Just got back from updating Vista Ultimate to SP2...

MUff1N said:

I DO have all the same programs installed as on 7 & on my system there's a HUGE diff in speed, OS size, OS resource usage & memory usage!
W7 is blazing fast & Vista is Snail Slow!

Strange that there would be a huge difference in OS size. I've found Vista and 7 to be about even in that category.

There's about a gb more disk space usage in my case.

Haven't double checked shadow copies to see if that would make a diff - still, it won't be huge in my case.

SIW2 said:

My results are not dissimilar from Petrosa's - and I am using 2gb, so I don't think having large amounts of Ram is responsible for those results.

Thought about adding some Ram - never got round to it. Works very well as it is. It is also handy in cases like - see my first sentence.

I think Petrosa explained it - he has a good machine - so Vista is in it's element. And he was comparing like with like install and setups of the 2 o/s.

I have a similar experience ( despite only having 2gb of Ram ).

Most people are not doing that it seems.

Well whatever makes your boat float as they say. Personally, given the low cost of 4GB of DDR2, I would upgrade to 4GB even for XP much less Vista or W7 x64.

You know when I worked on cars a 289 had about the same performance as a 454 big block when they were both equipped with the same 2 barrel carburetor. Just my 2 cents.

Boot time, assuming it is not snail slow, is not a concern to me. Boot time is often more restricted by disk I/O performance than processor speed or OS overhead. Its pagefile usage and hard disk faults that kills real world efficiency.

I am running 8GB and after a few hours work W7 will easily have 3-4 GB of memory in standby. If I'm doing audio/video work it will be maxed out. Since I can't afford SSDs, yet, giving the superfetch plenty of room seems to be a good option for achieving quick response when switching between apps.

MUff1N said:

I DO have all the same programs installed as on 7 & on my system there's a HUGE diff in speed, OS size, OS resource usage & memory usage!
W7 is blazing fast & Vista is Snail Slow!

Seen your system specs, i find that very very very hard to believe.

Or you have an old vista with a vast registry bloat.

Or you work for MS

Muad Dib said:

Well whatever makes your boat float as they say. Personally, given the low cost of 4GB of DDR2, I would upgrade to 4GB even for XP much less Vista or W7 x64.

You know when I worked on cars a 289 had about the same performance as a 454 big block when they were both equipped with the same 2 barrel carburetor. Just my 2 cents.

Boot time, assuming it is not snail slow, is not a concern to me. Boot time is often more restricted by disk I/O performance than processor speed or OS overhead. Its pagefile usage and hard disk faults that kills real world efficiency.

I am running 8GB and after a few hours work W7 will easily have 3-4 GB of memory in standby. If I'm doing audio/video work it will be maxed out. Since I can't afford SSDs, yet, giving the superfetch plenty of room seems to be a good option for achieving quick response when switching between apps.

Also doing 8gb, but i have set pagefile off. But then again i tend to close/reopen app's a lot old habit from the times that running several apps at once gave a load of BSOD's.

My rig runs in principe 24/24/7 because i only go to sleep mode. So memory is always same state.

At best i get 70% memory usage.

Boot times on both systems (i gave them each a dedicated WDC500) is equally slow.

Returning from sleep is equally fast, < 1 sec.

Vista SP2 x64 is pretty damn solid. Not sure why you guys are having such problems.

I dont know about Vista SP2 personally but it was a dog without SPs last time I used it on a top of the line Dell XPS gaming laptop.

Jon55 said:

Vista SP2 x64 is pretty damn solid. Not sure why you guys are having such problems.

Second that.

digitalrurouni said:

I dont know about Vista SP2 personally but it was a dog without SPs last time I used it on a top of the line Dell XPS gaming laptop.

when it first came out it was pretty awful, only after SP1 came out i switched from XP x64.

SP2 made it as rocksolid as a general use OS can be.
7 is very decidely SP3, no matter the 'moisterizing cream with nanotechnology' like stories about a totally rebuild microkernel there may be.

But trying to pull a camper with a Smart is generally not a good idea, so you need good hardware to run either.