ok so im sitting here researching if i should upgrade to vista or not (commence your hissing if you feel like it) and a few things have come to mind from what ive seen.

1.) i know that i will need new drivers for everything. ive found the nvidia nforce4 drivers, my graphics card drivers and beta realtek driver. now i know nothing about raid settings, and only have 1 hdd so do i need any special drivers for this?

2.) also ive seen a few posts about these beta realtek drivers not working. anyone know anything about this too?

3.) am i an idiot for wanting to upgrade now? i mean i know all the reports and reviews say that vista is s***/s*** for gaming, but im used to getting crappy fps unless playing an older game anyway so does it really matter?

im slowly upgrading parts of my pc when i can get around to it so i figure vista would be a good start. i only really want 3 other things anyway. thanks for your help

raid for 1 hdd?

like i said, i know nothing about raid at all. 0. honestly dont know what it even is but i read something about it during my search so i thought id ask.

when you say 'realtek' driver, are you referring to the realtek ac97 driver or a certain realtek netword card driver

if you're talking about the ac97 sound driver, the vista drivers work fine

If you're going to buy vista, don't until your hardware is stable. If you go installing it then activate it it'll register that hardware hash with MS, then when you change something down the line if you have to re-activate it there'll be another hardware hash gone. After a while they ban your key and you have to get another one, well that's how it was with XP anyway I figure vista is the same/worse.

Basically I don't think any games/software NEED vista just yet, so if you plan on a major upgrade hardware wise later on, I'd wait until then to go vista. I'm waiting until the last possible minute to get it, until stuff needs it to run, but that's mainly because I hate the user interface more than anything.

definitely get better hardware first before you even begin to consider Vista. It should really be your last upgrade component. You can live with XP for a little longer.

You haven't got much to lose by trying, HDDs are cheap as chips these days. Go buy another one and install Vista onto that and have a dual boot (just choose which HDD to boot off first in BIOS)

With Vista you get 60 days to use the OS as a trial - just enter no key when it prompts during the installation, so if you know someone with a legit copy just install off their DVD as the Ultimate version and away you go.

If its not fully compatible with your hardware and you are over Vista format the drive and use it for more storage and stick with XP, or see what you need to upgrade.

BTW I have had vista installed on an Nforce2 and Nforce4 based systems that ran fine. Nforce4 has offical drivers and will run fine.

Also Realtek devices generally work out of the box without any drivers needed at all.

last edited by rubba-chikin at 07:06:55 24/Apr/07

I have nothing constructive to add except I've been running vista at work for a month now and no sir I don't like it.

Unless you are buying a new machine today, I would wait for SP1. Unfortunately the implementation of Vista's security features (which would be a main for me to upgrade, and I guess directX 10) leave something to be desired, and the lack of driver support really only leaves you with a more aesthetically pleasing ui when compared to XP.

With Vista you get 60 days to use the OS as a trial - just enter no key when it prompts during the installation, so if you know someone with a legit copy just install off their DVD as the Ultimate version and away you go.

whoa that's pretty cool, do you still get to use genuine windows only software stuffs from ms dot com? If so, what's to stop people just entering no key & formatting their PC every 60 days? :)

what's to stop people just entering no key & formatting their PC every 60 days?

laziness

You can download a program that checks your system to see if it's Vista compatable or not, I know it's actually on the cd. I'm about to instal Vista onto my 3rd machine and I have to say i've had zero problems so far. Games work great, networking flies, eye candy looks sweet.

Treat Vista like a Battlefield game - give it a year to stabilise then it possibly might be worth a look, maybe.

Well I just completed installing Vista on my gaming rig (the beast) and the biggest hassle I had was downloading the creative drivers for my Creative SB X-Fi Platinum. Smooth sailing =)

no probs with vista so far here either (running on my laptop). Runs all games fine including C&C3 and CS:Source (7950GTX in a laptop.. hot)

You can download a program that checks your system to see if it's Vista compatable or not, I know it's actually on the cd. I'm about to instal Vista onto my 3rd machine and I have to say i've had zero problems so far. Games work great, networking flies, eye candy looks sweet.

that program failed to even run on my laptop and my brand new computer. I find that freaken hilarious. According to microsoft my laptop has genuine windows software(R)(TM)(C)(BS)(FFS)(LOL) so it's not failing because of that.

Waiting for SP1 before touching it with a stick.