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Old PC with 4GB RAM Max - Win 7 32 bit or 64 bit?

Leyawiin

Leyawiin

Diamond Member
Hey guys. Making a "project" PC with parts laying around just to have something to do. Here's a list of components:

Athlon 64 X2 3800+
ASUS X8V-A motherboard
4GB DDR 400 RAM (maximum the motherboard can take)
240 GB SSD
6800 GT AGP

I'm primarily going to just tinker with OCing and maybe turn it into a dual boot Linux box and load older games (up to about 2006 or 2007) on the Windows side. Is there any benefit to going with 32 bit on older hardware and a 4GB RAM limit? Since I can do 4GB of RAM and my CPU is 64 bit should I just go with Win 7 64 bit? Would I notice any difference in performance?
 
I would double-check to make sure that 64-bit drivers are available for all your hardware first.

It's old enough that... well, probably not, but maaaaaaybe you'll find something that doesn't work under Win7x64.
 
That's my biggest concern. I've read that MS has a lot of the VIA chipset drivers on Windows 7 so I'm keeping my fingers crossed nothing is left uninstalled. The old 6800 GT actually has Nvidia drivers from just February 2015 so its in good shape there.
 
I would also choose 64bit. The 3rd post is something to look for as well.

I have a question here. Wouldn't 32bit software start to become limited and unavailable during the next few years?
 
Go with win32. 64 bit will run slower on old hardware. The win32 file system is smaller. There are less IOPs, less threads running, etc. On a 4 thread cpu with an SSD, 64 bit is possibly a little faster, otherwise its just a dog.
 
For everyday performance I doubt you'd see much of a loss going with 64-bit over 32-bit. Unless you're planning on doing something especially demanding on a fairly old system.

For everyday use browsing, some Office work etc. etc. I doubt you'd notice any difference between the OS versions unless you were benchmarking. The SSD will reduce much of the system bottle neck you'd see imo even if the board only supports SATA II as long as there is an option for AHCI in bios.

I have put an SSD in a Core 2 Duo laptop with 2 drive bays and used the original drive as a data drive with the page file on the SSD and temporary program files on the HDD and the system is still noticeably faster in everything that an SSD would have an impact on even with just SATA II using a 64-bit OS

While it probably doesn't apply much at all to the situation I read that a relatively new security mitigation which was newish around the release of Vista wasn't quite as complete in 32-bit versions of the OS as the 64-bit versions so I'd gather that perhaps MS pays a bit more attention to 64-bit code than 32-bit. It is just speculation on my part though.


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sm625 said:
Go with win32. 64 bit will run slower on old hardware. The win32 file system is smaller. There are less IOPs, less threads running, etc. On a 4 thread cpu with an SSD, 64 bit is possibly a little faster, otherwise its just a dog.
Click to expand...

What are you trying to say?? There is no such thing as a "Win32 file system". Windows 32-bit and 64-bit, can use both NTFS and FAT32 filesystems. There is no correlation between the two categories though.

Edit: I would probably say 32-bit, if you plan on playing "older" games. Many really old games have 16-bit installer programs, even if the main game itself is 32-bit, because that's the way things were done back in the Win9x days. And, unfortunately, 64-bit Windows does not run 16-bit Windows applications. So you wouldn't be able to install those games on 64-bit Windows. Yes, you'll lose out on half a gig of RAM.
 
Probably the newest thing that'll go on it is Titan Quest... maybe Torchlight II. Sounds like 32 bit will be fine for it then. I seriously doubt I'll do anything that sucks up that much RAM that a missing 500 mb would matter.
 
32-bit is better for older games as far as compatibility goes. As far as speed and the half-gig of RAM, you won't be able to tell a difference.
 
Meh, I put W7-64 on my 2007'ish Dell laptop with an AMD 2-core, all the while waiting for it to puke it up... and it's still running very well. I added an SSD and bumped the RAM up to 4GB; while it's not a rocketship, it's pretty responsive. ...just don't try to multitask.
 
Hmm... my main PC has a retail copy of Win 7 on it (which can be moved from PC to PC). Maybe I'll buy an OEM license, but it on the main and experiment with the the spare parts PC to see which is better (since the retail copy has both 32 and 64 bit DVDs).
 
VirtualLarry said:
What are you trying to say?? There is no such thing as a "Win32 file system". Windows 32-bit and 64-bit, can use both NTFS and FAT32 filesystems. There is no correlation between the two categories though.
Click to expand...

I meant the size of the Windows folder. The number of files, etc, not the actual file system per se. I dont see a point in loading and storing all those extra files unless you actually need more than 3.2GB of memory.
 
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