What windows 7 to buy ?

ryzouk · 24 Mar 2014 at 21:15

Hello,

I want to buy windows 7 for my new gaming pc. I see that there is 3 different ones to choose from. Windows home premium, Professional and unlimited. What one to buy if I am only using the pc for gaming.

marc2003 · 24 Mar 2014 at 22:02

home premium. it's the cheapest too which is a bonus.

Deewon · 24 Mar 2014 at 22:13

Home premium unless you need the features the others offer (which I very much doubt)

Tappits · 24 Mar 2014 at 23:04

What about the memory limits.

Do people still only get 16gb of ram for gameing pc's? that's what i got 3 years ago.
Even if you only plan on having 16gb this year your copy of windows will prob do you for the nest 3 years+ and you have to think in the nest 2-3 years are you still going to be running 16gb?

EDIT: just looked at your other topics and it seems your getting 8gb of ram so yer HP will do for now. EDITEDIT: also i would prob pay the £2 more and get windows 8 (or £26 more for win 8.1 pro) so then you don't have to buy another os for 5-10 years

marc2003 · 24 Mar 2014 at 23:15

16GB is a ridiculous amount of ram for a gaming machine. 8GB is more than enough. even if you think you need 16GB, you can still do that on home premium so it shouldn't affect your choice.

Sin_Chase · 24 Mar 2014 at 23:20

What Windows 7 do you need?

It's called Windows 8.1.

Why are you buying a new OS and picking Windows 7? Madness.

Tappits · 24 Mar 2014 at 23:42

marc2003 said:
16GB is a ridiculous amount of ram for a gaming machine. 8GB is more than enough. even if you think you need 16GB, you can still do that on home premium so it shouldn't affect your choice.

Depends on the game and your nerd level but i know i got 32gb this time because i was nearly maxing 16gb out playing EvE Online

marc2003 · 24 Mar 2014 at 23:58

Tappits said:
Depends on the game and your nerd level but i know i got 32gb this time because i was nearly maxing 16gb out playing EvE Online

really? that's me told. i've never heard of any game using that.

Freedom · 25 Mar 2014 at 01:53

I'm running 3 desktops off 8GB while playing the Like's of WoW and never used more than 6gb

Rroff · 25 Mar 2014 at 01:56

Eve "needs" about 2GB per client to be comfortable - if your only running 1 client then 4GB is fine for OS + the game unless your OS install is really bloated or you leave a lot of other apps running when playing (some people do like to idle in eve and play other games while waiting for stuff to happen in Eve).

However if like me (and I assume Tappits) your "multi-boxing" 4+ eve clients on one PC you can easily use way over 8GB. (Hence why both my laptop and gaming PC have 16GB).

KraniX · 25 Mar 2014 at 13:50

16GB is more than sufficient for most PCs for the next few years, EVE multi-instances aside.

I'm sure I saw a report in CustomPC a few months ago on this but can't find it now, anyway these guys have compared and it makes literally no difference - http://www.thetechbuyersguru.com/Ramgaming2.php

I'm not familiar with the site so wouldn't usually quote a source I don't trust 100% but the results fit with every other comparison I've seen.

linktoinsanity · 25 Mar 2014 at 13:58

If you have to ask, usually the answer is Home Premium.

Tute · 25 Mar 2014 at 14:01

Yep, Home Premium is the way to go generally.

I run 16GB RAM and I feel it's absolute overkill.

demonix · 25 Mar 2014 at 15:48

Sin_Chase said:
What Windows 7 do you need?

It's called Windows 8.1.

Why are you buying a new OS and picking Windows 7? Madness.

It's not madness if you want an OS that doesn't break games like 8.1 does (when I get everything for my computer sorted out, I'll be installing windows 7 as it doesn't break any of the games I have and I would only be limited to the 32-bit version if I did as the CPU isn't compatible with the 64-bit version)

Tappits · 25 Mar 2014 at 18:11

demonix said:
I would only be limited to the 32-bit version if I did as the CPU isn't compatible with the 64-bit version)

You said in another topic you have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ which is a 64bit cpu so the 64bit version would work... on old rigs are people still running less than 4gb of ram (even on win xp comps)... i built a £230 comp last year for data entry at work and even that runs 4gb of ram and win 7 64bit

KraniX · 26 Mar 2014 at 08:29

demonix said:
It's not madness if you want an OS that doesn't break games like 8.1 does (when I get everything for my computer sorted out, I'll be installing windows 7 as it doesn't break any of the games I have and I would only be limited to the 32-bit version if I did as the CPU isn't compatible with the 64-bit version)

What games don't work on Windows 8? I've yet to find anything that doesn't.

demonix · 26 Mar 2014 at 15:40

Tappits said:
You said in another topic you have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ which is a 64bit cpu so the 64bit version would work... on old rigs are people still running less than 4gb of ram (even on win xp comps)... i built a £230 comp last year for data entry at work and even that runs 4gb of ram and win 7 64bit

To install a 64-bit OS on a 64-bit PC, your processor needs to support CMPXCHG16b, PrefetchW, and LAHF/SAHF

That was taken from the system requirements for windows 8.1 and if you look at the specifics for that processor it doesn't support SSE4 and as such doesn't support prefetchW meaning that the 64 bit version of windows 8.1 wouldn't install.

Tappits · 26 Mar 2014 at 21:20

demonix said:
To install a 64-bit OS on a 64-bit PC, your processor needs to support CMPXCHG16b, PrefetchW, and LAHF/SAHF

That was taken from the system requirements for windows 8.1 and if you look at the specifics for that processor it doesn't support SSE4 and as such doesn't support prefetchW meaning that the 64 bit version of windows 8.1 wouldn't install.

"Physical Address Extension (PAE), NX processor bit (NX) and Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2) are features of the processor, and they're needed to run Windows 8.1."

Windsor" (F2 & F3, 90 nm)[edit]
All models support: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, Enhanced 3DNow!, NX bit, AMD64, Cool'n'Quiet, AMD-V
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension (PAE) says It is also available on AMD processors including the AMD Athlon

Captain · 27 Mar 2014 at 00:26

I have always used windows Ultimate, just personal preference.

Home Premium is more than adequate.

demonix · 27 Mar 2014 at 15:12

Tappits said:
"Physical Address Extension (PAE), NX processor bit (NX) and Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2) are features of the processor, and they're needed to run Windows 8.1."

Windsor" (F2 & F3, 90 nm)[edit]
All models support: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, Enhanced 3DNow!, NX bit, AMD64, Cool'n'Quiet, AMD-V
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension (PAE) says It is also available on AMD processors including the AMD Athlon

Didn't you read all of the post you just quoted.

The 64-bit version of windows 8.1 requires a processor that supports SSE4, so I can't install the 64-bit version on my computer since it doesn't have SSE4 support and as such one of the extra requirements (I do remember some people who tried to upgrade from 8 (64-bit) to 8.1 couldn't because of the extra support 8.1 required of the processor).