Windows 7

[Paladin]

I'm finally making the leap to Windows 7. New, blank 1TB drive is in and awaiting tomorrow's delivery of Windows 7 Home Premium (full, non-oem version). I'm planning to install the 64-bit version. Any reason why not to? I've looked, and it seems like most games from the past 5 years or so will run on 64-bit, and I'm keeping my XP drive to dual-boot for a while, in case I need it.

System:
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L (rev. 1) motherboard
Intel E8400 Core2Duo (3Ghz)
2x 1GB OCZ memory
XFX Radeon 4870 (1 GB)
Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black
Western Digital 500GB Caviar Green (XP drive)
Sound Blaster Audigy something....
2 assorted DVD+/-RW & a DVD-ROM drive
20-in-1 memory card reader
Raidmax Hyper2 530W Power Supply

I know there's a benefit to going to 4GB, however, given the 2 year old age of the motherboard, there's nothing in the way of currently available memory products on the certified memory list - and I'm leary of dropping $60-70 on 2GB which may or may not work with what I have or $125 on a 4GB kit which has the same issue.

Is there a big enough performance hit with using only 2GB that I NEED to go to 4, especially with the 64-bit version?

[Creole Ned]

You should be okay with 2GB but I've never run Win7 on less than 4, so I couldn't say for sure. When I first got Vista I only had 2GB and it didn't perform poorly and Win7 is, if anything, more efficient than Vista was, performance-wise.

And the 64-bit version is the way to go, especially if you move on to a system with 4GB or more. Compatibility problems are few and far between now.

BTW, I still have 2GB of ram left over from when I made the jump to 4GB. It's Corsair 800MHz (2 1 GB sticks). If you can use it, let me know.

[Tai]

There is no advantage to using the 64 bit version UNLESS you go to more than 3 gig, right? I know 7 is supposed to be more efficient, but I'm looking at my vista box right now and it is using 53% of my 4 GB RAM with just steam running and one firefox window. (which I admit seems rather extreme).

[armerius]

i'm running 7 Ultimate x64 with 8 gigs of ram and it screams. fantastic OS. It's Vista, only actually good. I refused to go to Vista on my desktop based on how much I hated it on Lisa's laptop.

The move to 7 was fantastic.

[Creole Ned]

Windows 7 (and any version of Windows, really) will always expand on how much ram it uses for caching as you add more ram. It can run on as little as 1GB.

[Tai]

Windows 7 (and any version of Windows, really) will always expand on how much ram it uses for caching as you add more ram. It can run on as little as 1GB.

makes sense.

[Paladin]

OS is installed and patched. So far, so good. Seems fairly zippy.

[Paladin]

Almost a week with Windows 7. For the most part, I like the new OS. I have had a few issues. The biggest was that by moving my Steam folder, none of games got shortcuts in the Games Explorer. However, I wrote to MaximumPC magazine (hoping they would print my question and an answer in some future issue). That was Friday night. Today I got an e-mail from one of the editors with info on how to manually add links. Fast, and helpful. I love that mag.

Let me know if anyone wants the info.

I'm still moving old stuff over from my XP drive, but so far, everything I've tried to run on the 64-bit version has worked fine. I haven't tried anything particularly old. Mass Effect 2, TF2 and Left4Dead 1 & 2 all run great. In fact, Left4Dead 1 & 2 are actually better than they were with XP, where I was suffering from a multi-second freeze with audio loop at least once per level. Still running just 2GB, but that may change with Newegg's Thursday afternoon deal (4GB OCZ DDR2 1066Mhz ... currently $99 after rebate, deal will be less). Looks like it matches the timings of the OCZ ram I'm currently running, so I may pick it up if the deal is good enough.

Anyway, other than Shattered Horizon (or whatever it's called), what shows off DirectX 10?

[Creole Ned]

List of DirectX 10 games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_10_support)

I can vouch for Far Cry 2, Age of Conan and LOTRO being very purdy in DX10 mode. FC2 and Conan still look very nice in DX9 mode, however.

[samuelk]

Left4Dead 1 & 2 are actually better than they were with XP, where I was suffering from a multi-second freeze with audio loop at least once per leve

That can usually be fixed in XP by turning off Multicore Rendering in the advanced display options.

Not that it matters for you now. :)

[Paladin]

I'd already done that, Sam. It helped, but didn't solve the problem.

As an aside, Newegg's Shell Shocker memory deal turned out to only be another $10 off. Not nearly enough of a discount for me to get memory that I don't really seem to be hurting by not having.

[Tai]

I picked up one of those 1TB newegg drives and am quite happy so far. (which means nothing other than I now have 900 gigs free and saw a 30 MB/sec transfer rate).

More room for p[pictures and movies yay.