renderfarm in a box | 11:28 AM >

Well, after a few days of fiddling, attaching parts, and learning the ins and outs of dual booting XP and Vista 64, my new computer, FARMBOY-ONE, is now up and running happily. Hardware: Intel Core2Quad 6600, 4 gig of ram, 1x500gig, 1x320gig SATA hard disks, an XBox 360 controller for windows, and a GeForce 9600 with 512meg of video ram. Apparently, though, I still can't run Crysis at full-ball. You need two graphics cards for that.

I was very much primed to hate Vista, especially after getting it up and running on laptops bought by my girlfriend and one other friend. (Word to the wise: do NOT buy HP / Compaq. There's so much extra adware crap installed that the machine is nearly unusable until you spend a few hours cleaning.) On those machines Vista is this pokey monster, barely able to stand long enough to load IE or Firefox, and certainly not the kind of OS you'd expect to use when doing CG work. However, both of them are running Vista 32 with less than two gig of ram, and with GMA-type video.

Vista 64 is something wholly different; at least, it has been so far. I'm sure that the amount of memory I have is a huge factor in making the system so stable and zippy, as is the graphics card, but it *really* runs well. Better than XP, even. If a program goes unresponsive the OS does not flag. Games can be tabbed out of almost immediately and restore just as quickly. A lot of the UI changed that at first felt like change for the sake of change, are actually quite nice and useful. For example: the Start menu now has a little box at the bottom for typing things in, so you can search for programs and files. Interestingly, hitting the Windows key now and typing in the first few letters of your program, then hitting enter, generally launches what you're looking for not unlike Quicksilver or the Leopard additions to Spotlight. File search also works much more quickly and easily. Also, unlike XP's changes to the Control Panel from Windows 98, the Vista changes actually put things in more obvious places and keep the stuff you're most likely to do within less clicks.

The other thing that really surprised me is how well all my games and things work. I know that one of Windows' selling points is that your old software always works, but I didn't expect that to carry across to the 64-bit version. They've taken a different approach than Apple -- instead of really fat binaries that carry different code bases for 32-bit and 64-bit programs, completely separate versions of software are installed in separate directories. (So, all the 64-bit software goes into C:\Program Files\ and all the 32-bit stuff goes into C:\Program Files (x86)\.) I like that. I also like that the user folders are easier to find than in XP -- I use the command line a lot so typing in "Documents and Settings" every time got annoying.

Installing Vista 64 was not without pitfalls. I got bit by this bug. I got around it as they state in the thread -- I pulled out two gig of ram and then the install went fine. After patching up I went back to four gig. Someone should have gotten fired over that one, though. Not being able to install -- at all -- on a machine with over three gig of ram, when your OS's main strength is the ability to use more than three gig of ram, is just inexcusable. One of the NVidia programs (some sort of firewall thing) caused consistent problems until I removed it. Oh, and it never uses less than 20% of my total system ram. When I had two gig installed it used 40% (while doing nothing), and when I put the final two gig in that dropped to 30%. It seems to be equalizing, though, using a bit less each wake. I don't know why that is.

However, Steam and all my games on it seem to work so far, but the Bioshock demo is soundless under Vista after the intro (and apparently, this is a well-known issue).

So I guess the point of all this is, while I have a dual-booting XP / Vista 64 setup going on right now, I have absolutely no reason to boot into XP. I actually like Vista, despite all that's been said about it and despite how slow it is on machines that aren't mine. The funny thing is, it's so nice that I actually want to do work on it despite the fact that I only bought the machine to use as a render farm in a box. There are still a bunch of bugs under Leopard that annoy me and, at this moment in time, Vista is actually the more usable OS.

Not that I'm switching back, heavens no. Especially since I just put in an order for CS3 for Mac. I can finally upgrade from Flash MX -- how exciting is that?

Oh, and John? It would appear I'm ready to go fishing.