Newbie

Hi all, I just found this site by chance and it looks like it's going to be handy!

I'm looking to buy a new system within the next month or two! This is the spec I'm looking at-

Intel Q6600 2.4GHZ
4GB 800MHZ DDR2 MEMORY
500GB Hard drive
Asus P5N-E Sli motherboard
512MB 8800GTS

It's advertised as coming with Vista 64bit home premium (but that can be changed if I wish!).

My question to you all is- "Are there any problems with Vista 64bit OS?"

Ohh whilst I'm here, ATM I use Comodo FW and Avast AV with Windows XP. Can I still use both or those on Vista 64bit? if not what do you suggest?

In a nutshell- I have heard all the rumours that Vista has loads of problems and I'm a little worried about making the leap (Should I be?)

Thanks

Avast: avast! Antivirus and Windows x64 Edition

Comodo: Comodo™ Free Firewall Software Download

Both say they support Vista 64, though you'll need clean installs of the latest versions. But you'll be having to do clean installs anyhow: Vista 64 isn't upgradeable from other versions of Windows. So it's clean or nothing.

One thing I will say: Your post says 4GB of RAM: There is a hot fix KB929777 which you'll need to install prior to installing all of it.

(1) Load the OS with a stick or two.
(2) Leave the LAN cable unplugged until *AFTER* you have installed local (chipset, etc) drivers.
(3) If you're *really* prepared, you'd have your Drivers for your Vid card and peripherals saved on a CD/DVD. Install those before hooking up your LAN cable as well.
(4)Why???? Because Vista will automatically configure the network, auto-register, and automatically begin downloading and automatically install all of it's updates. You can do it in a different order, but In My Humble Opinion it's best to have your local stuff done first. Hard to cleanly install a driver when the OS installs an update and reboots in the middle.



Regarding "Loads Of Problems" in Vista 64?? I've been running V64 for half the year now, and have yet to have more than passing trouble with anything. And nothing I couldn't solve by poking through the manual and applying a little common sense. I had to upgrade my Anti Virus suite, and I got tired of waiting for the monkeys at Creative to write a 64 bit driver for their sound cards... Besides that, I've had no device troubles. Though I am aware there were a few RAID chipset/driver combinations which were bothersome. Stick to bigger name brands for your components and you really shouldn't have any trouble.

Even the install went problem free, tho I don't trust windows to format drives for me. And I *N E V E R* flash a Bios from within an OS. Out of long habit I drag the FLOPPY drive out of the drawer, boot to a C prompt, and do that stuff the old fashioned way.

There's some annoyances - User Account Control constantly asking for authority being the obvious. The other is Vista 64's pathological hatred for unsigned/expired digital certificates - Speedfan and CoreTemp didn't make the cut here. After that - There's basically just the occasional "Why did Microsoft decide to move that..." game of Hide the Sausage.

"Live With It" stuff: Your HDD will be pretty busy for a while - By default the OS indexes everything for faster searching. So near constant hard drive churning was a fact of life for a while. But I really like the new, fast, and usable Search. (Search results as fast as you can type) It's also VERY aggressive about using system resources. People who are used to their XP boxes idling along at sub~500MB of RAM usage *really* freak out over this one. Vista pre-caches all the stuff it thinks you may use into active memory for faster launching. So "Usage" goes from less than 500 to 1.2GB or a little more. But know that if an active program asks for resource, it is surrendered just as if the RAM were empty. A lot of people seem to not (want to!?!?) understand this, and scream 'Bloated Pig'. <shrug>

OK thanks

Also, I would have to recommend against that motherboard. If I were you, I'd go with a P35 or X38 chipset unless you are dead set on SLI. If that's the case then get one of the 780i boards. Vista doesn't seem to like the nVidia 600 series motherboards.

Order changed slightly, I found a different company and they said that all this will work well together-

2 x 160 GB SATA HDD UDMA 300 7200 8MB
1 x ASUS 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS 2xDVI PCI-E SLI
1 x GEIL 4GB DDR2 800 CL5.0 DUAL CHANNEL BLACK DRAGON RET
1 x ASUS SKT-775 P5N32-E SLI PLUS S/L 1333FSB
1 x ANTEC FULL CASE NINE HUNDRED BLK
1 x INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q6600 1066FSB - 8 MB
1 x MS WINDOWS VISTA HOME PREMIUM 64-BIT
1 x ThermalTake W0117RB 750W TOUGHPOWER
1 x Speeze QuadroFlow VIII - Low Noise
1 x SAMSUNG DVD /-RW 20x6x20x8 D/LAYER BLACK LIGHTSCRIBE (SATA)

Should be here in the next couple of weeks!