Windows 7 on older p4

csc

Member
Apr 14, 2009
143
1
81
p4 3 gig ht
1 gig 400
geforce fx 5200


Should I put windows 7 on this setup. It is a old hp mediacenter pc. Would it be worth the upgrade or stick with xp? It is for a friend, all my machines are newer and run win 7 great, will this machine have the same results? Anyone running 7 on a box this old?

Thanks for the input guys.
 

JackMDS

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 25, 1999
29,516
408
126
Yap, I have a box like this running Win7.

Mine has fx5500 with 128MB memory and it does Aero too.

If your Video card has 128MB or more on card memory you might even find modded drivers that would switch the Aero on.

Is it worth Upgrade? It is a personal call, it worth to me.

Ghost a backup of WinXP and save it somewhere.

If you qualify download a 90 days trial of Windows Enterprise, and give it a try.Do not like it, Ghost back Win XP.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/cc442495.aspx?ITPID=sprblog
.
 
Last edited:

sivart

Golden Member
Oct 20, 2000
1,786
0
0
My "main machine" (now the slowest) currently has Windows XP and will probably stay that way until I upgrade. For me, I have a couple of older programs that barely run under XP SP3 and no update is available from the maker short of purchasing it.

My current setup:

P4 D960 (3.6GHz)
512MB Video Card
3 GB RAM
1.25TB Storage

It should handle Windows 7 and I like Windows 7, but don't want to deal with finding new programs that I use frequently. (Specifically the Epson Print CD program that requires you to buy a new printer to get a Windows 7 version)
 

dualsmp

Golden Member
Aug 16, 2003
1,627
45
91
Win7 runs fairly quick on mine, but the video card is pretty much the fastest there is for AGP. I have all the bells and whistles enabled in Aero and it doesn't break a sweat. The 3850 scores a 7.0 under the Win7 benchmarks which is pretty good for such an old platform.

I did notice Win7 used a bit more than a 1 GB or RAM (around 1.1 GB) when I did a virus scan using NISv10, so you might need a little more RAM. Win7 hovers around 400 MB when first booting up so 1 GB is definitely enough, but it could start to swap here and there depending on the programs you use.

P4 2.6 @ 3.15GHz HT
2 GB DDR
Sapphire Radeon 3850 AGP
1 TB Samsung Green Drive