Vista - Killer hardware, ridiculously Vista64 performance

I just built a resonably fast machine:
- MSI 650i SLI motherboard
- Intel Core 2 6600
- 4 GB G.Skill PC6400
- 2 x WD 150 GB Raptors in Raid 0
- BFG 8800 GTS OC 640mb
- Soundblaster X-FI

I installed Vista64, updated drivers for chipset, graphics and soundcard. Installed all Vista64 updates and installed Office 2007. No other apps, drivers, etc installed yet. All hardware is recognized by system and appears functioning correctly. But....

Performance is terrible to the point the machine is unusable. Some example/benchmarks:
- Time to boot (POST to Vista login): 13 minutes
- Time to respond to simple CTRL-ALT-DEL: 35 seconds
- System sounds (e.g. alert beeps) play delayed, garbled and broken up.
- Time to install Vista update: 5 hrs, 45 minutes
- Time to start internet explorer, 3 minutes

There are alot of posts of people with slow Vista, but none that I've seen this bad and on this type of near top of line hardware. My CPU usage is constantly running 50-100%, but no one process seems to be hogging CPU. Its the normal kinds of processes that are each consuming a chunk of it (explorer, svchost, etc.). Wierd thing is that the Vista performance assessment gives my machine a 5.2 every time I run it (5.9 graphics, 5.9 disk, 5.5 memory, and 5.2 processor).

I'm tempted to do a fresh install of Vista but would like to hear any suggestions what might be wrong first so I don't just waste my time and end up exactly where I am again. Thanks for any posts.

This almost sounds like a hardware configuration issue, not a Vista issue. There could be several things, such as improper master/slave configuration on your hard drives, which SATA ports you have your drives connected to, multiple devices using the same IRQ channels, a hardware device or software that are not starting properly and are accessing all CPU cycles and memory etc. Worst case scenario could be a bad SATA controller on the motherboard or something of that nature. As much as Vista gets under my skin sometimes, I really don't think you are having a Vista issue and it sounds much more like a hardware or possibly 3rd party software problem.

Problem was indeed hardware. MSI 650i motherboard bios v1.1 needed to be updated to a beta release v1.22. Problem was that the motherboard operated very slowly with more than 2 gb RAM installed under the shipped bios v1.1

For others that find this thread with the same problem, I refer you to:

P6N SLI Platinum 4Gb Slowdown

for a discussion. The solution (including links to beta bios) can be found starting about 2/3rds the way down the thread.

Remember all drivers for vista are BETA if they say so or not,there are heaps of things missing from current drivers that are usually available in stable releases... Later this year we should start to see some really good drivers being released with way better performance than the current ones offered.

@peterav
Also DO NOT install the NVIDIA IDE drivers that come in the CD/DVD.
They are crappy and normally cause a lot of problems(including slow Response times).The default ones with Vista r good enuff(best actually).