February 20th, 2007

Living with Windows Vista: Week one report card

Posted by George Ou @ 12:58 pm

Categories: Desktop, Energy efficiency - green, Fun Stuff, Hardware, Intel, Mobile/Wireless, Networking, Security, Vista

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It's been one week that I've not used Windows XP on my main computer and actually living with Windows Vista so here is my progress report.  As some of my readers know, I've was having stability problems with my main computer as well as a number of other annoying bugs in Vista that kept me from jumping to Windows Vista.  Since I already swapped everything out (short of the Motherboard and CPU) which didn't stabilize Windows Vista, I upgraded my Motherboard and CPU.  Note that two of my other systems did run stable with Vista but they weren't my main system and I didn't want to waste a license on those old test machines with inferior hardware.

In my main computer I was running an old Intel P4 3.0 GHz CPU that I got in a deal that included a free motherboard and I had wanted to upgrade to an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 with a 965 chipset.  I also built another Intel E6400 with an Intel 945 chipset workstation for TechRepublic testing though this review will primarily focus on my own PC.  Here is the breakdown of the two systems:

*Upgraded components on my main personal computer

Drivers for the MSI system loaded flawlessly under Vista x86 edition without the need to download any additional drivers.  Gigabit LAN and 5.1 audio with all six speakers worked well.  MSI listed a bunch of drivers on their website for Vista x86 and x64 but I didn't use any of them.  Drivers for the ABIT IL9 based system with Vista x64 seemingly loaded fine but there was no sound output.  Jumbo frame support for both systems were missing with the default WHQL drivers dated June 2006 though I was able to average out at ~450 mbps transferring a 5 GB DVD backup from hard disk to hard disk from PC to PC while cranking both CPU cores to ~23%.  I found the latest Realtek drivers from Realtek's website which addressed the Jumbo frame issue and the sound issue on the ABIT system with Vista x64.

Vista didn't like the CPU overclocked beyond 2.67 GHz (25% boost) with a minor core voltage boost and didn't like the memory operating at 667 MHz (533 MHz is normal) unless it had a minor bump in voltage.  It seems Vista is very sensitive to any kind of hardware instability and it's forcing me to run a more reasonable overclock setting which is fine by me since I really don't want to live with silent data corruption anyways.  I did not test what would happen if I tried an aggressive voltage setting since I wasn't in it for extreme 50% boost overclocking and just wanted something reasonable with a mild voltage boost.  Previous experience had told me that Vista is very sensitive to memory issues and it's a good idea to test your RAM for errors and return it for any defects you find that normally might not affect Windows XP.

Hardware note: The fact that I had Intel SpeedStep power-saver mode enabled also limited my ability to clock higher but I wanted to conserve some energy.  My main system idles at 108 watts at stock CPU settings and at 116 watts with the overclocked settings and topped out around 170 watts when I was gaming.  The ABIT 945 chipset system with the smaller video card clocked in at 73 watts idle.  Both systems support S3 sleep state though the ABIT-based system refused to properly wake up from an S3 suspend state.  The MSI-based system worked fine at stock clock speeds but was unreliable at my 25% overclock setting so I gave up on the idea of using S3 sleep and I just shut the system down at night.  For those who would continue to argue the myth that a 330 watt PSU is too small, here are the actual facts with the measured numbers.  I've got enough room on my high-end system to go to a top-of-the-line graphics card and I'll still be running less than 270 watts peak.  You don't need a half ton or even quarter ton power supply and they're simply a method of separating you from your money.  The PSU thing has gotten so out of hand that someone is offering a 2000 watt power supply.

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