Upgrade from Vista query

Have Vista installed on a Intel Dual-Core 2.8Gz cpu, 4 gigs ram, ATI 4850
(512 megs ram) on a large enough hard disk.

Have an unused "upgrade from Vista to Win7" disk with key that I'm finally
considering using.

Multiple concerns but primary one is outright performance. Will I end up
with a faster or slower pc? Usage varies but heavy usage would be couple
games like FSX and a fair amount of video editing (not editing per se but
rather converting from MP4 to XVid and/or using Nero Vision to create a dvd
for home player).

I know enough to insure I have proper drivers on hand before upgrade etc.

I am somewhat confused about one thing though. The disk indicates it's an
update to a 32bit Windows7. I thought Windows7 was 64bit only. Assuming it
is 32 bit, would I be better off upgrading (or rather clean install as it'd
be new purchase) to 64bit Win7. Processer does support that right?

Thanks for any replies.

pjp wrote:
> Have Vista installed on a Intel Dual-Core 2.8Gz cpu, 4 gigs ram, ATI
> 4850 (512 megs ram) on a large enough hard disk.
>
> Have an unused "upgrade from Vista to Win7" disk with key that I'm
> finally considering using.
>
> Multiple concerns but primary one is outright performance. Will I end up
> with a faster or slower pc? Usage varies but heavy usage would be couple
> games like FSX and a fair amount of video editing (not editing per se
> but rather converting from MP4 to XVid and/or using Nero Vision to
> create a dvd for home player).
>
> I know enough to insure I have proper drivers on hand before upgrade etc.
>
> I am somewhat confused about one thing though. The disk indicates it's
> an update to a 32bit Windows7. I thought Windows7 was 64bit only.
> Assuming it is 32 bit, would I be better off upgrading (or rather clean
> install as it'd be new purchase) to 64bit Win7. Processer does support
> that right?
>
> Thanks for any replies.

Paul wrote:
> pjp wrote:
>> Have Vista installed on a Intel Dual-Core 2.8Gz cpu, 4 gigs ram, ATI
>> 4850 (512 megs ram) on a large enough hard disk.
>>
>> Have an unused "upgrade from Vista to Win7" disk with key that I'm
>> finally considering using.
>>
>> Multiple concerns but primary one is outright performance. Will I end
>> up with a faster or slower pc? Usage varies but heavy usage would be
>> couple games like FSX and a fair amount of video editing (not editing
>> per se but rather converting from MP4 to XVid and/or using Nero Vision
>> to create a dvd for home player).
>>
>> I know enough to insure I have proper drivers on hand before upgrade etc.
>>
>> I am somewhat confused about one thing though. The disk indicates it's
>> an update to a 32bit Windows7. I thought Windows7 was 64bit only.
>> Assuming it is 32 bit, would I be better off upgrading (or rather
>> clean install as it'd be new purchase) to 64bit Win7. Processer does
>> support that right?
>>
>> Thanks for any replies.

<<Finger hit the wrong button there>>

Maybe one of your questions, is easier than the others.

The 64 bit version, would allow usage of all 4GB of RAM. The 32 bit
would report 3GB free, as some of the address space would be used for
other things. So there is a slight difference in the amount of memory
you can use. My Win7 laptop has 3GB installed, and I've never had a
particular reason to be concerned about the amount of RAM. No
feeling that I needed to increase it still further.

64 bit uses signed drivers, while 32 bit doesn't. Not a big difference,
at least based on the complaint level.

For gaming, under Vista, there was initially an issue with the change
to the video model and gaming. That is described here. I would
expect, if you had a "pure 64 bit" game and a pure 64 bit OS,
then you could bypass this limit. But many legacy games will
still have this kind of limitation. Maybe an older game stays
within these limits anyway (because the developers would have
bumped into it). I'm not really sure how many 64 bit executables
are out there for stuff.

http://www.anandtech.com/print/2297

When it comes to application performance, you'd hope the OS would stay
out of the way. If FSX needs resources, the resource usage would be
the same as on another OS (ignoring the WDDM issue for now). I doubt
the scheduler differences in the kernel, make any difference to what
percentage of CPU a program gets. I keep seeing articles about scheduler
changes, but still fail to see any tangible difference reported by users.

There are always background activities of one sort of another,
which can compete with what you're doing in the foreground. Indexing
in Windows 7, is designed with a "backoff" feature, such that indexing
stops if user activity is detected. But a third party antivirus package,
could scan files as they're being accessed by your applications, which
tends to increase the load on the machine. That's sort of an on-demand
scan that happens any time a file is opened. You could be flying
FSX, doing read-ahead for terrain, while the AV package is scanning
the terrain file at the same time.

There are movie rendering packages that use multiple cores. I don't
know what limit there is to the parallelism possible. With the
one video thing I tried, editing used one core, while the final render
used both available cores. And that probably would have behaved the
same, with WinXP, Vista or Win7.

FSX uses multiple cores as well, and can have at least three
major threads on the fly at the same time (such as a thread that
does read-ahead on the disk drive, to get the next terrain
info that will be needed). That would have worked the same,
in WinXP, Vista, or Windows 7. FSX compute loading can be adjusted
to some extent, with detail sliders. If you dial up the addition of
ground clutter, then I presume that slows it down.

I would say, your experience should be no worse than Vista :-)

Paul

On 21/11/2011 8:45 PM, pjp wrote:
> Have Vista installed on a Intel Dual-Core 2.8Gz cpu, 4 gigs ram, ATI
> 4850 (512 megs ram) on a large enough hard disk.
>
> Have an unused "upgrade from Vista to Win7" disk with key that I'm
> finally considering using.
>
> Multiple concerns but primary one is outright performance. Will I end up
> with a faster or slower pc? Usage varies but heavy usage would be couple
> games like FSX and a fair amount of video editing (not editing per se
> but rather converting from MP4 to XVid and/or using Nero Vision to
> create a dvd for home player).
>
> I know enough to insure I have proper drivers on hand before upgrade etc.
>
> I am somewhat confused about one thing though. The disk indicates it's
> an update to a 32bit Windows7. I thought Windows7 was 64bit only.
> Assuming it is 32 bit, would I be better off upgrading (or rather clean
> install as it'd be new purchase) to 64bit Win7. Processer does support
> that right?
>
> Thanks for any replies.

Go for it. Win 7 will run just fine on your hardware, better in fact:
Vista is a resource hog compared to Win7, and XP for that matter. I have
W7 on a machine originally built for XP Pro, very similar to your
hardware, W7 runs faster than XP on it.

HTH
Wolf K.

Hi, pjp.

I can't answer all your questions, but I can help with a few off them. I've
installed both Vista and Win7 many times, but never "upgraded". Any
computer you bought in the last 5 years or so is almost certainly 64-bit
hardware, even if it came with 32-bit Windows and other software installed.

Win7 Ultimate comes with a single Product Key and TWO disks, one 64-bit and
one 32-bit. You choose either disk and install it with the one PK. Win7
Home comes with ONE disk and you must choose to buy the 64-bit or the 32-bit
version - but you can then get the other "bitness" from Microsoft at little
or no cost. Switching from 32-bit to 64-bit - or vice versa - will require
a clean install. Again, I've always used Ultimate x64 so I'm not sure of
the details for this. But why depend on somebody like me to answer your
questions? Why not get it from the real authorities:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w.../products/home

Windows 32-bit is often referred to as the "x86" version, referring to the
long series of CPUs from Intel with numbers like 8086, 80286, 80486 - and
Pentium. You can easily install Win7 x86 on 64-bit hardware, but you cannot
install Win7 x64 on 32-bit hardware. Win7 x64 will run 32-bit software - no
exceptions that I know of now. When Vista was introduced 5 years ago, some
32-bit software needed to be rewritten to run in 64-bit Vista. The last 2
that gave me trouble were both from Adobe: Photoshop Elements had problems,
and it took another year before a newer version ran smoothly. Adobe's Flash
Player did not run well at all in 64-bit until Version 11, just a month or
two ago.

Drivers were scarce, too, when Vista arrived, but Win7 comes with drivers
for thousands of devices; chances that yours will not be included on the DVD
are very slim, and more drivers are available online from Microsoft and/or
the device makers.

I'll let others advice about gaming and your other questions. But I'm sure
you will not be disappointed with Win7 - just recognize that it is NOT Vista
and there will be a small learning curve, but not nearly as steep as from
WinXP to Vista.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3538.0513) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1


"pjp" wrote in message news:jaev0b$mpc$...

Have Vista installed on a Intel Dual-Core 2.8Gz cpu, 4 gigs ram, ATI 4850
(512 megs ram) on a large enough hard disk.

Have an unused "upgrade from Vista to Win7" disk with key that I'm finally
considering using.

Multiple concerns but primary one is outright performance. Will I end up
with a faster or slower pc? Usage varies but heavy usage would be couple
games like FSX and a fair amount of video editing (not editing per se but
rather converting from MP4 to XVid and/or using Nero Vision to create a dvd
for home player).

I know enough to insure I have proper drivers on hand before upgrade etc.

I am somewhat confused about one thing though. The disk indicates it's an
update to a 32bit Windows7. I thought Windows7 was 64bit only. Assuming it
is 32 bit, would I be better off upgrading (or rather clean install as it'd
be new purchase) to 64bit Win7. Processer does support that right?

Thanks for any replies.

On Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:28:47 -0600, R. C. White wrote:

> "bitness"

It is called data width, bus width, or data bus width.

Googling for "data width 64 bit" gives many examples of those phrases.

Here's a link that also uses the phrase "bit width":

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/ram/packBanks-c.html

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

"R. C. White" <> écrivait
news::

<snip>
>
> Win7 Ultimate comes with a single Product Key and TWO disks, one 64-bit
and
> one 32-bit. You choose either disk and install it with the one PK. Win7
> Home comes with ONE disk and you must choose to buy the 64-bit or the 32-
bit
> version - but you can then get the other "bitness" from Microsoft at
little
> or no cost.

<snip>

My Win7 Home Premium upgrade box came with 2 disks (32 & 64bits); it's the
first generation bought in pre-sale at half price. I also have an OEM
(generic) version of Home Premium, this one only has the 64 bits disk.

On 11/21/2011 10:28 PM, R. C. White wrote:
> Win7 Ultimate comes with a single Product Key and TWO disks, one 64-bit
> and one 32-bit. You choose either disk and install it with the one PK.
> Win7 Home comes with ONE disk and you must choose to buy the 64-bit or
> the 32-bit version - but you can then get the other "bitness" from
> Microsoft at little or no cost. Switching from 32-bit to 64-bit - or
> vice versa - will require a clean install.

I beg to differ, all versions of Windows 7 (upgrade or retail) come with
both a 32-bit and 64-bit version. It's the OEM versions that only have
one or the other but not both.


--

Roy Smith
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Thunderbird 8.0
Thursday, November 24, 2011 7:55:08 AM

Hi, Roy.

Thanks to you and Dominique for the corrections. As I suggested to the OP:

> But why depend on somebody like me to answer your questions? Why not get
> it from the real authorities:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w.../products/home

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3538.0513) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1


"Roy Smith" wrote in message
news:H0szq.115012$...

On 11/21/2011 10:28 PM, R. C. White wrote:
> Win7 Ultimate comes with a single Product Key and TWO disks, one 64-bit
> and one 32-bit. You choose either disk and install it with the one PK.
> Win7 Home comes with ONE disk and you must choose to buy the 64-bit or
> the 32-bit version - but you can then get the other "bitness" from
> Microsoft at little or no cost. Switching from 32-bit to 64-bit - or
> vice versa - will require a clean install.

I beg to differ, all versions of Windows 7 (upgrade or retail) come with
both a 32-bit and 64-bit version. It's the OEM versions that only have
one or the other but not both.


--

Roy Smith
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Thunderbird 8.0
Thursday, November 24, 2011 7:55:08 AM