what a difference, Vista is now performing like XP was, maybe even a shade faster.

So I think I've just found the sweetspot speed for nice performance with Ultimate 64 (I also have 4GB memory for reference).

Benchmarks show the OC is performing a little ahead of an E6700 and just behind a 2.9 Ghz Xeon on Dhry test and ahead of the Xeon on the Whet test (SI Sandra).

 

[Deth]

I prefer 3.6GHz. Pull back to 3.4GHz if it's too fast for you.

 

[Alsone]

Its never too fast its just that I don't want to get into the voltage thing as thats when the extra wear / danger of overheating really starts to kick in. Non voltage overclocking is generally extremely safe as your not pushing the components outside of their normal power parameters.

As for the original post, its aim really is to give people an aiming point for processor spedd if upgrading to Vista Ultimate 64 based on my experience. In other words, my experience has been that if you want decent Vista performance you want to be aiming at a processor at probably E6800 level. Its possible this may vary between setups but for me it certainly seem to be the true sweet spot.

 

[riser]

This really should be in the hardware section as overclocking and Vista doesn't really change Vista.

Your system is running better, thus Vista will perform better. *duh*

 

[Alsone]

I know increasing speed means it works better! Point is Vista is a real system hog and people should be aware of the kind of processor they're going to need. I Bought the E6600 thinking it was enough, it wasn't, it was mediocre until I upped the performance. Vista is very different to XP in its performance requirements.

 

[riser]

Vista, while a hog, also prefetches common programs that you run to make them faster loading and working.

Go to the Windows Icon and in the search/run type: prefetch

(Yes, it is now a pain to give directions too)

I've seen programs that are HOGS on XP that take up 1/3rd the memory just idling.. and on Vista, when you close the program, the memory and CPU drop about 6% in use.

Most people probably do a handful things on their computer:

Play a game/Program
Music
Internet/Email
Video

That probably covers 75% of the users out there.. Its caching the main features of the computer for better performance at that point.

Tweak Vista and you'll like it more. Problem is, most people don't know how to tweak an OS without looking it up or using a 3rd party program.