Upgrading to 64-bit

[Spy Guy]

Hi all,

 

To start out, I have the following:

 

• Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz
  
• 4 GB of RAM (type unknown)
  
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 (2 GB)
  
• Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit) (booo! Hiss! :mad:)
  

I'm now considering an upgrade to Windows 7, 64-bit and to get 16 GB of RAM (Corsair Dominator GT Quad 16GB).

 

Now, with the processor and the mobo, it's probably going to get pretty severely bottlenecked, but I think I can salvage the RAM when I inevitably decide to take the plunge and make a complete upgrade.

 

The question is, would this be worth doing at all?

I'm expecting a slight performance increase just from firing Vista, but would I be able to run a 64-bit OS on my current processor?

 

Thanks in advance for any help you might give me. :)

[Hamblue]

I would save the money for the next rig.

Your ram is probably DDR2. For a future rig you will probably be running DDR3 or higher, which won't be compatible.

Going to 64 bit will allow you to use the entire 4 gig. Right now you're only using about 3 to 3.5 depending on your video card ram size.

[cichlidfan]

Win7-64 should run just fine. I had it on a Core 2 Duo @2.6 (I think) and it was just fine. I agree it is probably not worth upgrading memory just wait to do the whole bit.

 

EDIT: Actually, it should run better than fine. It should be enough of an improvement to be noticeable, perhaps not everywhere but you should see a marked improvement overall.

Edited June 8, 2012 by cichlidfan

[Spy Guy]

Thank you both for that :thumbup:

 

Going to do the swap to Windows 7 then, as it feels like the best upgrade for me right now.

RAM can wait until it's time to build a new box. ;)

[G00dnight]

I am running win 7 64 on a quad core 2.50 intel and it was a deffo improvement over vista, you might consider a ssd drive instead of more ram, although it wont make much diff to your dcs it will speed up the op sys.

[Pikey]

Win7 64 from XP 32 was the best performance upgrade I had for DCS, even before the memory 2-->4GB which was huge too. That was on an AMD phenom 2, 3.1GHz