First impressions of Windows 7 RC1 32-bit

TigerGD · **Posted:** Fri Aug 14, 2009 10:00 am

I'm running RC1 x64 as the sole OS on my new DVR. I initially installed Vista x64, but found that Media Center in Vista is still in the dark ages. 7MC is so much better, its ridiculous, and almost good enough for consumer electronics. I'm also running x64 as a secondary OS on my main rig, mainly just to fully utilize the 4GB of RAM I've got, when I need to run hungry apps like Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere. I like the interface changes, and find that everything that's been changed from Vista makes some sense. I felt that many of Vista's changes were made for no good reason at all. There's still stuff missing like firewire networking and webcam recording in Windows Movie Maker, but overall, I enjoy Win7 far more than Vista.

I have Professional upgrade on pre-order, and I'm scheduling my new rig build around its release. Core i7 (haven't settled on LGA 1156 or 1366), 150GB Velociraptor, 2x1.5TB Seagate Barracudas in RAID, Corsair Hydro H50 cooler, 800W+ PSU (either Corsair or PCP&C), 6x BD-ROM, Radeon 5870, and eventually an Asus Xonar HDMI 1.3 sound card.

Scorpiuscat · **Posted:** Fri Aug 14, 2009 10:35 am

I took advantage of the $50 dollar upgrade specials last month and have 2 Win7 Home Premium's on order.

And I still should get my free copy of Win7 next Thusrday at the Microsoft Win7 Seminar.

Master Wolfe · **Posted:** Fri Aug 14, 2009 12:29 pm

Just skimmed it, but here's a good article on ZDNet.

Benchmarks: Windows 7 RTM versus Vista, XP

Master Wolfe · **Posted:** Mon Aug 17, 2009 9:57 am

Here's an article from Guru3d comparing gaming on Vista vs. 7.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/windows-7 ... formance/1

Summary is...

Quote:

Final words and Verdict

Windows 7 is a very promising platform for many reasons. For me personally, Windows 7 is what Vista was supposed to be really. With our pretty spiffy test platform we can tell you that it's a pleasure of an operating system to work with. It's fast, good looking, diverse and most of all... very stable on all levels. Neither with the NVIDIA or ATI graphics cards did we run into any issues, and that is quite remarkable considering we are at the threshold of a new operating system era.

The VGA drivers are not only stable, they work really well and perform good as well. I was afraid that with the coming of a new OS we'd see a performance drop just like we had with the transition from Windows XP to Vista, but if anything, Windows 7 VGA performance is as good as Windows Vista with the obviously occasional random fluctuation in performance here and there though. Looking at the opposite side, Windows 7 won't offer performance increases in graphics performance either with an exception here and there.

Windows 7 will obviously bring a lot of good stuff along with it in the near future... though it will be available for Vista as well, DirectX 11 is just around the corner. Better shaders, better shader performance, a new compute shader and hardware tessellation are just some of the few new but exciting items that DX11 will bring. Of course this website can't wait until some actual DirectX 11 class graphics cards are released ... and along with it software applications and games.

So if you are a little afraid of picking up Windows 7 due to driver issues... don't be. It's stable and working really really nicely. Two big thumbs up to both ATI, NVIDIA and sure .. Microsoft. And as a testament to that, let me assure you, we'll be switching all our test systems towards a Windows 7 based platform... real soon.

Scorpiuscat · **Posted:** Mon Aug 17, 2009 10:33 am

Everything looks good so far.

I will be attending the MS Win7 Seminar this thursday, I will post any new insites I get on the OS.

Silverhaze · **Joined:** Mon Mar 03, 2008 4:22 am **Posts:** 3383

I had an issue with a recent Windows Update. All of a sudden my PC started to blue screen after being on for about 15 minutes. I rolled back the update and turned automatic updates off and waited a few days.
It updated itself again somehow a few days later and it appears they have addressed the issue because its been fine since then.

W7 couldnt tell me what the problem was, only that it was related to a piece of my hardware. Very helpful.

Anyway, all is well now

Still impressed with W7. Now if only I could get CubaseSX and Crysis Sandbox 2 to run, I would be very happy.

mikeymike · **Joined:** Mon Mar 24, 2008 12:05 pm **Posts:** 2030

Silverhaze wrote:

W7 couldnt tell me what the problem was, only that it was related to a piece of my hardware. Very helpful.

Yes, but to be fair, when would you expect an operating system to accurately diagnose a potential hardware issue, or even an OS issue for that matter? It's like asking someone in a mental hospital to diagnose himself.

An educated guess is the best I would ever expect (unless computers start getting some pretty nifty separate diagnostic modules in-built as standard), an error message teamed up with some decent online articles, but the quality of the MSKB has dropped dramatically since approximately the turn of the century. I started noticing its lack of coverage for event log IDs (for example) when Win2k was released, and it hasn't caught up since. I just find it amazing that MS write a tonne of error code conditions but don't publish any documentation. What was the point in the error codes again?

First impressions of Windows 7 RC1 32-bit

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