Windows 7 - Any good stories?
polycounter lvl 6
Lately I've been reading a lot of discussions about upgrading computers and I am in the same boat and looking to buy a new one. The biggest upgrade I'm looking forward to is going from my old 32 bit XP system to a 64 bit os (mmmm ram). It seems like I've read about lot of problems with Windows 7 and various programs like Maya, Photoshop, etc. So, does anyone have any success stories? Anyone sailing smoothly with Windows 7??
Replies
Right now I'm looking at an Intel I7 920 processor with a 1.8GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 260 and 8 gig of ram. Huge upgrade from my measly 2 gig I've been running for the last 4 years.
Otherwise, smooth except with older versions of some of the programs I use that aren't compatible with Aero. Thus dropping me back to a non transparent desktop. Slight annoyance is all.
And plugging in new devices and the such is a breeze.
Other than that, it works great. The homegroups are great, they automagically find each other and asks if you want to join the group. I'm def. going to upgrade to it once I get a mobo that supports more than 4 gigs o ram
Making backups, format hard drive, install new windows, install drivers, install programs, configure everything to you taste, etc.
I've must have done that a few hundred times in the last 10 years or something...
All the apps in my workflow seem quick and stable, Max 2009 64, UE3, Photoshop CS4.
As Oxynary mentioned, I too get the handwriting thing pop up when my Wacom is plugged in but it's a minor issue.
Sounds like you're looking at a similar spec PC to what I'm planning to build, although the GeForce GTX260 you mention is 896MB not 1.8GB, unless you meant something else.
EDIT: Apparently the GTX is available in 1.8GB as well as 896MB... news to me!
It is. Unless your going from Vista 32bit to Win7 64bit. But really.. why upgrade? Much less headache and potential issues if you do a clean install.
Look at it this way. Say you do find an issue from upgrading. You would have to reinstall twice, and then install all the programs anyways.
I'm actually really stoked about the upgrade and hearing all the good comments about Win7 is just icing on the cake. The computer I'm looking at is an HP. I debated building another system but I'd really like to just go with one off the shelf. I figured that system could easily last me 3 or 4 years and not require any kind of upgrades as far as hardware. Especially if my pieced together system made it 4 years only requiring a video card upgrade and that was only due to the fan on the old one failing.
A few other questions. I have an option between a 1TB HD and a 640GB HD. What would you guys prefer? Do you think a TB is a bit much? Would you rather have a few smaller drives?
Is there any reason to upgrade from Win7 Premium to Win7 Ultimate? Ultimate seems like overkill to me, but I really don't know that much about it.
If you have the option, go for 2 HDDs, one smaller capacity for your OS, one larger one for storage.
If not, go for the 1TB, unless HP are charging something silly for it.
1TB is quickly becoming less of a shockingly large amount of space and it's probably safer to grab the extra now rather than wait until you fill the 640 up. Unless you will have the option to add another HDD later, in which case you could maybe just go with the 640.
In terms of which version of 7 to go for.
As far as I know, the only difference between Pro and Ultimate is that Ultimate supports something like 30+ languages and the BitLocker encryption which is probably overkill for personal use. Normally you'd only want the extra security in a corporate environment and even then I'm sure there's alternatives.
if your not going to make your own. Dont forget to run this with all the bloatware that will come preinstalled.
http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/
Just does what it needs to do, and fast. Use a variety of apps on it, from 3ds max, photoshop, udk to adobe premiere and also play games on it (latest being mw2).
The differences between ultimate and pro aren't majot and would only be missed in a business environment like creationtwentytwo said
edit: that tool looks really handy oxynary, thanks for the link! I'm sure a few friends could use this lol
For $20 more I could go with 1TB RAID 0 (2 x 500GB SATA HDDs). The 1TB upgrade from the 640GB is free. All together I still have this old system with 500GB HD and another 250 external. My wife's system is an additional 1TB and hers is no where near full and never will be, haha. So I think I have plenty of storage for now. I'm not sure how easily it would be to upgrade the HP system with another HD later. I'm always concerned about the off the shelf power supplies. Since they are usually just the bare min needed.
Thats one problem I've run into with my current system and Maya. Really high res meshes give me fits. Lets say something like a sculpted mesh imported into Maya from Zbrush. My viewports are really laggy and if I selected the mesh it always took several seconds for the selection to actually happen. I always just wrote all that off as a result of only running 2GB of ram.
I end up having to decimate the hell out of any characters I've sculpted in ZBrush before I can even consider bringing them into Max.
Per, that's interesting you mention you get better performance on an older setup. What is your setup on the older system?
I've always passed off the poor performance in Max with my exported sculpts as my machines spec, but thinking about it now, I get a perfectly decent framerate in Topogun with OBJ's with polygons in the millions, yet terrible FPS in Max with anything more than about 100k.
In fact, this problem in itself is what was encouraging me to go for a top end system in the near future in the hope I'd see an increase in Max performance when working with super high poly stuff, but I may hold out a bit if the problem is software related.
No worries. Its actually pretty interesting as I've had similar problems on my current system with Maya. Like I said, I always just chalked it up to lack of ram. I think view port problems are the most prominent ones I have had with my current set up other than my batch render lockups. I just recently realized that those are more than likely being caused by my CPU running hot.
As far as the topic, I think I've seen more than enough good stories to make me feel better about making the change to Win7x64.
^ THIS!
I'm running a Core Duo too, but on a GeForce 9600M GT, fairly old but as I said, it's only really Max that's struggling.
not sure how it is now.
Dude, that card is fucking epic! I loved that thing, the price to performance ratio was top notch. I would take that over my 8500GTS anyday...
Anyway, that was completely off topic hehe
my hardware spec: amd 955/8gb ddr3/8800 gtx. my best bet at your problem is just a driver issue, prolly the chipset drivers or the vid card one. Also try to get your drivers from chipset/hardware manifacturer and not from your motherboard brand site (manufacturer got newer drivers)..
now max runs really good with no 300k poly limit and such problems. max 2k10/win7 x64
gl
One HUUUGE thing to watch out for:
Windows 7 64x has major problems with Nvidia drivers. It is not uncommon to have games crash or a driver failure if you have an Nvidia motherboard/card combo. I happen to have both (womp womp). Windows 7 very rarely BSODs but it does like to crash heavy hitting programs out to a black screen for a few moments and then recover from driver failure.
Other than that it is pretty amazing. The benefits far outweigh the Nvidia driver issues.
As always ... if anyone figures out how to overcome the mystery driver failure issue I will personally give you a massive cookie :P Good luck with the upgrade!
how much did you get? When i built my old system is was a core 2 duo w/ 2g ram
Now i build a quad with 4 gig, holy hell massive difference
I'm currently running
AMD 64x2 5400
2GB of ram
Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT
running 32bit XP
I'm upgrading to:
Intel i7 920 quad core
8GB of ram
1.8GB NVIDIA Geforce GTX 260
Win7
I know this is going to be a big upgrade for me but I cant wrap my head around exactly how much to expect. I mean as shitty as my old system is, its really been great. I haven't had many complaints at all.
Same story on my thinkpad - rock solid win 7 x32 home premium.
Only on my netbook win 7 crashes if you use HP drive guard and daemon tools together - so beware if you have a HP laptop.
Just out of curiosity perna, what cards and mobo are you running with your setup??
Edit just to chime in with the upgrade stories above, I went from:
amd athlon 64 x2 4200 (2.4ghz?) dual core
2gb ram
2x 7900gs @ 256mb
to
intel core2 quad q6600 oc'd to 3.0ghz
xfx nforce 780i sli mobo
8gb ram
4x 320gb sata ii
and 2 8800gt's (512)