2 gigs of ram in Vista

[zexmarquies01]

PC specs are in sig.

Basically, I've been on this current installation of XP for way to long, and it's starting to show. Getting slow-downs, Driver problems which is causing video problems...Etc.

I bought Vista a while back, way before SP1 came out, but quickly put XP back on, due to lack of driver support for a majority of products that i owned.

Well, I'm about to reinstall Vista again, Since i figure that if I'm going to do a clean install, I might as well use vista, and be able to use DX10 on my 2 8800's.

The problem is, I only have 2 gigs of ram. Not to get into the details, but I'm basically STUCK with only 2 gigs of ram, unless my motherboard will suddenly work correctly with all 4 dimms being used.

So how well will vista run? I plan to game on this machine. I use Dual Monitors, and will be running BOINC 24/7. Will it run fine, or should i keep XP until i do a PC upgrade, where i will be having at least 4 gigs? ( which an upgrade may be MONTHS away. )

 

[johnz]

Vista will work fine. I have it on a lower end laptop with 2gb, and it runs perfectly.

 

[Hardass]

Yep, ran Vista64 and 2g for quite a while no problems.

 

[zexmarquies01]

Vista will work fine. I have it on a lower end laptop with 2gb, and it runs perfectly.

Sweet. That's really all i needed to know. just organizing some crap on my other drives, and backing up files. I have a full checklist of things to do before i clean install, as i want to do this installation correctly, and would like to make sure my other drives are organized, clean, and no longer have a crap ton of files on them. Hopefully I'll have everything backed up, deleted, and organized by this weekend.

 

[Hardass]

Good luck.

 

[johnz]

One thing to keep in mind, is Vista gives the illusion of slowness. Most of that is due to the open/close animation of the windows. Where XP just pops a window up, Vista expands, and contracts the windows. They sped it up some in SP1(which I don't care for btw), but it's still "slower" than XP.

 

[zexmarquies01]

One thing to keep in mind, is Vista gives the illusion of slowness. Most of that is due to the open/close animation of the windows. Where XP just pops a window up, Vista expands, and contracts the windows. They sped it up some in SP1(which I don't care for btw), but it's still "slower" than XP.

Actually, Doesn't XP at stock animate the minimizing/Maximizing/Restoring of windows?

Right click Desktop > Properties > Appearance > Effects > Menu and tooltips transition. Because normally that's on. Doesn't Vista have the option to turn that effect off as well?

 

[johnz]

Yea, you can turn it off. I like the the pre-SP1 slower animations tbh. I'm just not that fast, or in that big a hurry to get work done, where a fraction of a second makes a big difference to me :^D


Edit:
The animation is much more pronounced in Vista than it is in XP.

 

[Neuromancer]

I recommend 2GB of RAM minimum in XP and 4GB of ram in Vista for a gaming PC.

Having said that, you can get by with less, depending on the games you play.

3 PCs in my house are running Vista with only 2GB of ram. My gaming rig has 4

 

[c627627]

Perhaps partitioning your hard drive, then installing Windows XP to its own partition then install large programs, games and applications on another partition is also a way to go.

That way you can image/reimage your Windows XP partition all the time (quickly) to get rid of the inevitable problems that always show up after a while.

 

[jdf_warrior]

The problem is, I only have 2 gigs of ram. Not to get into the details, but I'm basically STUCK with only 2 gigs of ram, unless my motherboard will suddenly work correctly with all 4 dimms being used.

Explain. Whats it doing with 4gb of ram in?

 

[jivetrky]

I had 2GB in vista for quite a while and it was just fine. But when I uped to 4GB, I did notice a difference when gaming. There were a couple games that used a ton of RAM, so their performance increased and/or stopped occasionally stuttering. Also when starting and closing them, I noticed it was much faster as I didn't have to wait for the HD to swap info around.


RAM is very very cheap. You can find 2x2GB for $40 and decently fast stuff (DDR2-1000) for like $50

If you can afford to spend $50, that would answer your problems pretty well

 

[Forsaken79]

Vista will run fine on 2gigs of RAM. Depending on how much you tweak it, Vista make take up to 1 gig of RAM for itself though.

 

[zexmarquies01]

Explain. Whats it doing with 4gb of ram in?

RAM is very very cheap. You can find 2x2GB for $40 and decently fast stuff (DDR2-1000) for like $50

If you can afford to spend $50, that would answer your problems pretty well

1 - I'm still using regular DDR at the moment.

My motherboard won't accept 3 sticks, and with 4 sticks, it will only read 2 of them. I have no idea why. And no, It's not due to the x32 limitation, it's something with my bios. I've messed with every single setting possible on this motherboard. ( The Bios itself will only read 2 sticks. )

I'm tired of messing with it, so I'm just going to stay with 2 gigs until i do a full upgrade here in a few months or so.

 

[SNieX]

Zex:

Ive used 2gigs DDR on my other rig, and vista 32bit, and its great the CPU is a bit slow.. but i can play CS:S and Red alert 3 with high settings, using a 8800gtx and its great, only down side i guess to the 2 gigs compared to 4 gigs of DDR2 is that my encoding times of DVDs are faster,

but what the heck 2 gigs is more than enough..

2cent

 

[zexmarquies01]

Thanks for the input everyone. Mainly, I'll be playing L4D and such. I'm not big into crysis or anything at the moment, so I figure that with a bit of tweaking of vista ( which I'd be doing either way ), 2 gigs will last me a few months till I get the money for the upgrade I'm wanting.

 

[RollingThunder]

Thanks for the input everyone. Mainly, I'll be playing L4D and such. I'm not big into crysis or anything at the moment, so I figure that with a bit of tweaking of vista ( which I'd be doing either way ), 2 gigs will last me a few months till I get the money for the upgrade I'm wanting.

Zex,

I'm in agreement with the others: Except for intensive grahics use, 2GB is just fine. Vista takes up a higher precentage of RAM than XP Pro does (~ 25% of 1GB versus ~ 40% of 2 GB). In time I'll upgrade to 2 x 2GB but right now it's not a priority.

 

[zexmarquies01]

Zex,

I'm in agreement with the others: Except for intensive grahics use, 2GB is just fine. Vista takes up a higher precentage of RAM than XP Pro does (~ 25% of 1GB versus ~ 40% of 2 GB). In time I'll upgrade to 2 x 2GB but right now it's not a priority.

When I do finally upgrade my computer, I'm going to have 8 gigs of ram. I'll have more than enough for gaming, and I will be able to take full advantage of vista's prefetch ( or is it called superfetch??? I forget ).

 

[mkoersvelt]

Vista will run fine on 2gigs of RAM. Depending on how much you tweak it, Vista make take up to 1 gig of RAM for itself though.

I agree.
You can also go into Services and turn many items to manual so they won't boot up and start up. This will help minimize the system resources you use.
I did this for XP as well. Makes a difference when you really need some HP when gaming.

 

[Hipcrostino]

my gaming rig used vista x64 and 2gb of ram. Works fine. I don't really see the need for any more right now. The time will come, but not yet.