Moving from XP to Win 7 on Athlon 64/3500+

I am planning on moving up to Win 7 Pro from my XP Pro OS. My CPU is an Athlon 64 (single) chip. There's a lot of information on the forum about Athlon 64x2 but not single.

Is anyone having any problems with a similar move? How does it run in 64-bit mode?
How much RAM should I have on-board?

Any other info you can think of?

Thanks in advance,
Gary

Cool...

What are the specs of this older machine? This will help me decide whether or not to recommend 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x76)

I run 7 pro x86 on my 5 yr/old laptop which has an Athlon 64 3200+ single core processor and 2 Gb RAM. It performs great for its age...

My wife's first CPU was an Athlon 3500+ and it ran Win 7 just fine with 2 GB of RAM. According to the upgrade tool from MS, it will even support 64 bit Windows, though it will probably run slower. We never tried, I just installed 32 bit for her.

You can get going on that one for sure, and it will do okay for most things. Don't expect to do some serious gaming on it, though. Keep an eye out at local computer shops, too. They often have a few old salvaged CPUs in the back room. My favorite shop had an old Athlon X2 4000+ for $20 that I popped in the wife's machine, and it's running like a top now. It's just about as fast as my quad for most things.

If you buy one like that, make sure they say it's been tested. That way, you know you're at least getting one that works. It helps to be a regular customer with them too, in case you have problems. But it's a lot safer than buying on ebay, and much cheaper than trying to find an brand new AM2 CPU from a retailer.

drgary said:

I am planning on moving up to Win 7 Pro from my XP Pro OS. My CPU is an Athlon 64 (single) chip. There's a lot of information on the forum about Athlon 64x2 but not single.

Is anyone having any problems with a similar move? How does it run in 64-bit mode?
How much RAM should I have on-board?

Any other info you can think of?

Thanks in advance,
Gary

Click to expand...

I don't know why people don't think that an Athlon 64 could run 64-bit OSes and software. Of course it can.

I run Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 Standard Edition on three different single-core AMD systems:

- Athlon 64 3500+ w/ 2GB DDR2, Ati HD4770 w/ 512MB GDDR5

- Athlon 64 3500+ w/ 1.5GB DDR2, onboard graphics nvidia GeForce 6150LE

- Sempron 64 3000+ w/ 1.5GB DDR1, Ati HD4350 w/ 512MB DDR2


On all three systems, I got browsers, office suites, graphics programs etc. and all of them run just fine and even fast. All of them got Aero and all goodies enabled (windows drag, mouse shadow etc.). No compromises there.

Just do it.