Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

Now would be a great time for a period correct vista machine before everything sky rockets in price on ebay.

Period correct as in massively underpowered like the crappy systems that were sold by all the large OEMs as being "Vista ready"?

Oh yeah.. let's make a bunch of low end Celeron machines with 1GB of RAM and only onboard video and sound and a super crappy 5400rpm hard drive.

Nope, I'm not bitter about having to do warranty work on those pieces of trash.

Vista was fine after SP1 (before SP1 there were huge problems with file transfer speeds and other crappy bugs) and I used it right after it was released.

That being said, I really see no point in building a Vista machine at all.

Can somebody give me at least one really good reason why a Vista machine would be useful at all as a retro machine?

cyclone3d wrote:

I feel the same way. What exactly is the point of having a Vista machine? Is there anything at all that works on Vista that will not work on Windows 7 or Windows 10 for that matter?

Having a retro vista experience is what won't work on windows 7 or 10. The definition of retro as of the past literally validates vista as retro, by the way, as it makes no demand for a particular past. For some, vista's not much in the past, and for others, it is, relatively speaking.

Oh wow i didn't know vista only rained for 1 year, you can use all 2008 hardware and still be vista period correct. Ask people why they prefer a 95 and ME over 98se, people like what they like this website is about nostalgia.

cyclone3d wrote:

I feel the same way. What exactly is the point of having a Vista machine? Is there anything at all that works on Vista that will not work on Windows 7 or Windows 10 for that matter?

I can think of some ways Windows 7 screws applications up in a way that makes Vista desirable, most of the updates that backport Windows 10 features to 7 can break compatibility with certain applications (KB3086255 breaks Safedisc, KB3121212 broke Virtual PC at one point, and there were some updates that broke VideoStudio but I can't remember the KB numbers), So from the standpoint of someone who would be paranoid about compromising their existing 7 PC by uninstalling updates, I can see the point of having a separate computer for running Windows Vista.

Now that I think about it, I used to have Corel VideoStudio v4 on my Windows 7 computer until I reinstalled the OS due to hard drive replacement, I didn't realize updates broke it until I tried to reinstall it only to have trouble launching it, the only use I had for that was capturing video from various sources so it's no loss for now, I think I'd like to build/get a small desktop with hardware that's both old and new enough to run Vista Home Premium so I have a dedicated machine for video transfer, but both space and time limits this for me. 😐

I guess all those oem copies of Vista I ended up keeping after I left one of my jobs will be interesting someday.

nforce4max wrote:

I guess all those oem copies of Vista I ended up keeping after I left one of my jobs will be interesting someday.

Maybe long after we all are dead. Not before. Dont hold your breath.

Vista was on the market for a very short time before 7 took over and I don't recall any games that work on Vista and not on 7. Games performing worse when compared XP and often having higher system requirements (like for example Crysis) doesnt help either.

I think it will be often overlooked when it comes to retro builds, the same way as Windows ME is today.

Speaking of which, when do you guys expect Vista/Late XP hardware (Late P4's, 478, GF6k series etc) to start sky rocketing?

I never have understood what causes this aside from scumbags that would rather scrap something if they cant make atleast $50 in profit on it.

I'm really hoping PC doesn't become as bad as Nintendo collecting and force non rich people out of the market (which IMO has already happened with 3DFx). Alot of my local scrap yards (all the ones i know of actually) don't allow us to buy scrap hardware. Infact, in my area any electronics taken there are automatically property of the county. My local thrift stores scrap all PC including goodwill and I live rural so people are stupid and think 10 year old PCs are still worth 120+ dollars. Basically eBay is my only source of parts which is why theres no chance of me ever getting something like a V5 for my max (I max out for 50 for any part. No reason to ever spend more).

Going back to the first few posts in this thread, I can't really recommend LGA1366, not when 1155 is cheaper and can host much faster Sandy/Ivy Bridge CPUs.

Unless your Vista games can make use of more than 4 threads, the first gen i7s aren't that much better than a really fast 45nm Core 2 system. When I tested a 4GHz i7-920 against a 4GHz E8600/DDR3 system, I found that the two were surprisingly close in several single- and double-threaded benchmarks.

Sandy Bridge really pulled ahead of Core 2, not only in multi-core but also in single-core performance. SB also uses less power than Nehalem & the LGA1155 platform is cheaper and easier to find. Oh, and SB happens to overclock like a madman. 😁

Having said all of that...a Vista retro PC?? IMHO, waiting till ~2024 to build a Win7 retro PC would be a much better idea. 😊

Standard Def Steve wrote:

Going back to the first few posts in this thread, I can't really recommend LGA1366, not when 1155 is cheaper and can host much f […]
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Going back to the first few posts in this thread, I can't really recommend LGA1366, not when 1155 is cheaper and can host much faster Sandy/Ivy Bridge CPUs.

Unless your Vista games can make use of more than 4 threads, the first gen i7s aren't that much better than a really fast 45nm Core 2 system. When I tested a 4GHz i7-920 against a 4GHz E8600/DDR3 system, I found that the two were surprisingly close in several single- and double-threaded benchmarks.

Sandy Bridge really pulled ahead of Core 2, not only in multi-core but also in single-core performance. SB also uses less power than Nehalem & the LGA1155 platform is cheaper and easier to find. Oh, and SB happens to overclock like a madman. 😁

Having said all of that...a Vista retro PC?? IMHO, waiting till ~2024 to build a Win7 retro PC would be a much better idea. 😊

If MS isn't careful I'll be using Linux in 2024.

And weren't most games only dual threaded until 2012-2013?

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Speaking of which, when do you guys expect Vista/Late XP hardware (Late P4's, 478, GF6k series etc) to start sky rocketing?

It have already started, especially on P4 EE and late highend Nvidia AGP cards!

What alot of people tend to forget is that AMD was the fastest horse at that time. Motherboards, FX CPU's and ATI graphics cards are cheaper at the moment.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

If MS isn't careful I'll be using Linux in 2024.

Why wait? 😁

And weren't most games only dual threaded until 2012-2013?

Indeed, we're only really now seeing games that can even USE more than four, which makes more than four rather silly unless you're doing some black magic involving thread affinity to dedicate four threads entirely to the game... For pure gaming, at least. Content creation/virtualization are entirely different stories, just to name a couple.

Back to the subject at hand, I think now isn't so much the time to be worried about a Vista/7 retro rig -- certainly hoard the parts until it is such a time, but I don't see us having a big reason to NEED such a rig for several years yet.

As to what I think the hardware should be, I'm a bit of a mixed bag -- Are you wanting to max out these games or run them as you remember them at the time? For the first, I concur with a couple others here, Sandy/Ivy Bridge is your target, probably with a GTX5x0-6x0/HD57xx-77xx and 8GB of RAM or so. For the latter, I agree with still others and suggest later Core 2 or Nehalem with a GTX2x0-5x0 and 4GB of RAM.

I don't think any P4s will ever become rare or expensive. The P4 era was when the home desktop boomed, they were EVERYWHERE. They are out there in droves, I can basically get any P4 CPU you want for less than five bucks if you have trouble sourcing them. name it, and I'll get you one. My local market is full of people trying to unload them for a petty penny.

I would say that Vista is retro in the sense that no-one would choose to have Vista on their 'current' PC, whether that be office or gaming, and it was superseded by the immeasurably better Windows 7. The only reason to use Vista is out of some strange desire to specifically use Vista.

Having said that, setting up a vista PC is too easy in the sense that I would use Socket 775 kit for it (S478 P4's would struggle I feel!). Socket 775 is "modern" in my view- SATA, PCI-E, satisfactory onboard audio, support for current aftermarket coolers, powerful enough for day to day web browsing and office use if you are competent with not having lots of start up programs and whatnot, and generally easy to get up and running. If you don't have to struggle to get it working, it ain't retro!

Almoststew1990 wrote:

If you don't have to struggle to get it working, it ain't retro!

Go period correct and limit yourself to capacitor plagued components.

vvbee wrote:

Almoststew1990 wrote:

If you don't have to struggle to get it working, it ain't retro!

Go period correct and limit yourself to capacitor plagued components.

This, I seldom have problems, more then anything I have problems when I try and put newer systems in old cases or other hokey stuff.

I'm ahead of the curve! I built my period correct year 2006 Windows Vista system years ago. I used an QX6700, Nividia nForce 680i SLI and a Geforce 8800GTX (later I added a second one).

The issue is that I hate Vista and also the performance sucked when compared to "slower" systems running XP so I never use the 2006 Vista system at all. I know this could be solved at least to some degree by installing the "make Vista just like Windows 7" update/makeover but that kind of defeats the purpose.

The year was 2006! (Warning! not 100% retro)
The year was 2006! (Warning! not 100% retro)

I just built another year 2006 system to use as my main rig over the summer.

E6700 @ 10x333 = 3.33GHz. The v-core is set to 1.2V (1.23V idle, 1.2V load) to keep the power consumtion low, the system still scores 50k+ in 3dmark 2001.
Asus Commando Intel P965 motherboard.
4GB DDR2 @ 666MHz CL4-4-4-8. I don't think clocking the memory faster would improve the performance much...
Geforce 7900 GTX at stock so far. For what I play the card is fast enough as it is.

This system will not run Vista though but Windows XP SP3 with Windows Embedded P.o.S edition hack.

I am not sure what special sauce Vista would offer over Windows 7, as they should be functionally identical (with 7 being faster).

Far cry from Windows 95 vs 98SE, because stock 98SE ran much slower than stock 95. But once you strip out a lot of the web stuff, 98SE is like a superset of 95.

Please correct if I am wrong.