weEvil

Since Punto's got an itchy trigger finger, I need to make a new thread. There is a program called 3D Analyzer that can emulate certain videocard features. T&L Pixel Shader... etc. on older GPUs with a performance hit. http://forums.megagames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49173 starcraftdude: Have fun with your game.... I mean slideshow.

That doesn't matter. Vista is here today and it better run on today's hardware. Otherwise to the bargain bin for future generations. I agree. It is a very solid OS. Slow, but solid with the undisputed best driver compatibility.

Have you done a price check on the Toshiba Tecra? Check newegg.ca, bestbuy.ca & futureshop. It sounds like a good deal at $999

Is this the upgrade for that PC of yours?

I agree with everything but the services. You can disable resource hogs like defender, indexing service, and the gadgets. Everything else, not much difference.

For video editing and encoding more cores is better. Stick with the Phenom. GPU I suggest the HD4670. Uses no extra power connectors and its pretty decent at gaming. Its a mainstream/budget GPU. Another is the HD4830. More powerful, and uses extra connectors. Its got the best performance/price ratio of the higher end GPUs. Chassis is whatever you want. Ventilated? Quiet? Flashy? I would suggest the Antec 300 and get an 80plus PSU. Its a great Chassis. Another is the Antec Sonata III. It comes with an 80plus 550W Earthwatts PSU. Its a quiet case, and its built very solid. Its what I'm using since its a great deal with the PSU. Get some Nexus or Noctua fans if you want it to be quiet. Noctua are the best, Nexus is a close second but alot cheaper. I'm running the Sonata III with the Noctua fans. Very pleased. If you want to reduce nose further look into heatsinks for your CPU and GPU. You need to tell us: How much are you planning to spend? How reliable do you want the PC? What resolution and FPS do you want to game at? Do you want maximum settings in a game at the cost of power & heat & noise, or can you do with less? Will you overclock, and if so how much? Limit, moderate, little bit..

Newer pixel shaders have more instructions. Like for specular, bump mapping... etc. If your card cannot understand, it either does not use the 'extra' instructions or skips everything altogether. In this case its skipping everything. Lowering it will force the engine to render the textures in the older pixel shader. The textures won't look so nice, but they should display. Check the specs. Give me all the info on this card.

Use themes and enable Aero. System is more responsive with a good GPU.

You need a videocard in order to run Aero. Your integrated won't cut it. Better stick to Aero Basic at most. More ram is better. 4GB is ideal for Vista.

My school uses the XPrint server for us laptop users to be able to use classroom printers remotely. XP works. Vista cannot log me in to the XPrint server. Is there an incompatibility with XPrint & Vista? How can I go about solving this problem?

I mean force the game to lower the pixel shader to work on the card. It won't look as nice, but it will at least display. You can't force the card to use a higher pixel shader. The hardware does not have the extensions for it.

Sorry I didn’t see this sooner. I repaired a computer that had an ATI card with an Envision monitor and it was too much. The colors looked over saturated and it lacked shadow detail. I tried CCC and the monitor adjustments but that just made it worse. I tried it with an nVidia card and it was fine. I would say it’s a mater of matching the right card with the right monitor. To use an old school film reference ATI looks like Kodachrome and nVidia looks like Ektachrome. At least to my eyes. I figured it out. Everything was 'over optimized', texture shimmering. Catalyst AI was set to High, when it should be set to Low. Performance difference is negligible from Low to High. Its back to normal and everything looks great.

Use Server 2K8 instead.

Superfetch takes awhile. It monitors your system for the most commonly loaded apps and preloads them into spare memory. It takes awhile. Has to determine a pattern first. Also, Vista is not slow. It is slower than XP. You messed up your system. That's your problem, not Vista's.' Clean it up, and put in the right settings.

That's the kind of computer I threw out. What's the matter with you? Replace the 9800GT with the HD4830 or the HD4850. P35 is good. P45 is better. Gigabyte P45 is amazing. Western Digital SE16 640GB. Overall fastest 7200RPM drive so far. Lots of storage. Cheap. The 350W PSU is a joke. Haha? 400-500W for future upgradeability. Its also not good to work a PSU near its limits. Reduces life, and less efficient. You can get the quiet Antec Sonata III case with a 550W 80plus (that means its efficient) PSU.

If your card doesn't support the pixel shader, then get a new card. Otherwise, see if there are some tweaks you can do to force a lower pixel shader version. Google is your friend here. Look for some tweak guides, it might contain that info.

A dual core is 2 cpus. Its just a strange configuration. Superfetch will improve app loading time at the cost of spare memory. Did you enable the advanced settings in device manager for your hard disk?

This doesn't excuse anything. DLL hell has been replaced with WinSXS. Same problem with a small difference.

I'm talking about using vLite. You can remove some components through Vista's own wizards. Dreamscene too. Find out where the default location is and check if they're there. It also helps to do a global search for the extension type. Google is your friend.

This is not about spirits, about feeling good. I am stating a fact. I'm not surprised you found drivers for such old hardware. Vista has the most comprehensive hardware support of any OS. Most people complain about this aspect, since they're trying to use it with ancient hardware.

Yeah. Vista is slower. It shouldn't be a noticeable difference from XP Vanilla except for startup. Checked the power settings? Vista can throttle down the CPU to reduce consumption. Re-Enable Superfetch. Its a useful feature. It makes applications start faster, and reduces boot time. Also, did you enable 2 CPUs boot in msconfig advanced settings? Worst case scenario you can use Server 2008. Its a little speedier.

I'm trying to use Vista's tagging feature. It doesn't work for PDFs. Any tweaks I can use to be able to tag more files?

Sweet. This is going to be a great game. Especially with mods. Ripken204: You're running out of space for all those stars.

Cool. I`m tempted to model some planes now.

This thread is really, really, really old. LeveL: You numbskull!