What is the verdict on Windows 8?

[c627627]

Instead of installing to C:\Program Files, if you custom install to say, E:\Program Files, that would make your drive image smaller and you can image/reimage much faster.

But I understand that people don't always image. In that case, my suggestion is based off of personal experience. When I installed a 4.1 GHz i7 system back in 2008, things were so blazingly fast that I also thought I had no need for anything else.


But switching to an SSD gave me in an unexpected burst of speed I could feel. I haven't felt anything like that since I switched from telephone dial-up to High Speed internet.

When people say that experience of switching from Mechanical to Solid State "blew them away," they are not exaggerating. I have Windows 7 and Windows XP and Windows 8 and Program Files for all three installed on a single 180GB SSD. I could even tell when I switched to Generation 3 SSD from Generation 1 SSD, let alone from Mechanical to Gen 1 SSD.



_____________________
Intel i7 950 [206] BCLK x 20 = 4.12 GHz @ [1.4000] CPU Voltage & [1.35000] QPI/DRAM Uncore Voltage, Batch 3029A40
2 x 4GB Kingston HyperX T1 DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) [DDR3-1651MHz] 9-9-9-27 @ 1.66 DRAM Bus Voltage
ASUS P6T Deluxe v.1 [LGA 1366 Intel X58] BIOS 2209
Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT with 120mm Scythe S-Flex F fan
ATi Radeon HD 7870 XFX Black 2GB HDMI 2XDVI GDDR5 1050MHz Core Clock
OCZ Agility 3 180GB SSD
Asus Xonar DX sound card
Antec nine hundred case, two front 120mm fans, one back 120mm Fan, one top 200mm fan
Corsair CMPSU-750TX 750W

 

[(G{in}[AK)TION]]

Instead of installing to C:\Program Files, if you custom install to say, E:\Program Files, that would make your drive image smaller and you can image/reimage much faster.

programs like adobe dont want to do that kind of stuff. thats why i prefer intel SRT. the only time ill ever use an SSD is for my laptop, Pentium 4 desktops, Pentium D desktops, Celeron D (without a doubt), and many other computers that can be used for internet, movies, and playing "basic/moderate" games (gldsrc and source for example).

i think a gaming desktop with an Intel SRT setup will work just fine. you would have to be either a very impatient man or a man big on graphic design/movie making if you wanted an SSD setup as your main drive.

i tried keeping my data organized the way you did it, but it didnt work so well for me. so i stuck with Intel SRT instead.

 

[c627627]

programs like adobe dont want to do that kind of stuff.

You don't often see shoddy programmers who use C:\Program Files when writing code like some of them did when Windows 95 was out. Almost all of them use and have always used %PROGRAMFILES% which can be set to any folder on any drive you want.

All Adobe programs on a modern system will let you custom install to X:\Program Files without you even having to mess with Environmental Variable like %PROGRAMFILES% -- just do a Custom Install.

Space was somewhat of a problem when I had a 60GB SSD but with 200GB+ deals now on SSDs, most people may not even have to bother custom installing away from C Drive... especially if installing one OS. Good luck with your build and whatever you choose.

 

[(G{in}[AK)TION]]

You don't often see shoddy programmers who use C:\Program Files when writing code like some of them did when Windows 95 was out. Almost all of them use and have always used %PROGRAMFILES% which can be set to any folder on any drive you want.

All Adobe programs on a modern system will let you custom install to X:\Program Files without you even having to mess with Environmental Variable like %PROGRAMFILES% -- just do a Custom Install.

Space was somewhat of a problem when I had a 60GB SSD but with 200GB+ deals now on SSDs, most people may not even have to bother custom installing away from C Drive... especially if installing one OS. Good luck with your build and whatever you choose.

ill take this as you throwing me the "setup ssd as main" suggestion again. but my answer is still....

that is all.

 

[KurtBlanken]

you would have to be either a very impatient man or a man big on graphic design/movie making if you wanted an SSD setup as your main drive.

Any Turing complete computer can run any program given enough memory and time. Going off of that, anyone who upgrades for any reason must be very impatient, no?

However if this is your mode of thinking, you are on the wrong forums.

(If you mean to say that the price/performance ratio of the upgrade isn't worth it to you, you should rephrase to reflect that.)

 

[(G{in}[AK)TION]]

Any Turing complete computer can run any program given enough memory and time. Going off of that, anyone who upgrades for any reason must be very impatient, no?

However if this is your mode of thinking, you are on the wrong forums.

(If you mean to say that the price/performance ratio of the upgrade isn't worth it to you, you should rephrase to reflect that.)

no. its so they can run newer or updated programs that they use. or just getting with the times. but if they are upgrading to a hard drive that has overkill speed for what they do then yeah, its probably out of being impatient.

man im editing thist post alot. WHAT IM TRYING TO SAY IS

im trying to get hardware where its like squishing an ant with your thumb intead of using a sledge hammer. or powering a flashlight with a car battery when i can use rechargeble double A batteries.

i dont know how else i can put it. i like my intel SRT the way it is. its "just enough".

can you make any sense of what im trying to say here now?

 

[KurtBlanken]

I get what you are saying, but would like to point out that you are on the overclockers forums, where getting faster speeds is an end in itself.

 

[(G{in}[AK)TION]]

I get what you are saying, but would like to point out that you are on the overclockers forums, where getting faster speeds is an end in itself.

what?

this went from windows 8, to me asking questions, and then me being suggested to use an SSD only.

i said no. why do i keep saying no to your suggestions and then telling you that im only looking for drives that are fast enough for what i am able to buy.

forget this. if you want your victory, you can have it. i dont care anymore. i hope you and c627627 are happy with your victory and that fact that you and your question made me derail the thread.

cant even pull together my thought since im starting to feel cornered here.

unsubscribed.

 

[neo668]

In the end Win 7 and Win 8 are just too close to call. For the desktop I would just stick to the one I'm most comfortable with. For a tablet pc I would definitely choose Win 8.

 

[xhacker]

I bought windows 8 (mostly because it was 19.95) and found it to be a very stable system. My only problem with it was overclocking. I could not overclock my system past 4.9 ghz. With win 7 I had no problem overclocking to 5.1 ghz.

That being said the target market for Windows 8 would be unaffected by the inability to overclock at that range.

So I'll stay with win 7 until microsoft forces me to migrate to win 8.

 

[c627627]

Just to clarify, being able to boot into Windows for benchmarking purposes or are we talking about a stable overclock for every day use?

Because if you installed nothing but initial install of Windows 7 on partition 1 and nothing but initial install of Windows 8 on partition 2 of the same hard drive, on the same system, would you really be able to pass OC stability tests on one Windows OS and then reboot into the other Windows OS and not pass them?


Gautam did multi-OS tests a while back and measured Vista to be the fastest - of course in real life that was not experience for most of us who could not wait to get away from Vista.

 

[xhacker]

I'm going for high overclocks. The 4.9 is stable on windows 8. The 5.0 is stable on windows 7. I admit I beat the crap out of windows when I oc. My system is backed up so I can always reinstall it.

I installed 7 ran tests then installed 8. Installing both operating systems is a great idea and I think i will give it a try (much better testing framwork).

 

[c627627]

Every single time I overclocked in my life, I ended up FUBARing Windows and was always surprised how people can overclock and then just continue using Windows. The only way I could ever do it is to image Windows at stock, finish finding out what my stable overclock is after 12-24 hours of Prime95 Torture Tests and video stability tests using 3DMark in the old days and Furmark later, and only then reimage Windows back and start using it.

You need to leave some headroom anyway depending on your geographical location and what the Winter/Summer fluctuations are for ambient temperatures.


Too many times people don't do enough stress testing and boot into systems they think are stable and end up being one warm sunny day away from destabilizing their setups.


But yes, any OS comparisons require identical setups. Dual booting off of the same hard drive is a good way to claim one OS can do something the other one cannot.

 

[Bobnova]

I have yet to see something universally not work under Win8 that does work under Win7.

Anything that requires an older IE.
Trucking load/route planning software for instance. I know a guy who's a trucker and is having a hell of a time finding a new laptop due to the software requiring IE8. No known way to get IE8 on Win8.

 

[c627627]

Are you now or have you ever been in a convoy?
If yes - than stay away from Windows 8! Windows 8 - not for Truckers?


I wonder if this would work: Internet Explorer 10 Desktop > F12 > Developer Tools >

Browser Mode and Document Mode >
Select a previous version of IE for both



Windows 8 Pro has the built-in Hyper-X to run a previous version of Windows with Internet Explorer 8.0 installed.

If you need IE8 and can't install it on Win8 then that sure sounds like a reason not to go with Win8.

 

[Culbrelai]

XD I would still be using XP's default IE version (6? I think) if I could. Once again, the whole usuability, openness, ease of finding goddamn buttons...

Most W7 things probably work on w8, but I still dislike being badgered by "compatibility mode applied" windows that didn't happen on 7, but happen on 8.

I mean how different can they possibly be? There is no reason for it, seriously.

 

[c627627]

IE6 is very insecure but the reason I never upgraded from it under Windows XP is because you are actually correct that it does have advantages, not just because of buttons, but if you never upgraded IE6, then you can easily find location of your custom icons of Windows Favorites:



Every other version of Internet Explorer after IE6 does not give you the location of your custom icon when you click on Change icon... button. It always gives you the same generic dll file, not the custom .ico file you set.

Of course, IE6 can't be used for browsing because it's so insecure but I'm sure glad I never upgraded it on my Windows XP partition because it made setting custom Favorites icons easier all these years.

 

[neo668]

And I think IE10 might be causing some problems. IE10 comes with Win 8 whether you like it or not. Whereas, with Win 7 it comes as an Update.

The reason I think this is because when I first restored an old Win 7 image I updated to IE10. I had a few problems, similar to those in Win 8. So I did a clean install of Win 7 again but this time I did not update to IE10. In fact, I hid the IE10 update. My computer is running really well now, like pre-Win 8.

FWIW

 

[c627627]

Because you could never uninstall Internet Explorer, (only hide it in later versions of Windows), and because it was so integrated with Windows functions, I never thought it was a good idea to update the actual version of IE. You can apply security updates to it, but never actually update the version.

Unless you have a specific need or unless you use IE for browsing.... Otherwise, if you use something else for browsing, I never saw an advantage to updating IE, but I've seen plenty of potential problems like you describe.

The same reasoning applies to most of us never allowing Windows Update to have anything to do with hardware updates, especially video card updates. Always go to manufacturer to get hardware updates. I can't tell you how many times allowing a video card to be updated by Windows Update resulted in messed up Windows.


So over the years, we learned the hard way not to install anything other than actual OS security updates through Windows Update. Hide everything else.

 

[neo668]

It seems in the next version of Win 8, IE10 will be replaced by IE11.

http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/windows-blue-leaks

That was quick!