Now vista is a weird mix of nuts with many complaining that it's just not ready even with a RC1 being out (which some think looks more like a Pre RC at BEST). However that has not stopped MS and others from creating various methods for us to test our current systems for Vista compliance. You can see what MS has to say about Vista and what you will require
here and now ATI has given us a tool as well to test your system's compliance and where exactly you'll lie. It has 3 catergories (min, recommended and optimal) and you can see where your PC lies. I am unsure as the the exact meaning of optimal vs. Recommended as in which will run Aero and which will run Aero without a hitch, however I would be led to believe that Recommended will run Aero albeit not with ALL the bells and whistles whereas Optimal will happily chug along without you noticing. The ATI Vista ready test can be found
here.
If you want a preview of what it looks like, I have attached my scores below (see thumbnails). Feel free to put your results as well (THUMBNAILS ONLY PPL) so we can see what kind of consistency there really is. For instance the poor chap below (1st thumbnail) has an X1600 Pro and he failed all three tests, whereas in my tests I passed 2 with a lower rated X1400 card... funny that.
My results:
As soon as Nvidia has a similar tool, i'll edit this post and post those results, just to see if they fail me cause I have an ATI card. Funny though in some other very related news read the fails of this article, its ironic:
Vista tests leave us all in the dark
We await the Nvidia test with interest
By Nick Farrell: Monday 11 September 2006, 08:25
IT LOOKS like there is still a lot of confusion about what software and hardware combinations Microsoft’s super soaraway operating system Vista will run on.
We have already mentioned how Vole has tried to be helpful and released a little program that scans your system and tells what you need to get an upgrade, and over the weekend we saw another one from ATI here.
However, both of them are confused about whether my new computer will be ready to take the top of the range version of Vista.
The ATI software is easier to use and does not require any serious installation. It tells me that although I can manage to run the basic versions of Vista my system is let down by its Nvidia GeForce 7300 GS graphics card. Apparently, this is good enough for the minor versions of Vista - it is not good enough for the bells and whistles version.
The ATI Vista says to get it all running smoothly I will need to buy a card that supports a PCI Express bus type that would offer greater bandwidth at higher frequencies over AGP or PCI bus types. Maybe ATI know something we don’t because skimming through the Vista literature, no mention is made of needing PCI express support.
The VoleWare version is clunky, it requires you to download .net, but it does tell you which types of software will not work under Vista at the moment too. In my case Nero 7 Premium Nero will have to be uninstalled as well as a little thing called Sun J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 6.
However, Vole says I will have no problem with any of my hardware and I will be able to install Vista’s premium packs just as soon as I have mortgaged the house and sold the wife and the cat into slavery to afford it.
The question is, which one is right? It seems that ATi want me to dump my Nvidia card and Microsoft wants me to abandon Java. We wonder what they are really trying to say? µ
