Windows 7 on a Pentium 4, 3.4 ghz with 2GB RAM

I thought about upgrading some office PCs with such configuration to Win7 (from XP). At home I run currently Vista on a much beefier computer and didn't care much for 7 so far. So, will 7 run well on such configuration?

I tested the Win7 beta a year ago, and the performance seemed to be on par with Vista. Did it get better in the final?

It might be a bit sluggish, but it will run. There was a blog post a while back about a guy who got Win7 running on his old Pentium III system with 512MB of RAM.

Depends, which "Pentium 4" are we talking about?

But generally speaking, if a computer's older than 3 years I'd stick with XP, otherwise you're just upgrading for the sake of it. It's unlikely your hardware has features Win7 can specifically take advantage of.

W3bbo said:

Depends, which "Pentium 4" are we talking about?

 

But generally speaking, if a computer's older than 3 years I'd stick with XP, otherwise you're just upgrading for the sake of it. It's unlikely your hardware has features Win7 can specifically take advantage of.

Ooops, mistake.

Not 2ghz, but 3.4 ghz.

It's a pentium 4 prescott, single core but with hyperthreading. I've have changed the topic of the thread, too.

wastingtimewithforums said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

Ooops, mistake.

 

Not 2ghz, but 3.4 ghz.

 

It's a pentium 4 prescott, single core but with hyperthreading. I've have changed the topic of the thread, too.

Well, I have the beta of it running on a P4 1.9Ghz, 768MB RAM (no glass) with some slight sluggishness (bought in 2001).

I have the retail running on a Athlon 64 3200+ with 2GB RAM (glass) with no sluggishness at all (this machine I built in 2005).

Not sure of any of that helps.

3.4 Ghz isn't actually too slow. My current CPU doesn't clock that high (although granted it is duel core).

ManipUni said:

3.4 Ghz isn't actually too slow. My current CPU doesn't clock that high (although granted it is duel core).

Processor clock frequency has little bearing on performance. I've got a Q9450 which runs at 2.66Ghz, yet it whops the best Pentium 4 in the benchmarks.

Comparison: my Q9450 gets 3990 points, yet the Pentium 4 3.8Ghz scores so poorly it appears on a totally separate chart, with 639 points.

I understand the benchmarking suite used by that site gives weight to processors with multiple hardware threads, but even if you divide 3990 by 4 (it's a quad-core) then you get a figure of 997, which is still substantially higher than 639.

W3bbo said:

ManipUni said:

*snip*

Processor clock frequency has little bearing on performance. I've got a Q9450 which runs at 2.66Ghz, yet it whops the best Pentium 4 in the benchmarks.

 

Comparison: my Q9450 gets 3990 points, yet the Pentium 4 3.8Ghz scores so poorly it appears on a totally separate chart, with 639 points.

 

I understand the benchmarking suite used by that site gives weight to processors with multiple hardware threads, but even if you divide 3990 by 4 (it's a quad-core) then you get a figure of 997, which is still substantially higher than 639.

I know I know.

I also know that in the real world CPUs have really stopped paying for themselves in terms of throughput increases (in real terms) a very long time ago. It is all about memory speeds, HDD speeds, and still graphics cards. But CPU makes little difference.

The CPU measuring tools work correctly, they just measure something more theoretical than noticeable.

ManipUni said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

I know I know.

 

I also know that in the real world CPUs have really stopped paying for themselves in terms of throughput increases (in real terms) a very long time ago. It is all about memory speeds, HDD speeds, and still graphics cards. But CPU makes little difference.

 

The CPU measuring tools work correctly, they just measure something more theoretical than noticeable.

I'd say the 4-fold increase in performance is noticable, not just theoretical, when working on parallisable operations. Try talking to a render-farm sysadmin sometime.

ManipUni said:

3.4 Ghz isn't actually too slow. My current CPU doesn't clock that high (although granted it is duel core).

sigh...it's "dual" not "duel", unless your processor cores routinely slap each other with gloves.

(No offense meant, but I see this mistake a lot these days and it really irks me.)

W3bbo said:

ManipUni said:

*snip*

I'd say the 4-fold increase in performance is noticable, not just theoretical, when working on parallisable operations. Try talking to a render-farm sysadmin sometime.

As I said, in the real world...

That is so far removed from the real world that it isn't even a real example. Server farms have always been in a world of their own.

ManipUni said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

As I said, in the real world...

That is so far removed from the real world that it isn't even a real example. Server farms have always been in a world of their own.

You'd be surprised.

You'll find many people who do 3D modelling (often non-professionally) have a little render-farm cluster sitting under their desks. It isn't hard to rig together a Beowulf cluster to run Renderman on.

Your PC is a little bit faster than my netbook, so Win7 should run fine on it.