New Computer, which OS should I buy?Follow

So I ended up buying a new computer yesterday, it's currently being built and should be shipped out today (hopefully) from a company I found called MagicMicro? which may or may not be a good deal, but its one of the better prices/performance/free shipping deals I could find. Relevent stuff:

AMD Phenom II quad core 2.6ghz
ASUS motherboard
4GB DDR2 667 RAM
Nvidia 9400GT 1G
600W SLI Power Supply
and other crap.

However it did not come pre-installed with an OS, just a BIOS to allow one to be installed.

Now here's my dilemna, from what I understand (and could easily be wrong) Vista sucks so I'm supposed to steer clear of it -- BUT i've read that now Vista's Service Pack 2 makes it really bareable and only slightly worse than the new Windows 7. I have to admit though I am fairly attached to Windows XP - the last computer I bought in 2002 and just upgraded thru everything (2.2ghz 500mb ram integrated nvidia -> overclocked 2.4ghzAMD 2gb ram 512mb video).

Will XP SP3 be able to run and use the quad core? Or will I have to use Vista/7? And which is going to be better in the long run, assuming I own this computer for another 7 years.

Consider that I can get XP for free, Vista Home Premium for 70$~ish and 7 for around $200 (on release day).

Peronally I'd use the free o/s I had if it were xp, and down the road get Win 7.

But before you do this know going in the hdd will have to be formatted and you will lose most information game installs etc. when you swap. The main reason I would do that is regardless of how long Win 7 has been tested and used, it hasn't been given a real world test by the masses using the programs and discovering the flaws. Heck i didnt swap from 98 to xp untill i was fairly certain most of the games etc i played would easily run on the new o/s. I hate having headaches to trouble shoot a product that imho should (but never is) bug free on release day.

The only major "flaw" in Windows 7 I've discovered is something that causes Firefox to give it a C++ runtime error on Wikipedia pages once every few days, and crash hard. Since Firefox can restore lost tabs upon restart, it's more of a major annoyance than it is a serious bug, and it's something that Firefox, not MS, has to fix.

I hated Vista. Hated it. After a month I went back to XP. But I've loved Windows 7 ever since I got the RC a few months ago. It's actually a little faster than XP on modern hardware.

vista is fine, but not worth paying 70 bucks for when you have free XP. imo.

Yeah it is a 1TB hard drive, and to be honest I don't know how to partition a dual-boot system.

So, if I stick with XP it will be able to recognize and run normally the quad-core CPU right? That was what I was most worried about. I had heard that it won't be as "optimized" without a 64 bit OS.

Shaow go to Ibuypower.com The prices over there are from what i have seen as low as they get for quality components. They will sell you a system with or without an o/s and with or without just about any piece of current hardware from major manufacturers for some of the best prices I have seen. Personally i own two of them. On is my wifes and one is mine and have used them for the past four years with 0 incidents. they are inexpensive and run well as well as prompt on delivery after your order

Do they pay you to come here and advertise? Seriously, almost every post of yours I've seen is telling people to go there. I get that they're supposedly a good deal and all, but wow.

Well, that's different. Newegg is awesome.

Ok pointing out a few things.

First I would upgrade the 667 to ddr2 800. Or hell jump up to 1066.

Which model of phenom are you getting? I have not heard of a 2.6ghz Phenom 2. Maybe you are talking about the Athalon x4 620 or 640. Both of those processors started out as phenoms, but the l2 and l3 cache was messed up somehow and are now Athalons. (btw there are reports of people unlocking the cache and getting the performance of the phenoms at a 100 dollar price.)

I would upgrade big time from the 9400. It is pure crap. Hell it would barely run your physx processing. If you are looking for a card that is only a little more expensive, yet would give you a significant performance increase, I would look at the 9600 or the gtx 250. (The entire GTX series is dual core series)

Which mobo are you getting? M3N 78-VM? (Currently the latest model of Nvidia chipset boards that support AM3. Too bad its not true am3)

As for your operating system. I would go dual boot with windows 7 and XP. The reason is that dx11 and dx9 are not entirely compatible with each other. You will notice some random crashes with 7 if you use dx9 programs. DO NOT GET WINDOWS VISTA!!! Windows 7 will be released Thursday for the public. And... it costs EXACTLY THE SAME THING. Well as far as I know. I work for a wholeseller/systems integrator and I know that my company charges the same thing for both OSes. (Its microsoft's way of admitting defeat... without actually admitting defeat.)

I myself already have played around with windows 7 and I can tell you that it is very similar to vista. The Security center has levels now, so its not all in your face... or off. One tip, do not get the win 7 ultimate. There is no reason for a home user to buy it. All it gives you is easier networking options that corporations need. If you were slaving 100 computers to a server, then I would suggest ultimate. Pro or Home premium is all you need. If you are going to get more than 4 gigs of memory, I would go with 64 bit. Otherwise, go 32. Same price.





While true, I would definitely look at the wiring of Ibuypower's PCs. They are cheap and sell good computers, and they are the best deal short of building yourself, however CHECK THE WIRING. I bought one and it looked like there wasn't a single Zip tie used in the whole build.

Short of the wiring, these are the best deals on computers you will ever find.

Edited, Oct 18th 2009 8:15pm by lightningcount

Seconding the GeForce 9600. I use it and <3 it a bunch.

Well it came yesterday, looks really good and it's really REALLY quiet, which is weird for me, because it was kind of like the whole "listen to rain" to fall asleep thing for other people and I couldn't sleep at all last night.

And the whole damn thing glows like crazy (had no clue the fans I bought for the case were LED enriched). So it also doubles as a night-light.

Thanks for all the replies, I ended up going with XP Pro that I was able to get free, seems to be running fine after 6+ hours of updates and searching for necessary programs/drivers and pizza delivery stores. Only thing I'm confused about was the auto-updates stopped after about 48 security patches for SP2, but it didn't install SP3. Weird.

Eventually I'm going to get a 2nd HD and set up like a dual-boot thing and put Windows 7 on that one, its just a bit too close to release date right now and I don't wanna shell out for it yet.

My new comp came with Vista, and a free upgrade to win7. I had never used Vista, and quite honestly was scared away from it by all the negative press. Now granted I've only had this new pc a day, but downloading/transferring/installing everything so far has been a breeze, and "seems" easier to use than XP.

I have a related question to the OT if I may. I'm currently buying a new system on Newegg right now, but it's been a while since I've built. My current comp. is 5 years old. I usually don't keep up with tech advances until it's time to build (now).

What I'm noticing is there is no listings here or there for sound cards and network cards. Am I to believe onboard sound and networking is sufficient that I do not need external cards? That would be a relief as my shopping cart is quickly adding up. Buying at home it is so much easier to spend more money than at the store. I see so much cool stuff, I can't get the cheaper stuff. I'm up over $1000 already. And I still haven't looked at monitors.

For OS I did go with Windows 7. I'm in dire need of an OS right now. So it was an easy decision. I just wasn't sure if I wanted to go with the cheaper builders version or the full version. At first I didn't know what the difference was, but quickly found out.

going with a gigabyte 770t board. cheap board but should be sufficient since I'm only running one vid card

Phenon 4 3gig processor

4 gigs of DDR3 SDRAM. Will this be compatible with my motherboard? That's the only thing I'm worried about. It has a 1333 number after it, and I don't know what that number means. My motherboard doesn't have that number under specifications.

GTS 250 Vid card. I didn't see GTX listed on newegg which is talked about in an above post.