is 2 gig enougth for windows 7 32bit

bcham

bcham

bcham

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im thinking of changing from xp pro, -32bit to windows 7, -32 bit,
will 2 gig of ram be ok,or will i need 4 gig for windows 7.
 
2 gig will be fine even though people will say you need more, i am still only using 2gb for my dual boot of vista and windows 7 and they run perfectly. 4gb would be nice but if you dont have the cash for it then your 2gb is fine
 
I've got W7 running on a Pentium M machine with 1GB of RAM. It's not all that quick but the RAM doesn't get full until you have quite a lot running, so I imagine 2GB will be fine.
 
timmothy said:
2 gig will be fine even though people will say you need more, i am still only using 2gb for my dual boot of vista and windows 7 and they run perfectly. 4gb would be nice but if you dont have the cash for it then your 2gb is fine
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I'm doing exactly the same thing and it's perfectly snappy with 2 gigs
 
2gb is the bare minimum for Vista and Windows 7 imo.

4gb is the current sweet spot

why not get 64bit?
 
Running Win7 64bit on a C2D 3ghz, 2GB ram + very old Geforce PCI-E Card (7300 iirc)

Very nice indeed, mostly mp3 playback/movies via the media center, and browsing.
 
I've had windows 7 running OK on 512MB also tried it with 1GB and its fine (yes I'd agree 4GB is great, but 2 will be fine for the OS) It runs much better on lesser hardware than Vista does.
 
timmothy said:
2 gig will be fine even though people will say you need more, i am still only using 2gb for my dual boot of vista and windows 7 and they run perfectly. 4gb would be nice but if you dont have the cash for it then your 2gb is fine
Click to expand...

I'm inclined to agree. 4GB might be more beneficial on a notebook where you've got a slow HDD and comparatively slower CPU hampering performance a bit, but as far as Vista is concerned, going from 2GB to 4GB got me virtually no noticeable performance benefit in day-to-day Windows usage. It was only in heavy multitasking and gaming that it became beneficial. With 7 being better optimised, I imagine 2GB will certainly suffice.
 
2GB is fine. i saw no noticeable difference upgrading to 4 in w7 or vista.

Get 64bit though as theres much more to it, than just extra ram.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
I'm sure I read that W7 lifts this restriction.
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Nope, a 32bit OS can only address 2^32 bits = 4Gb. It's possible Win7 32bit will show that 8gb, for example, is installed on the system, but it's logically impossible for it to actaully address that much memory as part of the OS.

64bit compatibility is so good these days though that 64bit Windows is fine anyway.
 
Windows 7 was designed to embrace lesser equipment than Vista so will actually get on better with say a p4 2.4ghz 1gb ram system, than vista would. Half my software still doesnt work. I tried vista 32,64 and finally windows 7 but yesterday bit the bullet and went back to XP again on my elitebook 8730w. Its still flying but not having any driver and dll issues now.
 
Bcham,

2 gigs will be sufficent for Windows 7 32-bit but if 4 gigs of RAM were available and installed, I would recommend Windows 7 64-bit at that point. To learn more about Windows 7, Microsoft does have a site with whitepapers, tutorials, walkthroughs and screen casts on all the “under the hood” features in Win 7. Check out the Springboard site for Windows 7 on TechNet here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd361745.aspx

Jessica
Microsoft Windows Client Team
 
buddy has a NC10 with one of those Atom processors and it seems to run it just fine...I have a 12" lappy with a core duo 1.66ghz coming tomorrow and plan to run Win7 and 2gb on it, I'm expecting a snappy enough system.
 
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