Is this configuration OK for Win 7 Ultimate 64 Bit ?

D

DCEite

Disciple
I have a Desktop with

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86 Ghz,

1 GB RAM (512*2)

250 GB Hitachi HDD,

MSI GeForce 8400 GS 512 MB GFX card

Dell 19 inch widescreen monitor (EW198wfp).

I wanted to upgrade to to Win 7 64 Bit Ultimate . Is my configuration sufficient ? Will it be atleast as fast as Win XP SP2 which i am currently running ?
 
Its fine.

I dunno about the graphic card.

You could do with another GB of RAM, in fact, you need to have that. 1GB won't be okay.

Basically your system should be okay with the 32 bit version. For the 64 bit version I recommend an upgrade.
 
The problem is that i have 2 sticks of Kingston 667MHz DDR II RAM 512 MB. I don't think this particular model is easily available ? Or should i just settle with 32 Bit ? How much of a performance difference it will be (64 bit 2 GB v/s 32 bit 1 GB) ?
 
DCEite said:
The problem is that i have 2 sticks of Kingston 667MHz DDR II RAM 512 MB. I don't think this particular model is easily available ? Or should i just settle with 32 Bit ? How much of a performance difference it will be (64 bit 2 GB v/s 32 bit 1 GB) ?
Click to expand...

much difference. better stick with 32bit win 7
 
in 64bit OSs applications demand more power and memory. however 2gb ram should suffice. so better make a wise decision because win7 is a costly OS.
 
Update: Upgraded to Win7 ultimate 32 Bit with 2 GB RAM.

The system works like a charm, graduating from WinXP to Win7 feels like upgrading from Alto to Honda Civic :D.
 
jojothedragon said:
in 64bit OSs applications demand more power and memory. however 2gb ram should suffice. so better make a wise decision because win7 is a costly OS.
Click to expand...
This claim is not correct, not for power. And for Memory it is like 64 bit application can have much more virtual memory available than 32 bit apps. Which does not mean that your memory/RAM requirement is huge under 64 bit OS.

In Win7, IMHO, 1 GB is OK, 2 GB is good, depending upon your application/games, try playing GTA IV on 2 GB Ram and its a lost battle. But than you never said that, so for generic Win7 operation I believe 2 Gb will do. I do not see any positive in trying 64 bit if your RAM is < 4 GB. In fact with WOW layer things may slow down a bit (not noticeable though).

I am a bit greedy, when It comes to RAM, check my signature for details.

Good luck with your Civic. :)
 
32 bit OS does not let applications utilize more than 2GB of RAM. So, the memory hungry applications like audio and video encoding, complex engineering programs like CAD and games have to resort to using the hard disk ( Virtual memory) which IIRC is around 1000 times slower.

For this to happen, the application has to be optimized so that it takes advantage of the different architecture. Thus, there are 2 version of most apps these days. 32 bit and 64 bit. However, for our basic uses we will never know the difference.

Good decision to upgrade the RAM. Easiest way to get a noticeable performance difference. :)
 
>>32 bit OS does not let applications utilize more than 2GB of RAM. So, the memory hungry applications like audio and video encoding, complex engineering programs like CAD and games have to resort to using the hard disk ( Virtual memory) which IIRC is around 1000 times slower.

I did not get this. looks like you mixed two thing. :)

let me try, my bit

In 32 bit OS, user mode address space per process is 2Gb (with the exception of boot.ini switch, which can make it 3 Gb for large address aware applications), Now this means that no matter what hardware capacity you have, OS will not allow more than 2 Gb to an application.

Next once in protective mode, all application sees is a virtual address(They never access physical address directly), whether that address is in RAM or page-file(in which case it will bring back to memory) is decided by Memory Manager. Obviously it has to use page file as there is no guaranty that at a given time there will be enough RAM to satisfy all application requirement.

Now 64 bit lift this restriction of 2 GB address space, but even if your system has 8 Gb or more RAM, there is still no guarantee that there is enough RAM for all running application, so it has to *use* page file. you can disable it; in which case once all RAM is exhausted, it will fail memory request, and poorly written application will start crashing. Which we obviously do not want, So page file/virtual memory is involved, be it 32 bit or 64 bit.

64 bit OS will show benefit, provided that there is enough RAM to accommodate memory requirement, in this case requirement to page data in/out of the page file will decrease and hence system will not have to wait for HDD to complete its read/write. Which eventually makes it faster.

It has nothing to do with big user mode address space in 64 bit though, With little RAM they are same as 32 bit version of OS. The benefit will majorly be seen in application which cache lots of memory, like data bases, now they can safely allocate a big chunk and use, which was not possible at all in 32 bit because of the obvious restriction.

Check this for more details. Does No Swap File Equal Better Performance? : Vista Workshop: More RAM, More Speed
 
^ Hmm, I was trying to say the same actually. If you have 8 gigs of RAM and a 32 bit OS, your apps will never see or be able to use the extra 6 gigs right? So, they will be using the Virtual Memory. You cannot even think of lowering or disabling the page file since your system is going to run out of memory for sure.

On the other hand, if you have a 64 bit OS, you can lower the page file and be sure that your RAM is going to be able to handle the extra load too. I know an app doesn't know whether it is using the RAM or the HDD. I also know about the Memory manager part. It is an abstraction for the app.

2GB of RAM will not make a difference, be it a 32 bit OS or a 64 bit OS. That is fairly obvious! :)

The databases you are referring to ( I'm assuming you are talking about SQL Server, MySQL etc ) also have options wherein you can lower the memory they reserve ( I've done tweaking on our SQL server. Brought the memory usage down from 17GB to 3.5GB ). That's beyond the point though, since a normal user never has to worry about these things.

A good explanation nonetheless! Good job! :)
 
I think its nomenclature difference than which made me think something different, We use Virtual memory for virtual address, which can not be disabled in protective mode where as you used it as page file. Obviously its MS to blame for this as we both got it from them. :)

>>On the other hand, if you have a 64 bit OS, you can lower the page file and be sure that your RAM is going to be able to handle the extra load too

True, but I think this is just temporary phase, sooner or later, when 64 bit applications will start consuming loads of memory, page file will again become a necessity. Though as if now we can get rid of these slow disk IOs.

On additional note, even if you disable page file,

1) your binaries i.e. exe/dlls are still paged. As you may already know, code/read only section of exe/dll are backed by their on disk file and not by page file, So disabling page file does not disable it for all.

2) Apps will still access memory using virtual address.
 
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