Cheap(ish) upgrade

[obsidian]

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit! It's natively backwards compatible with any 32-bit program so you don't have very many reasons not to go 64-bit.

Only get Professional or Ultimate if you get a stupidly cheap price for it. I wouldn't be running Ultimate if I didn't get a copy directly from Microsoft for $10 through work. It's a stupid piece of marketing where they will give you two extra features that you will probably never use so that they can have a higher priced product for business licenses.

[Don Carlos]

Well I have the 32bit software coming but if the licence allows me either, I know someone with a 64bit disc I could use...

I still don't get what the difference is really?

[obsidian]

32-bit is for old computers. It has some limitations, primarily with the number of memory addresses it can allocate to the OS, which is somewhere less than 4GB. So even if you have 4 or 8GB of RAM installed, the OS will only be able to make use of a little more than 3GB of whatever amount of memory you have installed. This is a pretty big bottleneck for modern systems so converting to a 64-bit OS with 64-bit hardware (any new computer within the last 3 years) will remove this bottleneck.

[SoM]

dude, just go Win 7 64 bit, you won't regret it

[Foo]

Well I have the 32bit software coming but if the licence allows me either, I know someone with a 64bit disc I could use...

I still don't get what the difference is really?

Couple of differences that'll be important to you:
- 64-bit CPU runs a 64-bit OS and apps natively, using all instructions. but a 64-Bit CPU runs 32-bit in a reduced instruction set, or emulates. In real terms, you don't get the most out of any 64-bit CPU unless you run the whole stack at x64, and with a 32-bit OS you'll never achieve that.
- 64-bit allow your system to allocate more than 3.5Gb memory to a single process and without any wonky hax (PAE).
- In earlier versions of Windows, driver support for x64 was poor while driver support for x32 was strong. On Win7, the opposite is true. This trend will continue over time.

Definitely snag the x64 install DVD and use your (completely valid) license.

[Don Carlos]

New gear arrived....installed. Just not got new Windows or my new hard drive running. With 4 gig it is a little quicker but in general boot times are the same.

General hard drive chatter is still high as my 320gig drive with 8meg of cache is slowly fucking itself up the arse. I have a new main drive - 1TB with 32MB cache that should solve this problem.

Windows 7 64bit it is - thank you for all your input

Anyone know of any good benchmarking software I can try on this thing?

[Foo]

Built-in score would be interesting

[Don Carlos]

Windows Vista 32 bit

Processor 5.9
RAM 5.9
Graphics 5.9
Gaming Graphics 5.9
Hard disk 5.3

Overall 5.3

Interesting that the processor did not change from 5.9 after I ensured all 6 cores were working and am now running at 3.5ghz instead of 2.8ghz

Top temp seen on CPU so far is 30 degrees at 100% load

[Don Carlos]

14336 3DMarks in 3DMark 06

I think, as has been stated early in this thread, that my graphics card is now the bottleneck

[SoM]

you have a better CPU then me and i score higher on everything you have, with Win7 64bit that is

[Plan B]

To me, this just doesn't seem the time to do serious upgrades;
I'm going to wait a couple of months for Rage, Deus Ex:HR, Batman:AC etc to hit.

Nice system to tide you over, though (no ygp-if-that's-all-you-can-afford)

[Don Carlos]

Interesting...well we shall see what happens when I smash on the 64bit on the weekend.

My 5.9 score is the same running at 2.8ghz and 3.6ghz...any ideas?

[Plan B]

It probably only recognizes stock/default cpu settings?
(I know nothing about how that whole windows scoring system works, but prolly run 3dmark again to get a more reliable bench)

[SoM]

32bit vista only sees 3GB ram

[Plan B]

Yeah, but he's talking about overclocking his cpu, no?
Doesn't really seem ram dependant.

[SoM]

Don, did you do a rescan the assesment after OC'ing ?

[Don Carlos]

The machine upgrade is a long road and this is a good base for cost vs performance vs OC potential.

Slap a 470 in it and I am sure it will destroy most games.

I think performance vs a i7 would show a gulf but for the money I've paid the AMD option was a no brainer. Less than 300 for the CPU, Mobo, RAM and hard drive.

New GFX card for Rage and that will see me for the next few years (had the last rig for 4 years unchanged

[Don Carlos]

Don, did you do a rescan the assesment after OC'ing ?

Yeah, but I'll try it again

[Don Carlos]

Still sees it as a 2.8ghz machine, despite another program showing it running at its true OC speed:

[SoM]

my overall score is also 5.9

but seperatly are higher then yours.

here's mine

AMD Phenom II X2 555 3.2GHz - 6.6
Kingston 2x2 GB dual channel 1600MHz - 7.4
Nvidia GeForce GT220 1 gig - 6.5
Gaming Graphics - 6.5
Seagate 1.5TB - 5.9

[Don Carlos]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh 5.9 is the maximum you can get on Vista sir....Windows 7 will give me some more "points" as it were

[SoM]

Ahhhhhhhhhh didn't know that, and never used Vista

[AmIdYfReAk]

Yeah, Vista's cap is 5.9, Though, i would think that they upped it with SP2... not sure though.

Nice scores man.

[Don Carlos]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds ... reviewed/9

Win

[^Ghost]

ur base score is determined by the lowest subscore. so if ur lowest score is 6.0 on gaming graphics, ur base score will be 6.0 (for win7)

and in the properties of my computer it will always show the standard clock speed, even if u did oc it.

for example my i7 920 is clocked at 4ghz but it still shows the standard clock speed of 2.67ghz