Vista - Tomorrow it begins

Okay officially tomorrow I begin my build of a PC that will from scratch be running nothing but Vista 64 Ultimate. I have listed the hardware below..

Case: Antec Nine Hundred
Processor: Core2Duo E6600
Motherboard: Gigabyte 965P-DS3
RAM: Corsair XMS2 800 Mhz CAS4 running 4x1gig(4 gig total)
Video: ATI HD2900XT
Sound: X Fi or Onbaord, still not sure
HD: Western Digital SE16 320 Gig
Optical: Liteon DVD-RW SATA

Now if anyone can make some suggestions to tweak this then please do.. Also any build tips I should get?

BTW should I run the SATA as AHCI or normal? Also should I use the Intel fan control or the Gigabyte control?

Hi Computer-Ed,

Here are some tips for speeding the performance of Vista up when you are done.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/81176-speed-up-performance-vista.html

Have fun building,
Shawn

I'd go with an nVidia 8 series graphics card. And you're skimping a little on your hard disk, aren't you?

Sounds totally fun Computer Ed!

I want to do something like that one day I just don't have enough knowledge yet...

Here is a link I recently used to install more ram - they have build info there...
How to Build Your Own PC - Seating the RAM Chips

Let us know how it goes....

Sandy

Okay things went smooth until I noticed my HD performance seemed laggy. I am scoring a 5.4 on WIE but it did not seem that quick. I applied the HD performance tweaks and still no joy.

I checked the system info and found that my HD was only working at Multiword DMA Mode 2. That did not seem right so I checked my data drive, a 250 Gig WD SE16. It is running in Ultra DMA Mode 6.

I am not sure I understand how this comes into play but I would suspect that the UDMA Mode 6 is the faster of the two. I will likely switch over to this as my primary and keep the 320 of other storage.

Will post more as the work progresses

Okay after a few hours of testing I figure that the leg I felt was just the index feature at work. Both HDs test nearly identical in speed. I guess the detection system in the Device Manager is flawed.

I am now working the fresh install.

Okay good news, the system is now running with all drivers and updates in place, no issues. I just finished installing Office 2007 and everything is running smooth. Going to take a break, do some tweaking and then make an image of the system.

In answer to two questions above. the 320 gig was priced right and paired with my 250 this gives me plenty of HD space, so not skimping at all. As for the video I have both and decided on the 2900 as the image quality is much nicer and ATI has a better reputation with Vista and 64 bit driver support.

Congrats!

My new Vista 64 rig should be up and going next week.

Computer-Ed,

Glad to hear you got it going smooth.

Shawn

The system is up and smoking along just fine. Everything is working perfect and the system is smooth as butter.