Hello all. Just wanted to pop in and ask some advice as I'm not quite sure what to do (surprise surprise!). The other day I ordered the Titan Sabre system and the Viewsonic 22" HD Monitor from Overclockers - getting delivered on tuesday and I cannot wait! I've been forced to live with an old Pentium 4 processor, 1GB RAM, ATI X1650 512MB graphics computer with 15" monitor for quite a few years now, so I'm hoping I'm going to be in for a treat???!!! (Haha any confirmation you can give me of this would be greatly comforting!) My dilemma is this - I chose not to get an operating system with it because there are a few options these days and I have no idea which is best for me. I've been working on good old XP with my old PC and I've read so many reviews of Vista/Windows 7 that they run slower than XP? I understand with them being more advanced operating systems they require more hardware power, so would it be a good idea to run XP on the Titan Sabre which would, I'm assuming, run faster than if I were to run Vista/Win 7? Or am I being an idiot and this is not how it works? A friend of mine has a pre-release of Windows 7 and I have to say it looks like a lovely OS... The main thing I'll be using this system for is music production with some pretty intense apps, and I occasionally play games like Mirror's Edge, Prototype, etc...? Any help greatly appreciated
If the main use of the system is music production then I would check that all your music software and sound card drivers (assuming you use a dedicated soundcard) will work with Windows 7. What specific music apps are you using? As I may be able to offer to help as I also use my system for music production. In general Windows 7 x64 is a lot faster than XP and is a great OS, I use it for all my day to day tasks and it runs fine.
Hi, Welcome to the forums there is nothing wrong with vista it is a good OS people who bad mouth vista generally have rubbish computers that dont run it well i would suggest getting an OEM of vista as the current ones that OcUK sell have an upgrade voucher to windows 7 you get to use a new legit version of windows vista then get your windows 7 upgrade in the post on the 5th november if you redeem the voucher its a win win situation and get an X64 version too if you have any technical queries regarding your new system, dont hesitate to conact me in the customer service forum in the RMA section here
Aah! That's another thing you reminded me! Regarding x64 or x86 - which should I be installing on the new system? Obviously on my old pc it is only capable of x86, but again I'm just wanting to get the best performance out of this new pc... As for the music software thing - I'll be running SONAR 8 producer with some heavy VST plugins such as Miroslav Philharmonik... It will run on my old pc but at VERY slow speeds! Soundcards are of no use to me as I use a lot of USB/Firewire interfaces for recording...
you should be able to run it in compatibility mode if anything vista would be more adept at this mainly because it is an established OS and Win7 isnt officially released yet [so it may present incompatability issues and be a bit buggy with certain pieces of software] i am not familiar with the software packages you mentioned but vista has a great 'run in XP compatability mode' which does the job really well in most instances go for the 64 bit edition to make the best use of your hardware i have ran X64 vista since it launched and never had a single issue with it
thanks rjkoniell was also wondering about the x64/x86 thing... I should also probably point out that when I say "I occasionally play games like Miror's Edge, Prototype, etc", what I mean to say is that Mirror's Edge only just runs on the lowest settings with everything turned off, and Prototype... Well that game crashes whenever I try to run it... I can't wait to join the 21st century.
In all honestly as long your interface has Vista or Windows 7 drivers it should be fine just go to the manufacturers website and check, I use Vista drivers for my USB interface under windows 7 and it works fine. If your considering anything other than XP I would go with Windows 7 right off the bat. From my experience if it works under Vista it works on Windows 7, I've had no compatibility issues so far with Windows 7. 64-bit would also be a logical step to go so you can make use of that 4GB ram.
the sabre is actually a surprisingly snappy system, i am a big fan of AMDs phenom lineup at the moment and the 4890 gpu in the sabre is a cracking card [i am slightly biased though ] it will play all your games fine on a 22" monitor you wont be able to use PhysX in mirrors edge as that is an Nvidia feature but everything else should be fine and dandy
It really depends what you're going to be doing. I would recommend Linux until such a time as you decide what else to put on it, but it's not the best for gaming... depends on which games really.
Yeah well it was the reviews of this system that pushed me to buy it - all the reviews said in one way or another that they were surprised how fast it runs for its price...
rjkoniell - I've read in a few places that physX is not really a big deal in modern gaming technology...?!
You could try a Linux OS such as Ubuntu but you won't be able to run any of your music production software inside of it and I doubt any of your audio interfaces will have Linux drivers as a majority don't. Your best bet is to order the PC with Vista x64 or wait till the PC's start getting shipped with Windows 7 pre-installed which should be soon, just drop a webnote on the ocuk website and find out when they will start shipping machines with Windows 7 pre-installed.
I recommend Linux for a variety of reasons, but the main one being it's free, and small. You can just download and run that until you get Windows, which you should use for gaming and anything else that doesn't work that well in Linux. This should be relatively easy to learn for a newcomer: http://www.linuxmint.com/
Thanks for all the advice guys - gonna stick with Windows and order Vista x64 with the Windows 7 voucher Many thanks!
Alowe23, Windows 7 will be released in just 9 days and offers improvements in many areas relating to performance, security, stability, virtualization and more. To learn more about how Windows 7 can meet your needs and to take a tour of all the features Win 7 offers, please go here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/features/tour.aspx Jessica Microsoft Windows Client Team
