Contemplating Vista - What should I purchase?

[Ranari]

Yes, I did a search and it answered some of my questions, but not all, so please be patient with me.

I just purchased a new machine (as follows):

-E6750 2.66ghz / 333fsb
-BFGTech Nvidia 650i Ultra Motherboard
-2gb Corsair XMS DDR2-800 5-5-5-12 1.8v
-eVGA Geforce 8800GTS OC 320mb (Default 576/1700)
-Creative Labs SB X-Fi Xtreme Music (carried from old machine)
-Seagate 320gb 7200rpm 16mb HD

I understand that the following issues I might, or will run into are:

-Creative Labs and their woefully inadequate Vista X-Fi drivers might force me to revert to using onboard audio.

However, that aside, I just want to make sure what I purchase will suite my needs. I'm a fairly bare bones computer user. I game and I work, that's about it. I am not a torrent user or someone who downloads gigabytes upon gigabytes of stuff. I keep my hard drive to a fair minimum of about 50gb give or take whatever games I install.

So what Vista should I look into purchasing? I want to go Vista because DX10 is starting to take root, and I don't want my brand new 8800GTS 320mb or future video card purchases to be limited by XP's DX9 capabilities. I know DX10 isn't perfect yet, and that current DX10 cards aren't entirely adequate for the job, but eventually cards will be released that are, and I want to actually be able to use them to the fullest.

So my options are: Vista Home Premium Retail or Vista Home Premium OEM? Has anyone gone with the OEM and been satisfied with what it does? I know what OEM is, but will that allow me to reinstall in case I have to reformat later on down the road? The reason I ask is because there's a fairly sizeable price difference between the two. Also, will Vista Home Premium address more than 2 cores? (CPUs was mentioned, but CPUs can be anywhere from 1-4 cores, so I'm a little confused). My motherboard does have Penryn-333fsb support, and eventually I know I'll be slapping a Penryn quadcore in this motherboard.

Please forgive me for not finding all the answers using search. I am at work right now and don't have a whole lot of time to do as much research as I would like.

 

[Night Black]

I'd suggest Retail Upgrade, unlimited reinstalls on a PC, and you can get a full install cheaper. How, I'm not going to say. It does support quad cores.

 

[RangerSVT]

Vista Home Premium OEM, 64bit version would be my choice, considering your processor, otherwise, 32bit if you'd like to not fully utilize your processors capabilities.


Either way, that Creative card is going to give you some problems, you might be lucky, but it'll more than likely give you some problems.

 

[Azhar]

I strongly advise you first download the 64 bit trial edition of Windows Server 2003 server just to see if all of your programs will work on 64 bit at all.

I use Primavera for work, but sadly it refuses to work in 64 bit environments. So I'm stuck with 32 bit until Primavera gets their stuff together.

(note: I suggested Server 2003 because I know it's available on Microsoft's website as a trial download. I don't think there are XP64 or Vista64 trials available for downloads. However, if you know someone with a Vista Ultimate cd, ask them if you can borrow it so you can install the trial version of it.)

 

[RangerSVT]

I strongly advise you first download the 64 bit trial edition of Windows Server 2003 server just to see if all of your programs will work on 64 bit at all.

I use Primavera for work, but sadly it refuses to work in 64 bit environments. So I'm stuck with 32 bit until Primavera gets their stuff together.

(note: I suggested Server 2003 because I know it's available on Microsoft's website as a trial download. I don't think there are XP64 or Vista64 trials available for downloads. However, if you know someone with a Vista Ultimate cd, ask them if you can borrow it so you can install the trial version of it.)

very good suggestion.

 

[darkar]

buy oem home premium unless you need shadowcopy then find ultimate.. the whole cant reinstall it is totally bogus btw: )