Is this computer configuration good for Windows Vista?

[AnX]

Well, the issue is that Turbo core is limited to 4 cores out of 8. It does slightly improve CPU perfromance, but only if the hotfix is on there. Yes, the M5A97 has an option to disable it.

You can Overclock your CPU to 200MHz (0.2GHz) over the original speed, and you'll get better perfromance than what ever Turbo core can give you.

Edited January 19, 2014 by AnX

[ppgrainbow]

Well, the issue is that Turbo core is limited to 4 cores out of 8. It does slightly improve CPU perfromance, but only if the hotfix is on there. Yes, the M5A97 has an option to disable it.

You can Overclock your CPU to 200MHz (0.2GHz) over the original speed, and you'll get better perfromance than what ever Turbo core can give you.

I'll bet that since the CPU perforance improvement is lackluster, I'm disabling Turbo core once I get the M5A97 motherboard.

[Soukyuu]

I might be late, but:

Vista runs good on FXs

It's a fact the FX architecture is not fully supported on vista and only barely better on win7. They would be throwing away performance running an FX on vista, so why spend more money? It's like buying 8GB RAM and running a 32Bit system

ppgrainbow, do you have any use for those 8 threads? Only few programs actually scale that well with so many threads, if you don't do video encoding, it's not worth it. Don't get blinded by numbers.

A Phenom II X4 (or X6), if you go the AMD route, is the better choice for the majority of people, especially if you are running vista. The sad thing is that the FX chips didn't really improved single threaded performance by much compared to the Phenom IIs, and this is what actually counts most of the time, still.

[ppgrainbow]

I might be late, but:

Vista runs good on FXs

It's a fact the FX architecture is not fully supported on vista and only barely better on win7. They would be throwing away performance running an FX on vista, so why spend more money? It's like buying 8GB RAM and running a 32Bit system

ppgrainbow, do you have any use for those 8 threads? Only few programs actually scale that well with so many threads, if you don't do video encoding, it's not worth it. Don't get blinded by numbers.

A Phenom II X4 (or X6), if you go the AMD route, is the better choice for the majority of people, especially if you are running vista. The sad thing is that the FX chips didn't really improved single threaded performance by much compared to the Phenom IIs, and this is what actually counts most of the time, still.

I don't think that having more than a quad-core processor is a good idea. Also, why is the AMD FX processor not fully supported on Windows XP, Windows Vista and the original release of Windows 7? As far as I know, the AMD Phenon II X6 and the 2nd generation Intel Core processors are believed to be the fastet processors that Windows Vista will fully support and run.

AMD's Kabini APUs, 3rd generation (and later; Ivy Bridge and Haswell) Intel Core processors will be incompatible with Windows XP or Vista at all as there are no drivers available: http://www.hitechreview.com/it-products/pc/amd%E2%80%99s-kabini-apus-won%E2%80%99t-run-windows-xp-windows-vista/42774/

[Soukyuu]

The reason why they are not fully supported is because they were released after the development phase of that OS. The FX chips are even newer than win7, hence why even win7's scheduler doesn't fully support it. Microsoft is not interested in adding support for those OSes because they want us to buy windows 8.

And yes, a quadcore is more than enough.

[ppgrainbow]

The reason why they are not fully supported is because they were released after the development phase of that OS. The FX chips are even newer than win7, hence why even win7's scheduler doesn't fully support it. Microsoft is not interested in adding support for those OSes because they want us to buy windows 8.

And yes, a quadcore is more than enough.

True. The AMD FX-4300 processor was released on 23 October 2012, three days before Windows 8 was even publicly released. I honestly can't believe that Microsoft is only using the AMD FX processor to only fully support Windows 8.

And since the AMD FX is fast enough, I would TOTALLY avoid the AMD Kabini APUs.

[AnX]

There was a hotfix made for Windows 7 to support the CPU, and Windows 8.x has it out of the box.

[ppgrainbow]

There was a hotfix made for Windows 7 to support the CPU, and Windows 8.x has it out of the box.

And since Windows XP nor Windows Vista are getting the hotfix, I bet that these OSes will function as-is without the hotfix, true?

Edited February 10, 2014 by ppgrainbow

[AnX]

They will, but it isn't long before one of the unofficial geeks on this site create a patch. In fact, all it takes to fix the problem is to make Windows use the Intel HT scheduler, so the cores are scheduled in a way that shared cache can be cleared.

Edited February 10, 2014 by AnX

[ppgrainbow]

They will, but it isn't long before one of the unofficial geeks on this site create a patch. In fact, all it takes to fix the problem is to make Windows use the Intel HT scheduler, so the cores are scheduled in a way that shared cache can be cleared.

I can't wait for a unofficial patch to come out for Windows Vista on the AMD FX processor soon!

[ppgrainbow]

Okay. It's finally over. After about two months of consideration, research and planning, I made a final decision of what I'm planning to get. The specs that I provided are final and will not be changed anymore:

1. ZALMAN, Z9 U3 Black mid-tower Case w/window, ATX, Steel/Plastic
2. ASUS M5A97 R2.0 motherboard with AM3+, AMD 970. Support for up to 32GB DDR3-2133 SDRAM, PCIe x16, SATA3, RAID support ATX
3. Quad-core AMD FX-4300 3.8 GHz - 4 GHz AM3+ 95 watt processor with 4MB L3 cache and support for up to DDR3-1866 SDRAM
4. Fractal Design Integra R2 500 watt power supply, 80 PLUS Bronze, 24-pin ATX12V v2.31 EPS12V, 1x 8/6-pin PCIe
5. Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO copper/aluminum CPU cooler, Socket 2011/1155/1156/1366/775/FM1/AM3/AM2 w/1 gram of thermal compound
6. Western Digital 1 TB WD Black (WD1003FZEX) 7200 RPM SATA3 hard drive w/64MB Cache
7. Crucial 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) Ballistix Sport PC3-12800 DDR3 1.6 GHz CL9 1.5V Non-ECC SDRAM DIMM
8. EVGA GeForce 8400 GS 520 MHz w/1 GB GDDR3 1.2 GHz w/VGA+DVI+HDMI, PCIe x16
9. Lite-on, iHAS124 Black 24x SATA DVD±RW Dual-Layer Burner

10. Sabrent CRW-UINB USB 2.0 internal card reader (eBay)

The cost of this custom built PC that I ordered was $630.95. The internal card reader off of eBay was $10.99. If you include the shipping and handling on al of this, then the final total amounts to $706.47.

If there are any issues arising, I will report it to the MSFN forms.

By the way, what are your thoughts on this final configuration? Do you think that it's all good to go?

[AnX]

One of my friends have installed Windows Vista on their FX 8 core, and after running Windows Update, Windows Vista Sp2 utilizes the FX properly, and runs the cores in the same manner 7 with hotfix or Win8 would.

So all you have to do is to run Windows update, and Vista will support the CPU.

[ppgrainbow]

One of my friends have installed Windows Vista on their FX 8 core, and after running Windows Update, Windows Vista Sp2 utilizes the FX properly, and runs the cores in the same manner 7 with hotfix or Win8 would.

So all you have to do is to run Windows update, and Vista will support the CPU.

Thanks for telling me. But since I finalised the configuration earlier, I'm settling with the quad-core.

[AnX]

The scheduling fix really applies to both the FX and the APU line, and all of its CPUs. So, this means that we have another OS that can properly support these CPUs.

[AnX]

In the future, you can also upgrade to an FX 8 core processor.