Does it make sense to upgrade the OS on this system?

[DREDIOCK]

From Windows XP pro

the machine still runs fine. just some stuff I'd like to try that the OS wont support.

more importantly. Would an upgrade in the OS have any detrimental effect on the game?

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

CPU
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80570E8400
Hard Drive
Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
Memory
Kingston HyperX 4GB (4 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Quad Kit Desktop Memory Model KHX8500D2K4/4GR
Video Card
NVIDIA GeForce  GTX 650 TI 1024.0 meg memory

[Ratsy]

My wife has been running Aces High and other games on Windows Vista 64-bit and Windows 7 64-bit for about 5 years.  It's stable and relatively quick.

My wife is still running a rig very similar to yours...just with 8GB of memory (worth a look in your case perhaps).

Others will comment more intelligently than I can, but you wouldn't be too sorry if you upgraded.

A general comment:  There are still a large number of folks that have never upgraded from XP for various reasons - money, fear, comfort, not wanting to borrow trouble, ...  all good reasons.

It's not a painless process sometimes,  but if you don't keep your operating system current you might miss out on some things.  My wife's rig certainly won't run Call of Duty Advanced Warfare...well, it might run but not very quickly.

Good Luck!

 

[Pudgie]

About the only issue that I can think of that might crop up would be around the sound card being used.........................

If there are Vista/Win 7 drivers available for the specific sound card/chip being used then all should be good to go.

When I upgraded from Win XP to Vista some time back w/ a similar class system (Intel C2D E8600 on EVGA 780i FTW mobo w/ 8Gb mem (4Gb x 2 1066 DDR2 mem kit)) I found updated drivers for the onboard sound but I had to change out my discrete sound card (Turtle Beach Santa Cruz which didn't provide updated Vista drivers for it & so was useless) to an Asus Xonar DS 7.1 which had Vista drivers.

Since Win 7 (or Win 8.x) is using the same basic Vista kernel (although much better refined) that the same issue would be still present..................

Hope this helps.

 

[Ratsy]

See?    Pudgie!

Good luck, DREDIOCK.

[Serenity]

Do NOT get Windows 8. If you had to chose between getting cancer and getting windows 8, take the cancer. I keep finding more and more hardware (brand new hardware mind you) that still just will not work with 8.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Do NOT get Windows 8. If you had to chose between getting cancer and getting windows 8, take the cancer. I keep finding more and more hardware (brand new hardware mind you) that still just will not work with 8.

One of my computers has almost exactly the same hardware like Drediock (same motherboard and cpu, ram and gpu brand). It ran just fine with Win8 and Win7. Currently it's on Win7 but only because I tried it with the Win8 preview that expired. I have a 660GTX on it, it struggles with games already so I'm using it to dualboot linux.

[Chalenge]

It would make a great file server, HTPC, or guest system.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

It would make a great file server, HTPC, or guest system.

It still runs AH2 no probs though. I have naturally overclocked the machine to 3.9Ghz in order to give some artificial life to it.

[38ruk]

Looking at different benchmarks of directX9 gaming  between windows XP and Win7 show a slight lose in frames per second with win7 .... like 3-5% .....so you might lose a frame or 2 here or there in AH ( is AH all you play on this rig?) . That small of a lose prolly wont be too noticeable thou. 

Looking at Gigabyte's support site , they have drivers support up to Win7 64bit for you board , so your good there ..... I wouldnt run windows 8 if someone paid me . 

[Bizman]

I have the same motherboard and cpu. Installed Windows 7 a couple of months ago, no problems whatsoever. Changed my 2x2GB (1066) to a set of used 4x2GB (800) which seems to add some oomph when having multiple things running. With a Radeon HD6970/2GB runs AH very well at a resolution of 2560x1600.

[BaldEagl]

I'm still running basically the same system (NVidia 780l, E6750 OC'd to 3.2 Ghz, 4 Gb Kingston HyperX DDR2800, NVidia GTX9800+) and have no problems with AH outside of smooth shadows.

I've had a copy of Win 7 sitting here since August that I haven't installed yet as I was hoping my brother would return my NASCAR Racing disc before I did but alas I haven't seen it yet.  I expect no problems with the upgrade but the longer I wait the more likely I'll upgrade my Mobo, CPU, CPU cooler, RAM and GPU before I get to it.  In the meantime I'm still running XP Pro with no issues although I probably need to find a browser other than IE which XP supported versions of struggle with some of the newer web site code.

BTW, I bought a new laptop recently (MSI - Intel Core I5 4210 2.6 Ghz, 8 Gb RAM, NVidia GTX 820M 2 Gb, Win 8.1) for $700.  While I haven't played AH on it yet I did install it and it installed with all graphics maxed by default and seems to run smoothly looking around from the tower.  Pricing new guts for my old system and adding an SSD comes in just under $1000 (reusing case, PSU, HD's, Optical drives, keyboard, mouse, monitor and speakers).

After all these years I've recently had some positive movement in my income and work situation and finally have a little extra money to do a few things but I still have to be careful.