So when is Vista available for "enthusiasts"?

[Houston Haynes]

Much hay has been made that Vista will not be available to large OEMs until after the first of the year. Is there a different time-frame for general release of Vista OS as its own product?

Quite frankly, I could care less whether Dell or Gateway can put Vista in a toaster box - I've built my own system from the ground up, and want to put the Vista upgrade on it. (OK, I know I can put the beta on now, but I'm waiting for the x64 drivers to arrive for my sound device). If anyone has info on when and whether the "full retail" versions of Vista (and their upgrade distros) will be available, I'd greatly appreciate it.

TIA,

[Haydn]

Hi Houston,

It doesn't look like it will be ready until next year. February was the latest I heard for the 32 bit version. Unfortunately, the development of the x64 version is dragging behind and I don't think it will be released until after the 32 bit version is out.

I've been looking at the x64 version myself. Most of the drivers are now available for my equipment. Sonar is already x64 and seems to be working well from reading the forums.

Jim

[Houston Haynes]

Why the rush? What will you run on the system?

I could tell ya - but then... you know...

Also, as has been previously discussed here, building a Vista ready computer is not going to be as easy as it's been in the past.

I've run the Vista upgrade advisor, and my machine passes with flying colors, for what it's worth. When I upgraded my system earlier this year, I intentionally chose components that would support running Vista, so I feel like I'm on solid ground, except for waiting on the formal release of my FW-1884 drivers.

Anyway, it's of small consequence, since I'll likely go with one of the later RC beta distributions and run with it. I had read in earlier reports that while the OEM release of Vista was delayed, that MS still had plans to release the retail version (and upgrades) late this year. That may well have changed by now.

[Pat Azzarello]

The retail and OEM releases happen on the same day. I don't have the exact date (I suppose I should, but...). There will be much hoopla around this (as there was for previous versions like Win95, WinXP, etc.).

[fizbin]

Why the rush? What will you run on the system?

Also, as has been previously discussed here, building a Vista ready computer is not going to be as easy as it's been in the past.

Lee Blaske

Say you've got 4GB RAM, not even more than Windows 32 bit can address. However, in Windows 32 bit (even with the /3GB boot switch) you will only be able to address about 3GB or so out of that 4GB because the hardware address spaces will impinge upon that 4GB total. With x64 bit Windows you will be able to address that entire 4GB of RAM, even with your 32 bit applications because your hardware address spaces will not impinge significantly upon the total address space.

In short, on sample machines with 4GB RAM you'll get to load about 1GB more samples, or maybe 3.5+GB total samples out of the 4GB instead of about 2.7GB max on a 32 bit OS.

fizbin

Disclaimer: When I quote gigabytes I should mention that the host and plugins are going to take up a portion of that space, so it is not really all going to loading the samples.

[Richard Berg]

Sorry fizbin, that's wrong on several accounts.

32-bit versions of Windows NT, 2000, XP RTM, and 2003 have no problems with 4GB machines, even if hardware address translation puts some of the free space above the 4GB barrier. Capping physical addresses at 4GB was only introduced as part of the memory protection changes in XP SP2, due to AppCompat (poorly written drivers that don't handle PAE correctly). I believe 32-bit Vista also has this limitation. Thus: use Windows 2000 or 2003 if you need 4GB+ support on 32-bit hardware.

The /3GB switch regulates the way Windows partitions virtual memory into application and kernel segments. It has nothing to do with physical memory.

DAW hosts, plugins, and samples all exist in VM. They will be limited to 2GB (or 3GB with the above switch) per process. That means (a) you can't load more than 2GB (3GB) into a sampler unless it's done out-of-process; however, (b) the memory taken up by your DAW, that of your sampler, etc. don't count toward the same limits. There is no limit on total VM assuming your pagefile is big enough.

[Haydn]

You definitely do not want to be use Virtual Memory with samples. They need to be loaded into physical memory or you will get stuttering, pops, etc as the samples are pulled from the Virtual Memory paging file. This is why programs such as Kontakt have a lock to not use virtual memory.

Jim

[Richard Berg]

You're confusing virtual memory with nonpageable memory. All memory seen by user-mode applications is virtual. Programs like Kontakt have no access to the physical address space. They can mark some pages (sections of virtual memory) from their working set as nonpageable using VirtualLock() or AllocateUserPhysicalPages() but both are error prone...I doubt Kontakt uses them.

[howardv]

Hey, Houston. Not sure if you're aware but this is now out:

http://www.tascam.com/Products/FW-18...stall_1_50.exe

Howard