[zaim]

wouldn't theoretically 64bit be "twice as fast" as 32bit? given twice the channel to play with?

[Ferret_Style]

yes please PM me the command. I will call ms tomarrow and ask unless someone knows for sure.

[GutterPunk]

Originally Posted by jasonbourne

right i activated my windows ultimate 32 a few weeks ago but like zardon said i was thinking in changing it to 64 bit at the end of the year will i have to buy a new license key

I have the 32-bit installed right now on my crap machine. Im getting ready to build a new one but I wanted to give vista a try here. So I called up M$ and asked... If I have the 32 Bit installed right now and I'm planning to build a new computer am I able to install the 64 bit? I got a firm yes... without a problem sir. I peed myself a little laughed and said thanks. I'm not sure whether or not I'm going to install the 64bit or the 32bit come next month when my build is complete.

[Nightowl225]

I ran in to incompabilities with Quake 4, both KOTOR games, Call Of Duty 1 on Windows Vista, and no 64bit drivers for my soundcard yet. I ended up going back to WindowsXP until there are improved drivers for my videocards, there are 64bit drivers for my soundcard, and game incompatibilities have been taken care of. These were the only issues I ran in to.

Yet the games I listed are OpenGL games, and what's screwed up is that Neverwinter Nights 1, which is also OpenGL worked without problems for me, and so did Neverwinter Nights 2.

As a result of the game incompabilities, I wound up having to go back to WindowsXP.

[Lelisevis]

Wow I just severly spooked myself or rather Vista just spooked me. I was talking to a friend on messenger, not doing anything else in the background. The system must have decided it would run purely from the 2GB of RAM. Trouble with that is after 20 minutes of HDD inactivity they went to sleep. The worrying thing is they wouldn't wake again, quick reset caused them to disappear completely, I had to switch off and wait a few moments, when I restarted everything was good as new. I've changed the power setting now so that my disks don't sleep for at least 2 hours of inactivity.

That was a proper heartattack moment that, I had visions of hunting for old receipts to return the drives. I think now might be a goodtime to make a backup of my important files .

Edit: actually on that note does anyone know of a complete disk image software for Vista yet, like a norton ghost type software. It would be nice if it had the system transfer feature too.

Oh and what the hell is vista doing with the HDD all the time? I've noticed on mine and a friends that on startup it seems to spend about 10-20 minutes accessing the drives and at random times it'll just burst into 100% activity. Is this the OS optimising the file system and if so I wonder what affect it'll have on HDD lives.

[SaberZ]

Originally Posted by Zardon

dude we need to get you a new keyboard

Yes I agree, but the only way to make people move to the 64 bit version is to actually have something that uses the 64 bit operating system - not a bunch of 32 bit apps which run fine in the other version with better driver support!, this is exactly why no one is moving to it because it offers nothing over the 32 bit version right now (even 64 bit XP is a flop). You get the odd game like farcry and a few other things, but its not enough incentive to make people move.

its a vicious circle. Nothing uses it, no one needs it, so very few buy it, so development for it is slow as developers all know this.

We need a 64 bit Adobe Photoshop, then things will start moving.

Hit it right on the head Zardon,

As much as I'd love a 64-bit Photoshop(anything photoshop mmm...photoshop..) An OS launch could be compared to a Console Launch(yes strange, but it is true). The 64-bit OS needs killer apps, must haves, and also 64 bit ready software editions of current applications.

Having a 64 bit:

Office 2007
Photoshop
Games(64 bit WoW, Supreme Commander, STALKER) etc will help transition gamers and those who like to use productivety applications. Otherwise as Zardon stated it will not be adopted.

Only those who know the benefits of 64bit will adopt it right now, and I sure hope it takes off well, I mean most of us purchased our processors for this very reason, early adopters of the socket 754 etc are now on the 3rd Socket revision for AMD's 64bit line of CPU's.(scary to think what Vista might have been back then if it had released).

[SaberZ]

Originally Posted by Lelisevis

Wow I just severly spooked myself or rather Vista just spooked me. I was talking to a friend on messenger, not doing anything else in the background. The system must have decided it would run purely from the 2GB of RAM. Trouble with that is after 20 minutes of HDD inactivity they went to sleep. The worrying thing is they wouldn't wake again, quick reset caused them to disappear completely, I had to switch off and wait a few moments, when I restarted everything was good as new. I've changed the power setting now so that my disks don't sleep for at least 2 hours of inactivity.

That was a proper heartattack moment that, I had visions of hunting for old receipts to return the drives. I think now might be a goodtime to make a backup of my important files .

Edit: actually on that note does anyone know of a complete disk image software for Vista yet, like a norton ghost type software. It would be nice if it had the system transfer feature too.

Oh and what the hell is vista doing with the HDD all the time? I've noticed on mine and a friends that on startup it seems to spend about 10-20 minutes accessing the drives and at random times it'll just burst into 100% activity. Is this the OS optimising the file system and if so I wonder what affect it'll have on HDD lives.

Nothing is worse than my attempt to set a static page file in vista on several machines, yeah quick way to see the BSOD. Haven't attempted it since launch, I'm afraid to lol, but at least O&O Defrag will fight off fragmentation for now.

That startup activety is Superfetch, basically taking your most used files, applications and storing them into memory. Vista basically tries to use as much memory as possible to make things quicker and snappier.

[Zelig]

Originally Posted by Lelisevis

Oh and what the hell is vista doing with the HDD all the time? I've noticed on mine and a friends that on startup it seems to spend about 10-20 minutes accessing the drives and at random times it'll just burst into 100% activity. Is this the OS optimising the file system and if so I wonder what affect it'll have on HDD lives.

Reading an MS blog (IIRC), they expect that to turn it "off", people will just hit the power button on the start bar. This puts it into sleep, or hibernate, (I just leave my computer on, so can't remember the details very well), and leaves the ram contents intact. They reason that desktops use a few watts when they're plugged in and turned "off", and putting them in "sleep" mode won't change this by a whole lot.

[Monkeyboy]

Originally Posted by Lelisevis

..... what the hell is vista doing with the HDD all the time? I've noticed on mine and a friends that on startup it seems to spend about 10-20 minutes accessing the drives and at random times it'll just burst into 100% activity. Is this the OS optimising the file system and if so I wonder what affect it'll have on HDD lives.

Well, Vista has a new startup mode (delayed start) for certain services, so it loads enough to get the GUI and desktop up and running, then loads the 'less essential' services once the machine has booted.

Once that is finished, Superfetch will start pre-loading your most-used files into memory (based on your usage patterns of course) so that your apps start up quicker. I imagine it's a combination of these things and the disk indexer cataloguing your hard drive to make searches quicker.

[Judas]

Plus vista does regular background defraging on the fly not to mention several other tasks. While it's doing this, i've been quite impressed with the little to no noticeable performance issues. I'm still being intriqued and impressed with vista.