gaurav Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 [ali g voice over]RESPECT! [/ali g voice over] I have this rather old laptop, with a dying Windows XP SP2 installation on it. Its spec is as follows: Pentium M 1.6GHz 512MB RAM ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 Since its reformatting time, I was wondering whether I should just stick with a clean WinXP SP3 install or leap ahead and jump on the Win7 bandwagon? I am a sucker for nice neat eye-candy that Vista/7 offer, but unsure if this machine will be able to take it smoothly. I did some research and several peeps confirmed that 7 can run properly on older PCs, maybe even as good as XP, but I still wanted your helps... So what do you think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max Veteran Posted June 13, 2009 Veteran Share Posted June 13, 2009 Windows 7. It runs like a dream on older hardware. I tried it on a system much older and was suprised at the results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
9UnknownMen Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 How big is your HDD? You can always partition a lil chunk to try out 7 and decide for yourself. IMO, 7 will run just fine on those specs even though it wouldn't hurt to add some memory or use readyboost via USB. I have it running on an old dell with similar specs but no discrete video and it works as well as XP. Oh yeah..."RESTECP!". ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hdood Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 No. It will run like ****, and you won't be able to use Aero on it anyway (what you wanted). Keep XP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gaurav Posted June 13, 2009 Author Share Posted June 13, 2009 The HD is 40GB, not enough to make another partition and try it out. I won't be adding memory as it costs a lot over here. Readyboost sounds kinda neat, but the downside is that its got only 2 USB ports, 1 for mouse and the other used by 1 external HD...nothing left to stick that stick in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pupik Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 If you're reformatting, then I'd try the Win 7 RC and if the performance is not to your liking, jump back to clean XP install. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAID 0 Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Windows 7. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camlann Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Windows 7 I installed Win7 a few weeks ago on nearly the same hardware and it runs smooth :) Pentium M 1.6GHz 1024MB RAM ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hdood Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Seriously, some of you guys are either insane or you've never tried Windows 7 on a non-Aero capable machine with only 512MB RAM. It's utterly pointless. Performance sucks, and he won't get any of the eye candy (the one thing he wanted). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pulgafree Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 If the laptop is going to be used as a NetBook, W7 FTW! The only downside is your old hard drive (slow loading) and not much ram (not hardcore programs allowed). But i have been testing on a laptop with 1.3 ghz with 1 gig of ram, 40 gb and ati m200 and the system responds really really well. Have a nice try. PS: Testing 7201 here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ViperAFK Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Try out the rc and see if it performs well enough for you, if not install xp. You will not be able to use the 'eye candy' (aero) with that video card though. Win Win. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonhapimp Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Seriously, some of you guys are either insane or you've never tried Windows 7 on a non-Aero capable machine with only 512MB RAM. It's utterly pointless. Performance sucks, and he won't get any of the eye candy (the one thing he wanted). you've never tried wins 7 on an non aero machine with 512mb ram, it runs better than xp and it still looks better than xp. the performance doesn't suck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aero_Rising Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 I would give it a go. I'm looking to try it on my old desktop when I get a chance that one has 1ghz p3 512 mb ram and some extremely old ati card. It has pretty much the minimum so we'll see how good it runs on ms' minimum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hdood Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 (edited) I have dell dimension 2.0ghz P4 on 512 MB ram and no discrete video and it as fast as XP and boots just as quick. Really? It's faster than XP by what measure? And memory is just as important, because 7 uses a fair chunk of it meaning there is less available for buffering and less available for application use before having to page out to disk. To illustrate this, on a system with 512MB here, XP is eating up 84MB, while 7 uses 250MB. We are not talking about being able to boot up 7 and stare at the desktop and maybe browse a folder, we are talking about an actual usable system. Edited June 13, 2009 by hdood Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hdood Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Your post made no sense. Can you try again in English? The processor was just an example of something more extreme I've also tried it on. That's why it says ", and I have even.." How is using three times as much memory as XP on a machine that already has very little of it "better"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hdood Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Huh? What on earth are you talking about? I haven't said anything about processors, I think you must be confused. I mentioned a P3 as an example of something else I've run 7 on, and I said "that hardware" in another post (#13) in reference to the hardware described in the post I quoted (#12, yours). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NEVER85 Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Stick with XP. Windows 7 may run better on lower-end hardware than Vista but with 512 MB RAM? That's too low for my liking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hdood Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Huh? I haven't been talking about anything other than memory, except an example of the most low-end system I've tried 7 on. I don't know if you noticed, but the sentence has two parts, separated by a comma. I have no idea what you're trying to argue about, so I'm just going to leave it at that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omen1393 Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Calm down? You're cursing a ton over whether or not somebody's opinion on Windows 7 being faster than XP is right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hdood Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Yes, you're full of stars for claiming that 7 runs better with 512MB than XP does. That is an outright lie. How is using three times as much RAM on a system that barely has any, "running better?" As for the speed of the OS on that configuration, can you provide any actual benchmarks to show that it's better than XP? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonhapimp Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Yes, you're full of stars for claiming that 7 runs better with 512MB than XP does. That is an outright lie. How is using three times as much RAM on a system that barely has any, "running better?" As for the speed of the OS on that configuration, can you provide any actual benchmarks to show that it's better than XP? just because it's using the ram doesn't mean it's faster, maybe it's slower on your system but it's faster on mine, since it's my system you think i would be able to tell, i even have to same specs as the op(except for the video card) and my system starts up in 40 secs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Udedenkz Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Old Computers are build for older systems. Older system require LESS resources and thus MORE resources are available for software. Your CPU is rather weak. I don't even think that is a dual core. Do not expect great performance from W7 with something like that. You have half the required RAM. Your Page File will be used more with 7 as you will have less RAM for programs. You GPU is rather weak, it might not work well with the fancy effects. Just take a look at MINIMUM system requirements for Windows 7. It will run, but it will run like HL2 runs on 800Mhz CPU. Buy a new computer and install W7 on it, but not your current one. Also, you posted this in the W7 section - therefore W7 fanboys - therefore your poll is futile. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hdood Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 just because it's using the ram doesn't mean it's faster, maybe it's slower on your system but it's faster on mine, since it's my system you think i would be able to tell Can you back it up with any evidence? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonhapimp Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Can you back it up with any evidence? what do you want to come to my house and see it for yourself, the system does not use that much ram i don't see "3 times the ram" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hdood Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Uh, no, I want the results of whatever you're using to compare the performance of the two, not a screenshot of the processes running as your user (which aren't even all the processes running on the system). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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