This is a PC Hardware question on behalf of a friend of mine?

Question

He has Vista Ultimate running on his PC, and wants to know what modifications he needs to make to improve performance.

Current specs :

Pentium 4 2.4ghz CPU

768mb RAM

Nvidia GeForce FX 200 128mb graphics

Any advice would be most welcome and please for his sake, no 'vista sucks' or 'xp die hards'

Many thanks.

Answer 1

I've never ran Vista on a pentium 4, but the processor is fairly decent. And you know as well as I that the rumors that Vista needs 2 gigs of RAM to run decently are false. I've seen it run OK on only 512mb of RAM (Unsure if the dual-core processor had anything to do with the decent speed, though) And I noticed one guy recommended 4 gigs of RAM, the 32 bit version of Vista only supports 3.3 GIGs of RAM so 4 would be useless. I'm unsure if that graphics card is motherboard-integrated, but if it is buying a "real" video card that has it's own RAM would give a good speed increase. Integrated video card steal some of the RAM from your system so buying one with it's own RAM would free up that RAM.

Well I'm sure you've already recommended this to your friend since you're a linux user, but that thing would run pretty much any version of linux fine

Answer 2

Your friend would definitely need more RAM to run Vista properly. Upgrade to a minimal of 1GB, but 2GB is recommended.

Your friend can check his computer's score by clicking the Start button, right clicking Computer, clicking Properties. There he will find each component's evaluation - he will be able to tell what Vista recommends he upgrades.

In the mean time, he should make sure he goes for a reliable and efficient anti-virus solution, such as AVG. Products such as Norton and McAfee are really going to make his system grind.

Disabling Windows Defender, although not recommended, can speed the system up considerably.

If he is using the Windows Aero interface (all the funky animated stuff), he could disable that to reduce the strain on his graphics card and the OS's overall use of memory.

Close the sidebar if he doesn't use it.

Good luck!

Answer 3

Have him put in at least 2 GBs of the fastest ram his board will support. Also have him go into "power options" in the control panel and and use the "high performance" power scheme. Since Vista is new the latest hardware drivers and Windows updates help a lot too. If he hasn't already, have him turn that annoying UAC off. Vista has a ton of help files about optimizing performance.

Answer 4

Let's see, he uses windows vista ultimate which happens to be the most aggressive operating system (OS).

Microsoft targeted the memory industry to make more sales in ram. apparently it worked.

Vista requires 3GB of intense ram in-order to fully use the potential of vista ultimate.

The pentium is a bit low.
The graphics card is alright but not enough to boost vista in performance.

Answer 5

The single biggest (and cheapest) improvement is to put in as much RAM as the motherboard can support (Vista needs 2 GB ideally), otherwise it's goung to spend time swapping data in and out of the hard drive, which is a tediously slow way of doing things.

I'm certainly not going to knock Vista, but it is more memory-hungry than XP.

Answer 6

What sticks out like a sore-thumb here is the amount of RAM installed.

To get the best out of Vista, I'd suggest upgrading the RAM to at least 1GB. 2GB if the motherboard supports it.

The rest should be ok though.

Answer 7

1 gig of ram, 2 would be better, 4 even better
Check his mobo owners manual and look for bios update and swap out for a dual core processor if possible.
Vista is DX 10 capable so get a DX 10 video card (PCI-E)

Answer 8

Hi, tell him to upgrade the ram to 2gb cause I think thats all the p4 supports, and also get a new vga card. It will be better if he got a DirectX 10 vga card. I hope I helped.
Good Luck!

Answer 9

Delete all unwanted files and programs, add more RAM