I'm having trouble deciding what to buy in regards to Windows 7

[Topher925]

Tom's Hardware article about XP versus Vista:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xp-vs-vista,1531-4.html

The link you posted only compares XP to Vista, not W7. Also, that comparison is almost 3 years old and uses a graphics card that doesn't even support DX10. The computer they tested it on also only has 2 gigs of DDR800 RAM. In other words, ANYTHING you run on XP on that machine will perform better because it is simply limited by hardware. If you did the same benchmarks on a W7 machine with decent hardware and up to date software I believe you will always see a performance increase.

 

[slider142]

I would recommend having four gigs of ram if using W7. The OS could easilly top out anything less when multi-tasking and it is nice when to have a bit of a buffer to prevent problems. Also, having enough memory to avoid using your swap file will insure faster, more reliable operating.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I have noticed that the 64 bit version does use considerably more memory than the 32 bit version. This is not a problem for me as I have plenty of RAM, but I was wondering if anyone else noticed this.

The recommended amount of RAM for the 64-bit edition is 2GB. However, I am running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on a laptop with Intel integrated graphics and only 2GB DDR2 memory and frequently multitask with multiple browser windows while listening to music (Zune application) in the background with very little performance hit. In fact, this laptop used to run Vista and 7 runs applications much more responsively. If you intend on doing critical graphics/sound/video editing however, you will need more memory.

 

[Pattonias]

The recommended amount of RAM for the 64-bit edition is 2GB.

There is really no point in using the 64 bit OS with any less than 4 gigs. You use at least half of your RAM at idle. If the computer is limited in the space you have available for RAM then you may get by, but if at all possible you should use at least four. There are so many possibilities for optimization when you don't have to worry about running out of RAM.

If you can only use 2GB I would recommend installing 32 bit anyway.