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The upgrade is finally complete and I'm running 64 bit Vista on my new monster desktop system :) I had some problems getting to grips with the OS to start with and ended up reinstalling 8 times before I had something I was completely happy with. Unfortunately there are still a large number of incompatibilities between the new OS and the programs I had running previously in XP. These are slowly being resolved as new versions of the applications are released which are Vista compatible, and there are workarounds for others, but it will be a while before the machine is back to the same level of functionality that it used to have. Having said that I am pleased to have had a fresh start, as there were a couple of lingering problems in the old install that I had failed to fix which were annoying me. The XP install was over 4 years old, having been installed on 18/12/2002! Actually, one of my servers will very soon surpass that age, with an install date of 03/01/2003.

I haven't done a lot of benchmarking yet (partly because half of the benchmarking apps I have don't work on 64 bit Vista). But some of the graphics benchmarks I tried include:

- 3D Mark 05: New machine gets over 15k at stock speeds, no tweaking. Old system got just over 4k. Laptop gets 610.
- Half-Life 2 video stress test: Averages 207 fps at max details, 1600x1200 resolution (but with FSAA turned off - little point at that resolution). Not sure what the old system used to get but I expect it was about 50 fps at 1024 x 768!
- UT2004: Not a benchmark as such, but when just playing some multiplayer games at 1600x1200 with max details the frame rate is pegged at 100! I really noticed the difference in playability here, it was a lot easier to mow down the bots than it ever had been before.

I did mean to post some photos, but I haven't done so yet. I took loads of them - it's just a matter of getting round to sorting out the best ones and uploading them. I'll do it when I can be bothered!

I guess the most irritating aspect of compatibility problems is the fact that a bunch of hardware components don't work. Most notably my TV tuner card, but also scanner, webcam, wifi card (not that I'd need that though), remote control for sound card, and some bluetooth stuff.

Also two of my other machines were to receive upgrades passed down from this desktop machine, but neither of those work at the moment. In one case I think the PSU is not powerful enough. But I'm not sure about the other. It keeps blue-screening windows and sometimes failing to even reach the stage of running the bootloader. Perhaps it is overheating, as the XP3200+ was always a hot chip and it has now had a serious downgrade in system case which is possibly lacking in airflow. 

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