Win 7 64, Too Much Awesome?

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Deeky

Gawd
Joined
Feb 7, 2008
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Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM is currently $99 on NCIX, I was thinking I'd pick it up for my work PC (still on Vista and starting to sloooooow down). The thing is, the work PC isn't high end by any stretch: Celeron dual core processor, 2gb value ram, onboard video and sound. Would Win 7 64 cause problems, would I be better off waiting for 32-bit to go on sale? I'm not sure how a 64-bit OS would function on such low end hardware. Thanks!
 
There is little, if any, performance difference between the 32 and 64-bit variants. Also, the activation keys are interchangeable between the 32 and 64-bit variants, you just need to find a 32-bit 7 Home Premium DVD to install with.

Normally I'd also say that there isn't much difference between Vista and 7 either, but it does seem to run a tad better on low end machines. If you feel like upgrading then its probably worthwhile to go ahead and do it.
 
I moved from Vista to 7 at home and I definitely prefer 7 for a number of reasons I won't get into - a lot of small things that add up to a more enjoyable experience. Also, it's nice to have the same OS between work and home, especially for my wife (who works with me). Less confusing when I try to talk her through PC related shenanigans over the phone. =)

Thanks for the input!

EDIT: The one thing I'm not sure about is the processor. Does 64-bit Windows require a 64-bit CPU? I'm pretty sure it does. I'd be surprised if the cruddy Celeron is 64-bit (I can't recall the model number). I'll have to look into it on Monday ...
 
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Deeky said:
EDIT: The one thing I'm not sure about is the processor. Does 64-bit Windows require a 64-bit CPU? I'm pretty sure it does. I'd be surprised if the cruddy Celeron is 64-bit (I can't recall the model number). I'll have to look into it on Monday ...
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Yes, the CPU has to have the 64-bit instruction set. I believe the socket 775 dual-core Celerons have it.

You can check with CPU-Z. Download the 32-Bit no install version, unzip, and run the app. If EM64T is listed in the "Instructions" box on the CPU tab you're good to go.
 
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Deeky said:
I moved from Vista to 7 at home and I definitely prefer 7 for a number of reasons I won't get into - a lot of small things that add up to a more enjoyable experience. Also, it's nice to have the same OS between work and home, especially for my wife (who works with me). Less confusing when I try to talk her through PC related shenanigans over the phone. =)

Thanks for the input!

EDIT: The one thing I'm not sure about is the processor. Does 64-bit Windows require a 64-bit CPU? I'm pretty sure it does. I'd be surprised if the cruddy Celeron is 64-bit (I can't recall the model number). I'll have to look into it on Monday ...
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Yes, Windows 7 x64 requires that your CPU have x64 support. If it does, then by all means, get x64. I ran Vista x64 on an old Athlon 64X2 3800 with 2GB or DDR400 with no issues. Add in the fact that 7 performs much better than Vista on lower-end hardware, you should be golden.
 
Perfect! I'll check it out ASAP. The work machine was a boring, inexpensive email/wordprocessing/browsing rig I had built by a third party, so I'm downright ignorant when it comes to the components. It wasn't that long ago, I'm hoping the CPU offers 64-bit architecture. Thanks all.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
Add in the fact that 7 performs much better than Vista on lower-end hardware, you should be golden.
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"Much better" is a bit of a stretch. It's not so much that 7 runs better on low end hardware, it runs better on systems with 1GB or less RAM. The OP will see better boot and shutdown times on the Celeron machine, but applications aren't going to run any faster than they would with a clean install of Vista.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
"Much better" is a bit of a stretch. It's not so much that 7 runs better on low end hardware, it runs better on systems with 1GB or less RAM. The OP will see better boot and shutdown times on the Celeron machine, but applications aren't going to run any faster than they would with a clean install of Vista.
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As I've never tried 7 on my lower-end computer, I'm just going off of reports from other users. There have been reports from people who went from Vista to 7 on netbooks, and the general consensus is that the user experience of 7 is "much better". When I use that term, I'm talking about the general OS behavior, and not specific programs. One thing that I've noticed is that even on high-end rigs, 7's GUI seems to be more responsive and fluid. It's very subjective, but a lot of people think the same.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
It's very subjective, but a lot of people think the same.
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Right, and a lot of people still believe that Vista was crap even though just about every synthetic and real-world benchmark shows Vista with SP1 was even with or faster than XP.

A lot of reviewers point to the fact that 7 beats Vista in the synthetic productivity benchmarks like PC Mark and Sysmark as evidence of a smoother user experience. I'm sure that's true to an extent, but Vista wins over XP on those tests by an even larger margin and there isn't much (if any) perceivable real-world difference there either.

It's not that I think 7 is a bad OS or anything (other than some minor things like UAC not being fully activated by default), I just can't stand all the FUD about Vista's performance that's still floating around. Vista was a great OS, 7 builds on it. Just don't expect to see huge performance gains.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Right, and a lot of people still believe that Vista was crap even though just about every synthetic and real-world benchmark shows Vista with SP1 was even with or faster than XP.

A lot of reviewers point to the fact that 7 beats Vista in the synthetic productivity benchmarks like PC Mark and Sysmark as evidence of a smoother user experience. I'm sure that's true to an extent, but Vista wins over XP on those tests by an even larger margin and there isn't much (if any) perceivable real-world difference there either.

It's not that I think 7 is a bad OS or anything (other than some minor things like UAC not being fully activated by default), I just can't stand all the FUD about Vista's performance that's still floating around. Vista was a great OS, 7 builds on it. Just don't expect to see huge performance gains.
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All of the Vista-being-faster-than-XP stuff is moot because of all of Vista's quirky issues, like not copying files, randomly rebooting, hogging ALL the system's memory, etc. It was simply a flawed OS that was only a good thing because it spawned a lot of the great ideas we now see in Win7 (but thankfully improved).
 
DeathFromBelow said:
It's not that I think 7 is a bad OS or anything (other than some minor things like UAC not being fully activated by default), I just can't stand all the FUD about Vista's performance that's still floating around. Vista was a great OS, 7 builds on it. Just don't expect to see huge performance gains.
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Hear hear. I've not run either on a low-end system so I don't deny that there might be improvements there, but I've run Vista and 7 on this system and not only is any performance difference undetectable but generally using the operating system is on par with Vista for me. (I also reactivated full UAC.)

Vista was a good OS, though had some issues with poor third-party driver support at launch, and 7 is a good OS which avoided those problems by being on the same driver model. Most people haven't seen the problems associated with a major Windows platform change in a long time, especially since XP didn't need much in the way of new drivers over Windows 2000, which wasn't widely deployed as a home OS. Can't understand the popular hatred for Vista and love for 7 when they're so similar to me.
 
4x4not said:
All of the Vista-being-faster-than-XP stuff is moot because of all of Vista's quirky issues, like not copying files, randomly rebooting, hogging ALL the system's memory, etc. It was simply a flawed OS that was only a good thing because it spawned a lot of the great ideas we now see in Win7 (but thankfully improved).
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Vista main problems was before SP1 came out, but like you state it's a moot point. However, a lot Vista's bad image came from people who never used it, but heard it from people who were having problems, so took their word that it was so. Windows 7 also had the advantage of new computer hardware being out on the market, drivers that were develop for Vista can be used with Win 7 and software developers finally getting the message that they better develop their software for the newer OS. Vista had the disadvantage of being introduced when the computer technology was just starting to get there(by that I mean there were a lot of older computers still being used), Hardware and Software developers were playing catch-up, and Software developers dragging their feet in developing software for Vista. Of course not all of the fault is 3rd Party Developers, a lot of the blame can go to Microsoft too, for they took too long (in my opinion) getting Vista to the market, didn't really care if older computer hardware was or wasn't compatible with Vista, and really kept lid tight on Vista architecture from 3rd Party Developers in my opinion.
With that said, I think Microsoft did a good job rolling out Windows 7, for they didn't take too long in getting it to the market, they had the good fortune that computer hardware was finally matching the capabilities to the OS, and they seem to have better communication with software/hardware developers with Win7. The only thing I would like to see Microsoft do is instead of calling the service packs SP1 they would just rename it to Windows 7.1. I also would like to see them bring out Windows 8 in a timely fashion and with improvements that merit upgrading to Windows 8.

So if your cpu can handle the 64-bit OS version, I would definitely go that route.
 
4x4not said:
All of the Vista-being-faster-than-XP stuff is moot because of all of Vista's quirky issues, like not copying files, randomly rebooting, hogging ALL the system's memory, etc.
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This is the sort of FUD I was talking about. Not copying files and randomly rebooting is a sign of a hardware problem, not a "quirk" in the OS. The memory thing is FUD that has been around since Vista launched.

When you use XP most of your RAM sits unused until you launch an application. Microsoft added a feature in Vista called superfetch. It cachces frequently used applications into RAM, this is why Vista blows XP away on the synthetic benchmarks like PC Mark and Sysmark. It's not "hogging" your RAM, its putting it to work. If another application needs the RAM in use by superfetch it simply releases it to whatever needs it.

7 improves on Vista's memory management, but if you check the task manager you can see that it still uses a ton of RAM for superfetch if it can. The actual memory footprint for Vista/7 is pretty small, not a whole lot larger than XP.
 
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