Did you install the Vista service packs? For the little I ran Vista and 7, fully patched Vista felt like 7 with a different skin.

For all the bad rap Vista got, it was primarily that it didn't run well on the machines it was sold on, much of which was lack of memory, or sucky GPU.

XP's launch was actually about as rough as Vista's. But since XP was an important transition release, MS was not about to let that one just die. Compare that to ME, it had no reason to save face on that one. Vista should have been a very polished XP, and without any of the previous OS baggage. But they positioned it poorly by pretending it was going to be way more revolutionary when it wasn't going to be for the average person (and people didn't have the machine they wanted to be for it). So they created "7" instead and let XP live longer until things blew over. "7" is a cleaned up Vista, the same I thought Vista got anyway through updates. I ran Vista and it was fine on a proper machine. I also saw Vista on a improper machine -- Microsoft should be ashamed that people bought those machines that way!

The driver thing is just Microsoft for you. Always dropping in something that annoys people. The transition to XP kind of had similar things for the average person, but not as bad. It's up to you to run Vista, but really you'll get the same kind of experience, maybe with a little less annoyance, by just using 7.

Yeah, Vista, on release, was a mess. But it did get better. I ran it on a QX9650 @3.8ghz back in the day with two 8800 GTS 512 in SLI and 8Gb RAM. Very overkill for the time. It ran very well.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2026-04-29, 19:10:

Did you install the Vista service packs? For the little I ran Vista and 7, fully patched Vista felt like 7 with a different skin […]
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Did you install the Vista service packs? For the little I ran Vista and 7, fully patched Vista felt like 7 with a different skin.

For all the bad rap Vista got, it was primarily that it didn't run well on the machines it was sold on, much of which was lack of memory, or sucky GPU.

XP's launch was actually about as rough as Vista's. But since XP was an important transition release, MS was not about to let that one just die. Compare that to ME, it had no reason to save face on that one. Vista should have been a very polished XP, and without any of the previous OS baggage. But they positioned it poorly by pretending it was going to be way more revolutionary when it wasn't going to be for the average person (and people didn't have the machine they wanted to be for it). So they created "7" instead and let XP live longer until things blew over. "7" is a cleaned up Vista, the same I thought Vista got anyway through updates. I ran Vista and it was fine on a proper machine. I also saw Vista on a improper machine -- Microsoft should be ashamed that people bought those machines that way!

The driver thing is just Microsoft for you. Always dropping in something that annoys people. The transition to XP kind of had similar things for the average person, but not as bad. It's up to you to run Vista, but really you'll get the same kind of experience, maybe with a little less annoyance, by just using 7.

Running Vista SP2 - I'm not enough of a sicko to try the original release Vista. And yeah taking off my hater glasses for a sec, my honest impression was that Win7 did nothing really to reduce the system overhead that Vista incurred, just that hardware had caught up by its release. I remember Vista came out at the height of the Netbook craze - they were selling Intel Atoms with that crap!

Now that I've suffered through getting it set up, I maaaay keep it on Vista as a token rep for that era in my collection.

Vista was the Crysis of OSes, too demanding upon release for most hardware.

Not enough silver and black shiny plastic for a Vista computer!

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-04-30, 03:20:

Not enough silver and black shiny plastic for a Vista computer!

I agree, not the right case! Just happened to be the one it came with; I'm still on the hunt for a nasty late-00's tower of some sort, preferably blue...

Actually, at the time I would have considered this to be exactly the right case. I couldn't understand why people were adding windows to the sides their cases (let alone LED fans, etc) - computers are just a tool and should be under the desk and out of sight! (I've come around on this, and now enjoy building retro systems in modern "showcase" style cases)

See my beige collection from circa 2000:

People call it cursed but say that Windows 7 was the best windows ever ...Windows 7 is Vista just with better hardware support and a few refinements under the hood such as a far better and more stable driver model that was no longer needing to carry XP legacy driver support.

The issue with Vista wasn't that it was bad it was that it came at the wrong time and had to handle the transition between the older XP driver model and the newer Vista driver model, naturally MS had not given fabricators enough time to get Vista drivers ready so everyone naturally blamed the OS for that, Fabs were also dragging their feet with updated drivers but people seemed to just blame windows for that too.

With its service packs and good hardware Vista runs as well as Windows 7 does and is a rather pleasant experience.

ubiq wrote on 2026-04-30, 03:09:

Running Vista SP2 - I'm not enough of a sicko to try the original release Vista. And yeah taking off my hater glasses for a sec, my honest impression was that Win7 did nothing really to reduce the system overhead that Vista incurred, just that hardware had caught up by its release. I remember Vista came out at the height of the Netbook craze - they were selling Intel Atoms with that crap!

Indeed.

ubiq wrote on 2026-04-30, 03:09:

Now that I've suffered through getting it set up, I maaaay keep it on Vista as a token rep for that era in my collection.

I'm not sure why to use it. I do like the look though better than XP, and maybe even 7. Certainly nicer looking UI han the flat indistinguishable look today in Windows today. So maybe to remind us what it was like back then 😀

In my experience, Win7 boots somewhat faster than Vista all else being equal. Stability-wise they should be pretty identical with ~2008-2015 hardware. Win7 has significantly larger application support base, because it was a very popular OS up until its EOL, and even somewhat beyond. On a C2Q system such as this one, I would prefer Win7 over WinXP, but it is possible to dual-boot. If you don't care about application support, might as well stay on Vista. Vista went out of support in 2017, but you can install Server 2008 security updates up until the final final EOL of 2023.

Hmm, if I'm keeping Vista on it just to say I have that OS represented amongst my retro PCs, I would need to explain to myself why not one of mine is running WinME. And if I'm truly honest with myself, I actually even used ME back in the day... (and I haven't felt the need to check it out since)

Anyway, for this system...

I upgraded the E6850 to a Q9500 without doing any research as to whether that would actually be an upgrade. I just assumed Quad > Duo, 9500 is a much bigger number than 6850, and one CPU came out 2.5 years after the other so it must be way better. Now doing the barest minimum of research, it looks like nothing I'd be doing would take advantage of multi cores, and I should maximize single-core performance. The E6850 has a higher clock speed 3GHz vs 2.833GHz, but there are too many other variables for that to necessarily mean much. I should really just do some benchmarks, but I don't super feel like fighting with the horrible securing system of that stock Intel HSF again.

The quad should operate the monstrosity that is commonly referred to as the modern web faster.

I have 2 hard drives with Vista Business 32-bit, which were already installed upon arrival. It works pretty well all things considered, and the wallpaper is very nice.

Windows Update still works, although the only thing it can offer me is the discontinued Windows Live. Also make sure you have the sha-2 patch. UAC can be turned off, just like in any other windows.

R3dfox is a port of the latest Firefox, so your modern web browsing needs will be met. There's only one bug of note, you can't set the default download folder (Vista-only bug).

For IE9, you can add TLS 1.1 and 1.2 support (with a registry hack), and then use duckduckgo as your search engine.

Overall, Vista is a little slower than Win7, and still shows its XP roots, but it isn't as bad as some people say.

I need to investigate how to get more updates up to the 2023 cutoff.

Have to agree i toyed with Vista back in the day and had issues even on my "Vista Compatible" motherboard the system setup blue screened at install. Flip flopped a bit between it and XP and eventually picked up a beta build of Windows 7, the one with the beta fish wallpaper.

Just ran that until 7 was RTM and carried on with 7 from there on out.

I revisited Vista in modern times since it's been long enough that the UI and "feel" of it is now nostalgic. Just last night installed Vista SP2 on a third gen intel laptop and apart from the typical drivers missing needing to be installed it feels just like 7. Seems by SP2 and hardware catch up it runs fine,

I considered Vista for my AM2+ system, but there was a problem with TRIM - of course the OS doesn't support it but also AMD SATA drivers for Vista don't work well with manufacturer's tools so TRIM cannot be executed manually either. I have dual boot WinXP + Win7. You should probably dual boot it too.

Core 2 Quad Q9500 is a bit underpowered for Vista era games as they utilize just 2 CPU cores. Games from this era are very difficult to run at high fps for this reason. It shows in games such as NFS Undercover, GTA 4, Crysis, Far Cry 2. Try those. You would benefit from GeForce GTX 480 even on that quad if you want to play with maximum details. I came to conclusion GeForce 9800 is only good for s939 - early dual cores.

AlexZ wrote on 2026-05-06, 16:07:

I considered Vista for my AM2+ system, but there was a problem with TRIM - of course the OS doesn't support it but also AMD SATA drivers for Vista don't work well with manufacturer's tools so TRIM cannot be executed manually either. I have dual boot WinXP + Win7. You should probably dual boot it too.

Core 2 Quad Q9500 is a bit underpowered for Vista era games as they utilize just 2 CPU cores. Games from this era are very difficult to run at high fps for this reason. It shows in games such as NFS Undercover, GTA 4, Crysis, Far Cry 2. Try those. You would benefit from GeForce GTX 480 even on that quad if you want to play with maximum details. I came to conclusion GeForce 9800 is only good for s939 - early dual cores.

Thanks for the input! It seems to be running pretty decently on a just a regular 1GB SATA drive, so I'm not terribly tempted to try a SSD. We'll see. I do think I'll get a dual or even triple boot set up going on it though. I've found that being stubborn about a particular OS on a retro system (e.g. Win2K on my P2B-DS) leads to me just using it less.

Going to stick with the GeForce 9800 though. If I want to build it, I have a i5-3570K + GTX 680 for a potential next-step Win7 system.

I would recommend SSD, I use one even for s754 and it improved system speed significantly. SATA drives are good basically only for Windows 98 and Athlon XP (nForce2) or early Athlon 64 (nForce3). On Intel chipset TRIM via 3rd party app should be less troublesome than on AMD chipset.

AlexZ wrote on 2026-05-08, 09:24:

I would recommend SSD, I use one even for s754 and it improved system speed significantly. SATA drives are good basically only for Windows 98 and Athlon XP (nForce2) or early Athlon 64 (nForce3). On Intel chipset TRIM via 3rd party app should be less troublesome than on AMD chipset.

Ok fine~~~~

I don't have a preponderance of spare SSDs kicking around, but I remembered I had a spare 1 TB WD M.2 SATA stick and a 2.5" adapter to put it in. Linked because I looked up my old amazon order to see that paid $74.99 two years ago and they're listing them now for $492.99. Feels bad, man.

I've read that most modern SSDs take care of themselves and don't really need OS-level TRIM anymore. I plan to just wing it and flatten/reload windows if I run into any really issues.

Put the E6850 back and confirmed that it's definitely faster than the Q9500 a lot of the single process stuff I'd care about. Going to try a E8600 on for size too - they're at least dirt cheap to find.

I bought some very lightly used SATA SDDs few years back before memory prices soared. They had just a few dozen hours on them. For Vista 1 TB is definitely needed as games take more space.

Even modern SSDs need TRIM as the drive otherwise wouldn't know what blocks are free (it doesn't understand file system). They still contain the data as they are not erased when files are deleted.

E8600 is a great CPU for s775 in Vista era as games mostly use 2 cores. If you can find it, buy it. When I tested AMD AM2(+), I found out there is no matching X2 solution from AMD performance wise, Intel was so far ahead back then. Only Phenom II X4 955 at 3.2Ghz can match E8600. E8600 would struggle in Windows 7 era where 3 cores become useful but that isn't what you are interested in.

AMD initially gave us Phenom X4 9950 BE (2.6Ghz) in late 2007 but similarly to Q9500 it is too low clocked to be useful for retro gaming. Both remain just a curiosity.

AlexZ wrote on 2026-05-06, 16:07:

I considered Vista for my AM2+ system, but there was a problem with TRIM - of course the OS doesn't support it but also AMD SATA drivers for Vista don't work well with manufacturer's tools so TRIM cannot be executed manually either. I have dual boot WinXP + Win7. You should probably dual boot it too.

Last hotrod X2 machine I had together was using Raid 0 16MB cache drives, 300MB/sec coming and going, don't know if they were quite maxed or it was the full pipe of SATA2.