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I upgraded an old xp machine to Vista Ultimate 32bit for giggles when the XP installation caught a nasty virus.It runs a bit better than its XP conterpart.System rates at a 1.0 specs are as follows

MSI kt6v motherboard
Amd Athlon XP 2200+
1gb DDR400 Corsair XMS Ram
Geforce 2MX video card with 64mb Ram
160gb Western Digital SATA Hard Drive
200gb Samsung Spinpoint IDE hard Drive
1 Liteon DVD/RW DL burner IDE

The lowest score is the video card,the highest score is the hard drive which is a 5.7 and the CPU and RAM rate at 3.1 and 3.7 respectivly. Of course Aero is turned off by default and im using the drivers that Vista came with for my hardware, worked right out of the box, I just installed Service pack 1 ran windows update and I was ready to go.

Vista is great for mid to upperend destops. I'm really only ticked at the inclusion of DRM. With out the added coding (and inconvience) the operating system performance would be better. Woud I recommend it, For Avg individuals, including gamers, - Yes.

For low-end notebooks and desktops - Its a toss-up. I'm got a 2nd drive for my Lowly new notebook and am puting XP pro (SP3) on it.

Scotteq - Liked the link to extremetech. They used a mid range setup and showed very little performance difference. WOULD like to see this comparison on Low end (New) systems.

Added:
In ref to future support. My gut feeling are that with Wndows 7 coming out late 09 early 10 that vista support may not be all that great. Alot depends on the "Base" Which includes the corporate enviroment.
End Added

Ref 64 bit.
The performance of Games is more a function of the GPU. But for heavy duty video encoding, I don't think (could be wrong) Vista64 W/SP1 made up
the roughly 25% performance hit as opposed to XP Pro 64. ( Ref : my Son took Vista 64 off his system because of the performance hit.
Note: he has a dual 4-core Xeon sytem. He designed the video interface used by Sony in thougs large Displays used in the London Stadium. He designed a SSD for Space work 8 years ago. I only added the incase you think he didn't know what he was doing.

To the OP - You have been given some good advice - Verify that you are in fact runing ate the ratted speed and that your timings are at rated values. Not sure on the difference of CL4 vs CL5 on Vista MS Mem Performance

I think that FSB speed has more affect on Vista WEI RAM scores than Cas Latency. In fact, I believe FSB also has a notable affect on WEI's CPU score.

Halcyon _ Your Correct, FSB is more important, My comment on CL is for identical FSB.

I -did- tell you the link for the info last time...try reading now and then.
If you want to read the press report then goto CNET and search for it.

(1) I provided official links from Microsoft.

(2) Searching CNET shows no story saying what you say it does.

(2) You didn't provide a link then, and you didn't again now.

(3) Provide or remain in the 'Liar' box.

OP I have 8gigs of G. Skill PC28000 tweaked in BIOS and have a 5.9 Vista composite Vista rating.

Like most of you, I have many computers and also, parts, CPUs, video cards, RAM, etc. Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning I decided to throw some spare parts together and build my wife a Vista 64 system. I have 3 Vista systems up and running and I built a forth thinking she could use it, but she is perfectly happy with this.

AMD 3700 socket 754
ABIT NF3 MB
2 GBs Kingston Hyper X PC3200 (2-3-2-5)
2 x 120GB WD PATA HDs
Sony optical drives
Fingerprint reader
ACER 19" Widescreen


So, I have all these parts laying here. I build her this Vista 64 system. It costs her nothing. This is her personal home system. She does a lot of Phothshop, email, storage of important clinical/medical records is important and general business stuff. She really has to spend considerble time these days working on this computer. I stock up a lot on parts when they are on sale so I have all this stuff sitting here. So I buy a micro case and build this Friday, three days ago. It takes me several hours to transfer all her files and build her desktop 'just like her old machine' as I promied her. It's perfection on my part man. The system is blazing fast and it's all there, everything she uses, just like her old XP machine


Vista 64 Ultimate
e8400
ASUS P5E-HDMI G35
2 GBs PC6400 4-4-4-12 OC'd
250 GB WD SATA
500 GB Maxtor SATA
2 x DVD burner SATA
Zalman HSF
Antec case fans (quiet as a friggin' mouse)

So. I sayi , "t's built. BTW the fingerprint reader you use to log on to desktop will not work anymore wiyh Vista 64." She thinks about it. Then I say, "that old ancient Xerox laser printer will not work either." She figets around in her chair, but continues reading. Then I say, "Oh, Yahoo browser is not written for 64 yest, you'll have to log off each email site and then relog on to the next one to check your mail now." Her head pops off as she starts yelling, "I'm fine with the other computer...you mean I can't eeven read my email like normal!" "Put it back the way it was!"

This happens every day somewhere I'm sure. I saw a funny cartoon depicting the typical Vista experience somewhere.

OH MY GOD.

Simple answer to the OP's question

Vista benchmarks SIZE not SPEED. I ran some (simple) tests.

The other people on the site probably have X32 vista, not X64, which would prefer more RAM due to increased execution sizes.

And, VISTA IS RUBBISH.

I heard a lot of ppl are switching to macs because of vista. is this true?

800Mb is used up due the memory mapping etc. XP only supports 3.2 accessible. There is a switch for enabling it. Can't remember what it is though. Google it and you'll find it eventually.

Incorrect - It measures throughput, in operations per second, of the entire subsystem, as opposed to merely the speed of the installed DIMMS. In real terms, this means DDR2 800 on a 1600 FSB gets a higher score than DDR2 1066 on a 1066 FSB. The bottleneck is FSB speed, not RAM speed.


http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/ [...] 58117.aspx


The name of the switch you are referring to is 'PAE'. It is purposely blocked in consumer versions of Windows (XP and Vista) due to concerns about 3rd party vendors not (being able/willing to) providing drivers which are Large Address Aware. If you wish to use PAE on a 32 bit OS, then you will need NT or Server 2003/6.

Ahhhhhh. Yes that is the one, and I didn't know it was blocked on consumer versions.

And I put an extra 1gb in my 2gb system and my score went up by the same amount as it went down as when I removed 1gb from my 2gb system.

No. More people are switching because they can now run Win and Mac applications on the same machine since Apple started using intel C2D and C2Q CPUs.

Ahhhhhh! Someone else who "gets it"! Why have all those system resources and then NOT use them?
Superfetch article from the Vista Performance Team

Superfetch is not some mystical application. It simply looks at what you're doing, overtime, and stores those apps in RAM so they launch faster. Seems like a good use of RAM to me, keeps the system responsive...an evolutionary development.

...one more reason to have Vista on a contemporary rig with a contemporary amount of RAM.

Heh... I think the WEI is crap.

I've had my system give me 5.9 on memory when I was running single channel 2GB. The reason behind that was I was getting BSOD randomly, and I'm using DDR2-800 Crucial Ballistix. Ever since I got it fixed, even with my FSB bumped up, the index does not change, and mine is at 5.3 index.

It's not the RAM, but perhaps the Northbridge or memory controller of the type of chipset that operates it that may have something to do with the scoring WEI does.

oooh thanks

Oh.. BTW, I use NV 650i on an MSI P6N Plat.

I've read other users before this thread thinking about it, and they were getting 5.3 rating as well on the same MB/chipset.

So when looking at index scores, perhaps not only looking at the RAM, look at the chipset their using. Perhaps that will paint a better picture of what WEI is doing.

Edit:

I'll prolly end up messing around some more on my RAM to see if I can get my index back to 5.9 index. . o O (but I don't think I will see or be able to tell anything with my own eyes)

Continuation from my above post...

Whelp, done some tests since I got off work tonight.

To start out again, when I was testing Vista to begin with, it was the 32bit version.

What I was remembering, was skewed info. Although I did manage to run my system prime stable a 3.1ghz, with single channel RAM (2 gb). The WEI did give it a 5.9 index. I can't seem to remember if I installed the 650i drivers since the installation was weird. I recall the question Vista gave me.... Did this software install correctly? . o O (like I know if it did or not right off the bat)

So I thought, what the heck, I got my 64bit system to about where I want it, why not screw it up again?

From this point my system was a 5.3. I when ahead and OC back to my 2.8 speed (DDR was @ 700mhz). Still 5.3. Then I took one stick of RAM out for single channel. Score dropped to 4.5. Then I push the DDR speed to 800 (791mhz bios showed). Score when up to 4.6.

THEN... I shut down to put the other stick back in, and ran WEI. Turns out my index score is 5.7. . o O(okay okay, its a better score, but... I went from a 1:1 ratio to 13:16 ratio)

I think it's prolly best to use the trusted benchmarks for certain components. Really can't say what for memory (I remember sandra messed up something when I uninstalled it), but WEI is out of my list of benches.