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Windows 7 x32 SP1 on old Single Core computers
Contrary to popular recommendations about Windows 7 and what everyone is saying.
I am running an Athlon Barton CPU at 3200+ Speed, 2 GB of DDR2, and I have successfully been using Windows 7 x32 on this single core system to do almost everything I need to do.
Basic document editing
Web Surfing
Flash at 720p
H264/x264 L4.1 video playback at 720p with CoreAVC and MPC-HC
Music Playback --> Dual Analog Output, 1 to AVR and 1 to PC Speaker system Simultaneously
The only thing that is not possible with Windows 7 is sending 1 audio stream to Multiple Output Devices such as sending the same Audio track to SPDIF and Analog at the same time.
I am running Windows 7 on a 15GB Partition on the Primary Hard Drive, and it is very responsive and infact it is running much more Stable and Faster than Windows XP.
I am also using a Windows 7 Basic Black theme so I've turned off Aero, but window docking, and a few other features are still active. The Black Basic theme looks professional and not as ugly or instrusive as the original Basic theme.
Where Windows XP would sometimes Hang, Freeze, and Lockup, Windows 7 has been running Flawless and reports a Minimum of 42 Processes to a Maximum of 55 when I have all my programs Running.
It is also making good use of the 2GB of RAM.
So for those who have Older systems and do not have the money to upgrade, Windows 7 will perform just as good if not better than XP on these single core systems. I was slow to embrace Windows 7 but I am glad I did.
I can probably use this computer for another 2-3 years and it will most likely fail due to a Power supply or motherboard capacitors failing rather than software.
I hope you guys enjoy Windows 7 on your older computers as much as I do.
Addition: Windows 7 seems to use RAM much more efficiently than Windows XP. It seems to make an effort to use ALL of the RAM available to it, so you can safely lower the size of Virtual Memory which uses the Hard Drive. I have 2GB of RAM on this PC and I have lowered my Page File to 1024MB.
Last edited by OCD; 03 Jun 2012 at 03:28. Reason: Additional Info added.