Point Zero: Redefining Otaku

After holding back upgrading to Windows Vista on my desktop for so long, I have finally taken the plunge when I bought another extra 2GB of RAM for my PC, jacking up it from 2GB to 4GB. Even though I have Vista on my laptop, I didnt really got around to play around with it since the laptop already has everything preloaded and the only thing I have to do is to replace the anti-virus which came with it and install the firewall.

Now, with my PC loaded with Windows Vista Business 32-bit edition. I can finally delve deeper into tweaking the OS for home use!

But why am I still using 32-bit instead of 64-bit?

Theoretically speaking, 32-bit operating system is able to utilise up to 4GB of memory and not wanting to spend extra money to ship in a 64-bit Vista DVD, hence I stuck to the 32-bit version.

Here is a little know fact; even though Vista reports the full 4GB of memory, if you were to check it out in Task Manager it would report it as 3.5GB. So what happened to the rest of 512MB of memory? Well, some of the most common explanation is that Windows will automatically allocated some amount of RAM for system usage (Ok, I may be wrong about it. Maybe we can get Computer Engineer/Scientist to explain the reason behind this memory limitation.)

Even though clean installation of Vista is relatively speedy around 30 minutes on my machine, setting it up with all the appropriate software is a pain due to my oversight in downloading all of the Vista-capable software/drivers before hand. I could do an upgrade from XP to Vista, but I figured out that I would be happier with a squeaky clean hard disk.

All in all, it took me almost an entire day to install everything from the onboard sound/LAN, graphics driver driver to my anti-virus and firewall software. If I had everything downloaded before hand, I estimate that I can take half of the time to get the whole PC up and running. Since I didnt really play around with Windows Vista on my laptop, it took me another day or so to tweak and set up user accounts for my parents and network file-sharing.

So far, the Vista SP1 experience is positive as compared to the Pre-SP1 Vista experience I had on my laptop. No more BSOD when installing anti-malware software, no more slow USB transfer speeds which goes on for infinity and the list goes on… Also, shut down and start-up is also much faster which may be partly due to the extra memory it has. Not to mention, I am able to run WindowsXP on Virtual PC and Adobe photoshop, plus Firefox without one slowing down the other. The feeling is just GREAT!

On to the benefits of extra memory…

You get a more responsive system. I have heard of many people complaining about how Vista is slow and sucky, failing to realise that their system has only met the bare minimum for Vista to run smoothly.

-If you are a net-surfer or doing office work (e.g: Office 2007 etc…) : 2GB of memory

-If you are occasionally rendering video, editing photos or drafting (Any heavy duty work): 3-4GB of memory

-If you play games (e.g: Crysis, World in conflict, Left4Dead, Team Fortress 2) or host them: 4GB of memory

-If you use virtualisation software (e.g: VMWare, VPC): 4GB of memory

-Lastly, for those working professionals who uses video rendering, photo editing software, drafting software and programming: Move to 64-bit, 4GB of memory and above. You will see a significant increase in speed especially when working with huge (I really mean huge) files thus saving enormous amount of time and increased productivity.

Use this as a rough gauge on how much memory you will need but do remember this, Vista runs happy on more memory.

As usual, benchmarks has been done but mostly on 3DMark Vantage. If you were to notice, I didn’t overclock my graphics card because it seemed that I am having a problem with the latest Catalyst 9.4 drivers.

3DMark Vantage- Stock CPU speed, Stock GPU

3DMark Vantage- CPU overclocked @ 3.60Ghz, Stock GPU

SuperPI Stock CPU speed

SuperPI- CPU overclocked @ 3.60Ghz

3DMark 06 benchmarks on Vista and XP

(Very weird results, a reduction of 266 3D marks on Windows Vista. No SuperPI result is posted because there is no change in results for both OS)

Windows XP- CPU overclocked @ 3.60Ghz, GPU Stock

Windows Vista- CPU overclocked @ 3.60Ghz, GPU Stock