I have been using my Vista computer for years, with not the slightest reliability problem (at least, no worse or better than XP or 7). The only "problems" that I have encountered with Vista are that drivers can sometimes be difficult to find.
Are you overclocking your Vista box? If so, then the problem might be hardware, not software.
I also have an overclocked Core i5 machine. I've done benchmarks, and found that going beyond about 3.8 GHz just produces a lot more heat without significantly improving performance. In fact, for some compute-intensive applications (like MATLAB) 3.8 MHz performs best overall, even better than 4+ GHz. I concluded that it is a memory access bottleneck.
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No, the Vista box is a completely stock Core 2 Quad 6600 build. It was pretty stable in the first year of its life, then went through periods of total instability coincident with some Windows Updates. It has been reasonably stable for the past year or so. The usual failure mode is loss of audio, or loss of network connection. Sometimes the screen gets corrupted. In any case a reboot will clear it up.
I have become convinced that the remaining misbehavior may not be caused by Microsoft at all. Evidence (and internet talk) point to a wayward driver for my E-Mu 1820M sound module. Internet talk suggests a "memory leak" in the driver that can write to memory outside the memory allocated to the driver causing corruption of other drivers or the OS itself.
E-Mu was bought by Creative a few years back, and they do not seem interested in supporting their older products, even the flagship 1820 that cost about $500 new, so I no longer seem interested in purchasing anything from them. The 1820 is an awesome box and even with the flakey driver seems to work OK as a basic music player. It even has a built in phono stage. I have discovered that repeatedly changing the sample rate and the bit depth by building a play list of various music that was sampled at different rates will cause Vista to misbehave and even reboot itself. I have been hesitant to rip into the Vista box until the new Core i5 machine is fully loaded up and stable. I am leaving town next week, so it won't happen till next year.
The upgrade from Vista to 7 doesn't work on Vista Ultimate. I had to buy it and then argue with Microsoft support to find this out. There is no upgrade path from Ultimate! I haven't tried the $30 8 upgrade yet, and won't until the new machine has been running for a few months.
I came to the same conclusion. I built the core 2 Quad machine in 2007 and loaded Vista ultimate at the recommendation of Cakewalk music software. They said that it was the best choice for their Sonar music program which I use. That machine is used daily for everything. All of the other machines are also 5 years old, or older, mostly P4 boxes. Eventual replacement is slowly occurring.
Since my current main machine is now 5 years old, I decided to build a new one before it dies. I have accumulated a collection of hardware mostly from Newegg and Tiger Direct sales promotions. I decided to build the main machine first, and then make a few others from the leftovers.
I tried two motherboards, 3 processors, several budget video cards (I am not a gamer), several combinations of memory, and several M-Audio sound cards. Each combination was burned in with Prime 95 for several days and benchmarked with Passmark V8.0. Each was tested at stock speed, then overclocked until it quit, and backed up until stable, then lowered 200 more MHz. Yes, memory makes a big difference when overclocking.
I used an Asus P8Z77-V LE mother board with an i5-3570K processor chip for this build. The best combination for memory is 4 X 4 GB 2133 MHz memory DIMMS. It is faster than 2 X 8 GB DIMMS. I got the biggest air cooler that will fit in the case and the highest CPU temp I have seen is 45C while running Prime 95 in max heat mode. It runs 43C in blend mode. No errors were seen at 4.4 GHz so I set it at 4.2 GHz. The i5-2550K can be overclocked up to 4.9 GHz in the same set up, but gets up to 60C in the process, and benchmarks slightly better, but the i5-3570K seems to be faster in actual use. Both chips are around $200 when on sale. The 2550K is Sandy Bridge (32 nm) and the 3570K is Ivy Bridge (22nm).
Cakewalk is now recommending 8 for the latest rendition of Sonar, but I won't make that jump early on like last time.
Seasonic is not common in the US. It used to be. I refuse to buy $100 power supplies, nor do I run a video card that needs 200+ watts. I use name brand (OCZ, Corsair, Thermaltake, or Cooler Master) supplies that are on sale, or have a big rebate, and have not had a bad power supply in several years. The new computer has an OCZ 600 watt modular PS that I got for $39. I tried 3 power supplies, but the major selection criteria was cable routing and correct connectors. I have 4 spinning drives, 1 SSD, and a Blu-Ray drive.
I don't have Matlab, and wouldn't know how to use it, even though I am an electrical engineer! I use a big LT spice simulation, some video conversions, and some real time music effects processors to test the hardware since thats what I will do in real use.
I know its probably frowned upon here, but most of the time I play my guitar through the computer......the last "processor" is a real tube amp though. I use "Overloud TH2" because it IS over loud! Slow computers and lousy audio hardware causes audible latency.
It's typical M.S. They alternate decent OSes with rotten ones. Windows 9 should be great.
I'm with you Freax. I was very happy with Win 2K. I only went to XP because a new computer had it. It's basically the same, but with a Fisher-Price interface. It's still easy to get XP drivers, win 2K not so much, or I'd still be there.
I call it the (freddie) fllintstone interface. This is why I have XP configured to classic windows style.
Anyway. I still find XP to be rock stable and very user friendly otherwise.
Are people that supid that they can not find their mail app without a giant mail/envelope icon, etc ?
Maby there are few that supid but, you do no put training wheels on every motor cycle just because a couple of people can not ride them otherwise.
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I owned a core 2 quad with a GTX260 (draws roughly 350 watts while gaming) until I retired it and gave it to my mother, might want to put windows xp sp3 on it and call it a day.
You know I paid $200 for an Antec power supply that blew up in 2004 and took out my entire system, price makes no difference.
You don't need to be running a video card that needs 200+ watts.............
Name brand is just as unreliable as the crap brands, they WILL screw you over!!!!!
Its good that you refuse to buy $100 power supplies though, it weeds out most of the crap out there, Just make sure that they don't bite you in the *** and keep an eye on the capacitors.
You will be able to notice the capacitors bulging long before the computer starts acting up.
Thats all that I ask.
Corsair and OCZ are a recent contender and use the exact same PCB board design as Seasonic does, the only difference is that they WILL put cheaper components in there, keep an eye on them. Thermaltake and Antec are among some of the worst offenders.
Seasonic have been making PSU's since the dawn of time, along with Delta:
http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/psu_manufacturers
Dying PSU - guess which brand? Corsair. - Badcaps Forums
I've been telling people this for nigh on 5 years now, nobody ever believes me.
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Steam For Linux Is Now an Open Beta - Slashdot
don't be afraid to click on this link, it actually bad mouths windows 8
don't be afraid to click on this link, it actually bad mouths windows 8
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