Do I need Windows 7 Ultimate?

[badguise]

A friend told me that in order to take full advantage of hyper threading with the i7, I need Windows 7 Ultimate. Is this true? I can't find any information about it online and would much rather save the $200.

Thanks! Any info is greatly appreciated.

 

[jaguarskx]

Not that I am aware of.

Also, programs can only take advantage of hyper threading if they have been designed to use it.

 

[COLGeek]

A friend told me that in order to take full advantage of hyper threading with the i7, I need Windows 7 Ultimate. Is this true? I can't find any information about it online and would much rather save the $200.

Thanks! Any info is greatly appreciated.

This is not true and the ability to support HT is more dependent on the applications more than anything else. All flavors of Win 7 support HT.

 

[bwrlane]

Nonsense. The edition of Windows that you use has nothing to do with your ability to use hyperthreading.

In my opinion there is little benefit of any edition of Windows 7 above Home Premium. I have four computers that run Windows 7. One of them runs Home Premium, one runs Ultimate and the other two both run Professional. I'm not sure I ever notice the difference between them.

 

[badguise]

Thanks -

As a video editor/animator using Adobe CS5 and some 3D software, is there any perk to using 7 Ultimate? I don't care about Language Packs or BitLocker, but the option to have more than 16GB of RAM may come in handy at some point.

Other than that, I can't justify spending the extra dough..

 

[bwrlane]

I run CS5 with 8GB. I believe the most intensive apps are After Effects and Premier Pro. I understand that video rendering will use as much memory as you can throw at it. It's certainly true that it benefits from 8GB but I've never seen memory fully utilised, so would be surprised if more than 16GB were any benefit at all.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

I run a XEON W3520 with HT on Windows 7 Pro.That statement isn't true.

 

[Corning]

I usually recommend Home or Pro, if you want to run some old programs Professional will run them where Home will not. Old like Bardstail “ZZGO”

IMO Ultimate is a whole lot of extra stuff that I'll never utilize, that will slow down my computer.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Plus 1 ^

 

[badguise]

You guys rule. I won't 'Select the Best Answer' because they're all pretty damn helpful.

On a side note - Any recommendations for a workstation laptop that won't break the bank? I'm looking at the Sager NP8130 with an i7-2670, GTX 560M and 16GB RAM (only $15 more than 12GB - why not?) The laptop will be used for mobile video editing and animation via Adobe CS5.

I'm about to buy it unless someone tells me otherwise!

Thanks.

 

[COLGeek]

You guys rule. I won't 'Select the Best Answer' because they're all pretty damn helpful.

On a side note - Any recommendations for a workstation laptop that won't break the bank? I'm looking at the Sager NP8130 with an i7-2670, GTX 560M and 16GB RAM (only $15 more than 12GB - why not?) The laptop will be used for mobile video editing and animation via Adobe CS5.

I'm about to buy it unless someone tells me otherwise!

Thanks.

Nice rig. You should also take a look at the Dell Precision Mobile workstations as a point of comparison.

 

[badguise]

Right on. A lot of the workstation laptops offer the Quadro video cards, which is great, but a bit too expensive for me right now (I have a Quadro in my main editing machine, so I can rely on that for the serious projects.) Additional hard drives are a nice bonus too, but I think for my budget the Sager will do well.

Thanks to all!

 

[CaedenV]

Just an added note to what was said:
Home is fine for 99% of things with 2 exceptions:

1) Pro is required to be added to a Domain, so if you are on a professional network then go Pro

2) Pro has much better support for compatibility mode which supports old dated crappy software. So if you are reliant on software that requires win95 or something crazy like that then Pro is the way to go again.

The only other reason to go Pro is because it supports more system memory... but the limit is something crazy like 192GB of ram which most of us wont need until win16 and bloatware threatens the existence of humanity.

Ultimate edition was supposed to have some fun extra Power Toy software that was to be released at a later date... but I think it fell through so it is just a glorified version of win7Pro with Media Center tacked on to it (which nobody uses except for my wife).

 

[CaedenV]

Right on. A lot of the workstation laptops offer the Quadro video cards, which is great, but a bit too expensive for me right now (I have a Quadro in my main editing machine, so I can rely on that for the serious projects.) Additional hard drives are a nice bonus too, but I think for my budget the Sager will do well.

Thanks to all!

Ya, you can do a lot with 'civilian' hardware. Adobe is great in that respect. But as you know from your desktop, the pro hardware really helps a lot!

 

[badguise]

Yep! And with a little tweaking, the GTX 560M can utilize the Mercury Playback Engine in Premiere Pro. Not too shabby..