What would be a good upgrade for this PC?

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I have watched this thread, and have to disagree with ya Tigger29, in regards to whether Win7 64 bit would be of a great benefit or not for Jimson.....

I would strongly suggest he upgrade to the Win7 Pro 64 bit .... he will benefit from the full use of his 4 gigs of ram plus his use of his video ram..... his computer specs he listed:

EVGA 512-P3-N802-AR GeForce 8800GT Superclocked 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard

E8400 cpu

PC Power & Cooling S75QB 750W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply

Pioneer 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE Model DVR-115DBK  

Creative 70SB073A00000 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer

Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST3250310NS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

CORSAIR XMS2 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4096-6400C5

would see somewhat of a significant increase on the Win7 64 bit OS verses what he is seeing on the WinXP 32 bit OS....


I have witnessed 3 different builds , that showed wonderful increases just by upgrading the OS and using the existing PC components.... I built a PC with all 3rd or 4th generation PC parts and stuck Win7 64 bit on the HD and maxed out all settings with 75 fps and hires 1024 textures and shadows on 2048...

to where on the same pc using winxp 32 pro it fell down to 58 to 61 fps in light action..... and down to mid 40s in hvy action. on a 9500GT 512 meg DDR3 vidcard and 3 gigs of ram with an AMD opteron185 Dualcore 2.8 ghz cpu and using onboard sound......

my own PC gets a solid 5 to 6 FPS increase from 69/70 in winXP pro.... to solid 75 FPS in win 7 Ult 64 bit with my ASUS AMD athlon X2 6400+ 3.2 ghz dual core and 4 gigs corsair XMS2 pc6400 ram and creative xtremegamer prof soundcard and Asus 3870 512 meg DDR4 video PC P&C 750watt silencer PSU and Antec 900 case.....with same settings.... and I have 4 HD's in it 2 DVD DL RWs etc...and I built it like 3 or so yrs ago....... it still works great ( knocking on wood heheh )


Jimson,
if you can get ya hands on Win7 Pro 64 bit , go for it....... you'll most likely see an improvement... and may not even experience any flickering or drops for the most part . ( unless you use like 1900 x 1200  screen res )...... say 1600 or lower like me 1280 x 1024 and you be fine I'd think.....
if you can get a better video card, then do that too..... but comparing that old pc I throwed together to your current PC parts.. who should be able to smoke the results I got from that thrown together PC> with ease....

best of luck to ya...

hope this helps...

That's a bit odd since every benchmark to date shows XP to have a better performance on dx9 titles. Are you sure you didn't compare a 3-year old XP installation to a fresh Win7?

Also as far as AH2 goes, no user will be limited by that missing 700-800mb of ram at 32 bits. You have to run several 32-bit apps on top of eachoters to ever saturate 3gibs.

[TequilaChaser]

fresh installs on 2 seperate HDs, Rip,    each HD has dual boot capacity with winxp pro and win7 ult 64 bit ( correction..... I did finally reformat and removed winxp from the donated parts pc and reinstalled just win7 64 when i buttoned it up and packaged it up  finally )

on both the old donated pc parts pc and on my own pc....

now my older winxp HD ( the original one )  which is bogged way down pretty good 320 gig. only 34 gig free, but still i keep it serviced/tweaked. i am only getting around 52 with everything on ...... turn the shadows down to 1024 size in advance and i get back to 65 fps...

but seriously, the performace increase is there

am wondering if HTC has the info.......  didn't they gather the data of our pc performace/components/settings a while back during one of these newer versions?

I posted those same results, as I posted just now ( above ) back when I did all the comparisons .....

[BaldEagl]

That does seem odd TC since 32 bit apps (AH) can't access more than 2 Gb of RAM anyway.  The only thing that could explain it is if you had other processes running in the background or if you have too many system processes running and they're already stealing over 1 Gb of RAM (unlikely).

[jimson]

Jimson,
if you can get ya hands on Win7 Pro 64 bit , go for it....... you'll most likely see an improvement... and may not even experience any flickering or drops for the most part . ( unless you use like 1900 x 1200  screen res )...... say 1600 or lower like me 1280 x 1024 and you be fine I'd think.....
if you can get a better video card, then do that too..... but comparing that old pc I throwed together to your current PC parts.. who should be able to smoke the results I got from that thrown together PC> with ease....

best of luck to ya...

hope this helps...

I got lost on a lot of the techno-speak in this thread, but if (and at the time I started this, it seemed a slam dunk) I do get the free copy of win7 64 bit, I won't be limited to the 4gigs of ram.

I found the extra ram that I thought I had installed in another pc. It was actually sitting in a cabinet.

It is 2 1gb sticks of Corsair brand, same brand as I currently have 2 2gb sticks installed, so It's possible that I could at no to very minimal cost (if the guy comes through, I'll send him postage and beer money) have a Win7 64 bit system with 6 gb of ram (if it's all compatible), plus the video card memory, new video card or not.

[TequilaChaser]

That does seem odd TC since 32 bit apps (AH) can't access more than 2 Gb of RAM anyway.  The only thing that could explain it is if you had other processes running in the background or if you have too many system processes running and they're already stealing over 1 Gb of RAM (unlikely).

nope, I am very picky about keeping processes down on systems...... and keeping pagefiles in use down....

my system on winxp runs AH with total of 18 processes running.. sitting idle I am 15 to 17 processes and pagefile use is around 217 max(idle) most times.......

I would have to guess that most people just load and go, and have all sorts of stuff loaded up in both winXP and in windows 7..... but for the (5) windows 7 64 bit OS's I have loaded up, they all have performed better than the winXP OS they replaced....... and I would make the assumption at least 2 of those prob had a large process list of like 30 to 35 in winXP.......

we all got our views...... but I have only seen improvements with Windows 7 64 bit, over the 32 bit WinXP OS..... even on other's systems I loaded, who do not use any 64 bit apps.......

the DeLL monitor driver from winXP shorts my system 5 fps on the refresh rate verses the win7 DeLL monitor driver which lets me go to 75 hz  verse 70 hz in winXP .........

one thing though....... I came to the conclusion of going by my own "real world" results rather than going by what somone has posted in a report on some online pc magizine..... I have found that most times I get better or more than what most articles claim....... the internet has become so ridiculous it aint funny...... for every thing you find written to be true on the internet, you will find a matching written false contradiction to it.......

heya Jimson, if it helps, great...... I think it will......

but you will not know unless you give it a try...... good luck , either way   

[Skuzzy]

My personal Windows XP system will run rampant all over the top of any Windows 7 system (64 or 32 bit).

Any decently cleaned up Windows XP system will run Aces High better than any Windows 7 system can.

[SectorNine50]

My personal Windows XP system will run rampant all over the top of any Windows 7 system (64 or 32 bit).

Any decently cleaned up Windows XP system will run Aces High better than any Windows 7 system can.

Turning of Windows 7 Aero helps free up a lot of resources, I've noticed.  I find it interesting that some games automatically switch it to Basic while others will not.  Aces High is one that does not, any reason as to why?

I actually noticed no performance gain or loss when switching to Windows 7.  I like the functionality of Windows 7 a lot more as well.  I know there is a lot of negativity around the whole "Vista" era of the Windows operating system, but I personally prefer it over XP now (Even with only 2 GB of RAM!).

P.S. The system seems to work a lot smoother and snappier when using ReadyBoost.  I dedicated a 4GB flash drive to it.  My HDD is clearly the weakest link in my system, and the caching on that flash drive has sped up everything.  Very nice.

[Have]

EVGA 512-P3-N802-AR GeForce 8800GT Superclocked 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

I upgraded from a Palit GeForce 8800GT 512MB to Radeon 4870, which I bought second hand, and the performance advantage in AH is clear. With the 4870 I can have everything maxed at 1920x1200 resolution when 8800GT was running AH smoothly with approx. 60% graphics settings. The cost was 58 euros (including 18 euros from an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 heat sink for complete silent operation). I think it was a bargain when compared to the performance increase.

Otherwise my system is pretty much the same as yours, except that I have a E6550 processor.

Only game which I have problems currently is Rise of Flight, which would really need a new 4+ core processor to run smoothly. Even DCS: Black Shark runs great with the current system.

The OS is Windows 7 and I didn't notice any performance hit in games when I switched from the Win XP. I too much prefer the Win 7 over XP.