Vista Requirments

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill Martin
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Bill Martin

My understanding is that Vista will have flashier graphics, which of course
demand flashier hardware to support it. Will Vista allow one do disable
those features and run with a more prosaic interface for those who don't
want to spend resources for better graphics?

Currently I'm pondering the purchase of a new machine and am trying to
understand how Vista will play into that decision. Thanks.

Bill
 
Bill said:
My understanding is that Vista will have flashier graphics, which of
course demand flashier hardware to support it. Will Vista allow one do
disable those features and run with a more prosaic interface for those
who don't want to spend resources for better graphics?

Currently I'm pondering the purchase of a new machine and am trying to
understand how Vista will play into that decision. Thanks.

Bill
Click to expand...

It's my understanding that Vista will automatically "downgrade"
those features to accommodate your hardware.

I just read this morning that MS is offering coupons for Vista.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060810-7467.html

If it were me I would make sure that the machine I bought was Vista
ready, just in case I wanted to upgrade later.

gls858
 
gls858 said:
It's my understanding that Vista will automatically "downgrade"
those features to accommodate your hardware.

I just read this morning that MS is offering coupons for Vista.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060810-7467.html

If it were me I would make sure that the machine I bought was Vista
ready, just in case I wanted to upgrade later.

gls858
Click to expand...
--------------------------

No, the point is that I wouldn't want Vista to run in flashy graphics mode
even if it thinks it can. I'd rather hold the computer resources back to
speed up my applications rather than the OS user interface. So the question
is whether one can disable the "improvements" in graphics?

If not, then I want to make sure to get another machine *before* Vista comes
out rather than being forced to use a slower OS that doesn't benefit me in
particular by it's reduced speed.

Bill
 
Bill said:
--------------------------

No, the point is that I wouldn't want Vista to run in flashy graphics
mode even if it thinks it can. I'd rather hold the computer resources
back to speed up my applications rather than the OS user interface. So
the question is whether one can disable the "improvements" in graphics?

If not, then I want to make sure to get another machine *before* Vista
comes out rather than being forced to use a slower OS that doesn't
benefit me in particular by it's reduced speed.

Bill
Click to expand...

The excerpt below was from an article on zdnet. Sounds like it can be
turned on and off. I also saw a link to the Vista newsgroup in another
thread but I can't seem to find it now. I thought the subject line was
just one word... vista

gls858

http://www.zdnetasia.com/builder/program/windows/printfriendly.htm?AT=39393263-39000403c

Enabling and customizing the Glass interface
If your video card supports Glass, it should be enabled by default, but I
found that after upgrading Vista Beta 2 to interim build 5472, Glass was
turned off. To turn it on, right-click on the desktop and select
Personalize or click the Personalization applet in Control Panel. Select
Window Color And Appearance. When Glass is turned off, this will display
the Appearance Settings dialog box, shown in Figure C
 
I believe you can turn off Vista's Aero Glass look which most people call
Eye Candy.
But you should post to: microsoft.public.windows.vista.general
Someone should be able to answer your question here, the last version of
Vista I tried was still a Beta and things change.

JS
 
Bill, Every version of Windows I've seen has always allowed you to make it
look like the previous version; XP can look and feel like Win9x, 9x could
look like 3.x, and so on. This is to allow you to get used to it in your own
time. I'd be very surprised if Vista was any different.

HTH Tony.
 
...... > No, the point is that I wouldn't want Vista to run in flashy
graphics mode
even if it thinks it can. I'd rather hold the computer resources back to
speed up my applications rather than the OS user interface. So the
question is whether one can disable the "improvements" in graphics?

If not, then I want to make sure to get another machine *before* Vista
comes out rather than being forced to use a slower OS that doesn't benefit
me in particular by it's reduced speed.

Bill
Click to expand...

Buy a E-Machine, run Windows 95, set resolution to 800 x 600 with color at
16 bit.

mi
 
Hi Bill,

You can turn it off if desired, but it may not have much affect on system
resources. One of the changes in Vista, and one of the reasons it requires
higher graphics card capabilities, is that much of the UI is passed to the
GPU on the video card rather than the system processor, thereby relieving
some of the I/O normally associated with high end "eye candy".

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
miss-information said:
..... > No, the point is that I wouldn't want Vista to run in flashy
graphics mode

Buy a E-Machine, run Windows 95, set resolution to 800 x 600 with color at
16 bit.

mi
Click to expand...
-------------------------------

If you would *think* before attacking your keyboard you might realize that
some people are interested in high end processing power to run number
crunching applications, and have zero interest in flashy graphics or games.

One would not run Win95 for that if possible, and hopefully would prefer
Vista, just from the OS security angle alone. I'm not sure if Msft still
keeps fixing the myriad bugs in Win95, but if they do they won't for long.

Bill
 
That's an interesting way of looking at it. I suppose I'll have to do some
testing to fully understand the performance issues then. I know the limited
testing I've done with an Excel/VBA test routine shows Vista to be a bit
slower but that's one case.

Thanks Rick.

Bill
--------------------------
 
gls858 said:
The excerpt below was from an article on zdnet. Sounds like it can be
turned on and off. I also saw a link to the Vista newsgroup in another
thread but I can't seem to find it now. I thought the subject line was
just one word... vista

gls858

http://www.zdnetasia.com/builder/program/windows/printfriendly.htm?AT=39393263-39000403c

Enabling and customizing the Glass interface
If your video card supports Glass, it should be enabled by default, but I
found that after upgrading Vista Beta 2 to interim build 5472, Glass was
turned off. To turn it on, right-click on the desktop and select
Personalize or click the Personalization applet in Control Panel. Select
Window Color And Appearance. When Glass is turned off, this will display
the Appearance Settings dialog box, shown in Figure C
Click to expand...
 
Bill

I have found the opposite to be true.. Vista runs better with all eye candy
enabled than XP runs in Win 2000 mode..
 
Installing a graphics card with a wddm driver speeds up Vista over a
non-wddm graphics card for the reason Rick mentioned. If you turn Glass off
on the wddm card you will see a very small speed increase. The key is you
need a card with a wddm driver whether you use Glass or not. Vista uses more
RAM and depending on the version may have more services running than XP.
This is probably what caused your test to have slower results. The sweet
spot for RAM in Vista appears to be 2 MB for the 32 bit version. I haven't
done much testing of the 64 bit version so it may differ. With the 32 bit
version there is a very noticeable speed increase if you go from 512 MB to 1
GB, a smaller but again noticeable increase of you go from 1 GB to 2 GB, and
not much of an increase beyond that. To compare to XP it would be like going
from 256 MB to 512 MB to 1 GB with 1 GB being the sweet spot for XP. So far
for the optimum Vista experience I've needed a graphics card with a wddm
driver and a minimum of 1 GB (2GB is better). As long as there are drivers
for the rest of the hardware I can't notice much difference in speed between
XP and Vista if you meet those requirements. One bad driver and the system
will slow to a crawl.
 
You may have put your finger on the difference. Admittedly, the test I ran
was on a 1GB machine and with one of the old Vista betas. I haven't played
with it since. I'll look forward to trying it on a system fitted to it, and
with release level code.

Bill
---------------------------------------------------
 
Bill, Vista will adapt its interface according to your graphics card. If the
card is not supported by Vista your interface will be much the same as XP.
If Vista does support the graphics card then you will see Aero and 3D flip.
I had installed on my PC an ATI Radeon 9200SE Graphics Card. All i got was
standard graphics, i.e, like XP. I upgraded to a ATI 9550 to get Aero/3D
flip
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
http://vistasupport.mvps.org

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Bill

That's a smart decision. A person should always wait until the RTM is released before making a final decision on a new OS. If I remember correctly, there were over 300 bug fixes applied to XP between the last beta version and the RTM version.
 
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