Raid Corupts, Main system down... Vista Primary OS Trial Commencing

[deathman20]

Well after all the hassles of what installing XP was with damn raid drivers and no floppy drive (taking nearly 2 days to get it to install windows). I've decided to give Vista betas a whirl.

Using what I thought was 32bit but guess I didn't have that burned. So im using 64-bit Vista for now until it gives me too many issues that probably convert to 32-bit one and try that out..

So far so good got nero on, burning software. Looking for beta drivers for Intel Raid Matrix is a PITA since the site doesn't seem to have it.

I'll try installing a few games and such as soon as im done burning both updated 32 and 64 bit versions of vista.

Well see how this goes. Im going to try avoid installing my painful XP install as long as possible and if this works I might just stay on it til Vista actually hits stores. Might be limited in some area's but hey did a install and boots up no issues thats a huge plus in my book.

[AngelfireUk83]

I just would like to know could I get it working on my nForce2 system below or do I have to have a A64/INTEL P4 system. I just wanna test it out see what it's like.

[SeasonalEclipse]

You could, But you would need to get the 32 Bit version, Vista comes in both flavors.

[deathman20]

Well so far its been ok, most of the time my systems been trying to rebuild my damn raid 5. Seems to run ok but my vista key isn't working :( So im going to have to ditch it quickly.

Have any of you experianced this? Cruious if I should call in to see if I can get activated or not.

[AngelfireUk83]

You could, But you would need to get the 32 Bit version, Vista comes in both flavors.

It seems that they have released the audio & networking driver for VISTA but it says at the bottom that it works for nForce 3. But I know that nForce3 5.11 driver set are just the same as my nForce 5.10 set just with a new ethernet driver or so they say.

Vista must have the rest built into it like GART and SMBUS driver.

[deathman20]

Well might have a second go at this as well I got some more RC1 beta keys from MS. I still have it installed so thank god not reinstalling it. Now im just kicking myself for not burning the RC2 to DVD or moved it over to my secondary drive oh well. Found out MS still hands them out so maybe mine was just expired or something. Hopefully that will do the trick.

And finally hopfully found the Intel Matrix Storage beta drivers for Vista also. Its annoying that I have to install it every time to see whats going on when I reboot. Maybe thats why its taking so long to rebuild my raid as well.

[deathman20]

Well finally key works and I can procceed without worrying about it running out of time.

Since 64-bit theres a few issues of well, drivers more or less I'll go back to 32-bit. Since for some reason 64-bit doesn't reconnize my full 4gigs of ram either. Oh well I'll still have 3gig reconizable which is all that counts in my book.

Starting the 32-bit install currently so will take a while... Side note raid drive now 62% rebuilt, getting there looks like tomorrow is when I'll beable to really do stuff.

[deathman20]

Yup and running full steam.... RC2 client build 5744 ready for testing :)

I did a quick 06 mark test... and well suprised with the results thought it was going to be worse actually. No tweaks at all mind you.

My XP Pro run at 3.4Ghz was say 6600
My Vista RC2 run at 3.2Ghz was 6100

~11% difference and OS defaintly not tweaked and lots of things running in the background still that im sure affected overall score. The ATI RC2 drivers must of been amazing improvements or something because they worked great with that. The first 2 primary tests suffered the most, the CPU test well was down with slower speed and taxing from background. The Shader 3 tests though, amazingly it was only 2FPS off. That showed the best results of any of the tests.

Pushing forward to more tweaks. And if anyone is running Vista I highly recommend downloading this TweakVI. It seems to do some nice quick tweaks or something because I dropped about 200+megs of ugly fat in ram usage and still have Aero, IE (which is using 80megs right now) Triallan and a bunch of gadets in the side bar currently.

[deathman20]

Day 2 of full operation...

Smooth as silk. Doing a complete backup on the drive with software provided within windows. Its going very smoothly.

Tried Supreme Commander Beta last night on the system ran perfectly and very similar FPS that I got with my XP Pro rig, maybe slightly lacking in the FPS department (from 35 to 32) but not bad at all.

Going to try NeverWinter Nights 2 tonight and report back on that as well.

System preformance chart thingy that tests the system at startup well im happy. While right now my CPU and memory are clocked only at a 3.2Ghz right now this is where I sit point wise.

Processor: 5.7 (was 5.8 or 5.9 at 3.4Ghz if not mistaken)
Memory (Ram): 5.9 (not bad for being under 357Mhz)
Graphics: 5.9 (Nice :) )
Gaming Graphics: 5.8 (not bad.. don't know if that takes OC into account but at the time I didn't have it OC'ed)
Primary Hard Disk: 5.9 (nice and fast just how I like it)

Not bad for everything in that area, it takes the lowest score so if somethings lackign you'll be hurting in that score at least, but whoopie its just a "Windows Experiance Index"


CCC Options are similar to XP if not exactly the same, and it OC's just as nicely as well.

Along with more time I'll be upping my ram speed some more. I'm really curious what caused my raid Faulier from early so im going to take it easy and just leave it at 3.2Ghz for now but up the ram to a decent little OC in to ~450Mhz.

Til later

[deathman20]

And again happy to report NWN2 same FPS as previously seen. Only difference is that I was running 3.2Ghz instead of 3.4Ghz so saw a drop of 3FPS in that area...

Otherwise if it wasn't for the driver updates its been up since Tuesday night and running without a hitch doing things, backups, defrags. I hope that Diskkeeper comes out with a new one for vista, MS's one sucks even more now I can't tell if it really started anything or if its near completion.