Re: Vista-friendly builds: details, please

You do not need 1.5GB RAM, it will run just fine on 1GB. People are getting the look ahead RAM functionality of Vista and thinking it's taking more memory than it actually needs.
"Mike T." <noway@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:46090b94$0$97273$892e7fe2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"ToolPackinMama" <laura@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:RfCdnTZCcs1g9pXbnZ2dnUVZ_uTinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Please post details here if you have assembled a Vista-friendly PC. I'm particularly interested in budget systems that are Vista-friendly.

Thank you.

Laura

Simple, really. Just remember two things as you are choosing your components:

1) You need a Geforce 6200 -or later- graphics card with video RAM of 256MB or more ON the video card.* Be careful here, because some video cards which might otherwise be VERY vista capable are designed to use UP TO a certain amount of RAM, meaning that they steal RAM from the system. You need to make sure that the video card you choose has at least 256MB of RAM ON the video card.

2) For RAM, you need 1.5GB - 2GB (no less, no more), and speed doesn't matter. In this case, quantity is more important than speed. But as always, it is in your best interest to buy a good name brand of RAM.* That is, if you want your budget build to be stable and reliable.

Other components you don't really need to worry about, other than the usual "what is a good budget choice?". For example, CPU . . . You'll need something clocked around 1.5GHz or faster*. But, as long as you stick to the usual AMD or Intel, and buy something that is still widely available in the usual retail channels, you'll be fine. Same with hard drive. You will want about 60GB or more of space, depending on what you want to do with the system. But finding hard drives smaller than that is getting tougher. There are some 40GB drives still available, but the cheap drives seem to start around 80GB now, at roughly the same price as the 40GB drives. And so on.

Building budget-friendly for Vista is like any other budget build, but you just have to give a little more consideration to the video card you choose, and make sure you end up with 1.5-2.0GB of system RAM. OH, but do NOT skimp on the power supply. Depending on what other components you choose, newegg carries an AMS Mercury 460W which is very high quality at a reasonable price, if it will work with whatever you decide to build. Or at least they did, last I checked.

Post here when you think you've got a good list of components, and you will get plenty of helpful advice. If you want someone to choose the whole thing for you (every component), there are people in this ng who will be happy to do that, also. :) -Dave

* Yes, the "system requirements" listed on the vista web site and retail packages are slightly different, but I'm going by real-world experience, not some fantasy written by a marketing team at Microsoft.






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