# pentium 4 with windows 7?



## razaron (Jun 17, 2009)

how slow would windows 7 be with a 

2.9?ghz 90nm p4 (dont know model name)
radeon x800se
512mb ddr (dont know speed)

this would be for my friends rig he's upgrading from xp.


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## pbmaster (Jun 17, 2009)

I wouldn't even bother with only 512 MB of RAM. Yes, 7 is better than Vista for RAM usage but that amount is still no where near adequate for a nice experience.


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## razaron (Jun 17, 2009)

how bad is it? if it runs without proper freezing (no taskmanager no nothing) its more than good enough


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## kenkickr (Jun 17, 2009)

I believe the minimum requirement for ram on Win 7 is 1Gb

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx


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## kyle2020 (Jun 17, 2009)

My sisters laptop has 700 odd mb of ram and runs it fine, however shes running a dual core processor so I would say no.


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## pbmaster (Jun 17, 2009)

I don't think that technically qualifies as running fine....I can't even begin to imagine using only 512 on Vista or 7..you'd b be using more pagefile than RAM, and that just means lots of and lots of waiting


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## Ahhzz (Jun 17, 2009)

Running a P4 2.4Ghz with 1Gb Ram, runs just fine. Haven't loaded any proggies to push it, but the OS runs fine. Also running it on a box with 768Mb, same basic proc, strolls right along. not going to set any speed records, but no major crawlings either.


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## sweeper (Jun 17, 2009)

I was running it on my system (specs left) and found it rather annoyingly SLOW! Clean install of Vista and running much faster oddly enough. I almost went to XP but hate XP's interface compared to Vista.


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## lemonadesoda (Jun 17, 2009)

It will run fine, esp. if you add another 512MB stick of DDR to the machine.  Just turn off the glassy aero effects and you will be good.

Remember this is your friends webbrowsing, emailing and messaging PC, capable of "basic" gaming, ie. up to GTA3 generation. Not for running the latest DX10 games. Hell, you could use an Atom or VIA C7 if you wanted for Win 7, and both of those ARE SLOWER than the P4 @2.8.


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## Mussels (Jun 17, 2009)

if you can get 1GB+ of ram, it will run fine. My mums PC is running 7, and its a sempron 2800+ (1.6GHz i believe) with 1GB DDR 333 ram.

Ram is all you need - aero, superfetch etc only use small amounts of ram. aero is only about 30MB, iirc. disabling them will not make up for a missing 512MB.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Jun 17, 2009)

Get a cheap board,and a E1400,little troopers they are.X10 multi too,the one i had for one day went from 2ghz to 2.5ghz just with a 200-250fsb hike on stock vcore.


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## Arrakis9 (Jun 17, 2009)

win 7 actually is not as heavy as you would think. we have a tech box machine here loaded with win 7 running an AMD athlon XP 3200+ with 512mb of ram and it seems to run just fine


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## lemonadesoda (Jun 17, 2009)

Mussels said:


> aero, superfetch etc only use small amounts of ram. aero is only about 30MB, iirc. disabling them will not make up for a missing 512MB.


We are disabling aero for performance reasons not for ram saving! (If people are concerned the P4 doesnt have enough ooompf) 

With a "lite" install I'm sure 512MB would be fine too. Of course, running multiple apps will result in a lot of diskswapping, but no worse than Vista. I'd say, upgrade to Win7 on your friends machine WITHOUT any hardware upgrades. If the machine is "laggy" from HDD swaps/pagefile, then just drop in some more DDR.


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## Studabaker (Jun 17, 2009)

Win 7 is lighter and faster than Vista but I still say 1GB is about necessary.


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## hat (Jun 17, 2009)

1gb? Get 2, 1gb is simply not enough. In fact, just get the 2GB and forget about windows 7, there's no reason to upgrade to that yet. I say once DX11 hardware comes out and he builds himself a new computer, then he can think about W7. It will be sluggish on that machine... I know xp x64 is sluggish on mine when my cpu and memory is at stock.


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## vbx (Jun 17, 2009)

Win7 works fine on 512mb of rams.  Win7 automatically adjust itself according to the hardware you have installed. 

* Default  Windows 7 with 512 MB Ram Review  *
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=340971
Toshiba Satellite M70, Celeron M 1.7 gigahertz, 512 ram, 64-128 ATI x200m.


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## newtekie1 (Jun 17, 2009)

You shouldn't have a problem running it the current setup, your biggest problem will be the RAM slowing you down.

You can either stick in at least another 512MB, or at the very least use Readyboost.  Vista on 512MB is usable with readyboost, so Win7 will only be better.  The processor is fine, I run Vista on worse.  The RAM is where you need to be concerned.


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## Mussels (Jun 18, 2009)

lemonadesoda said:


> We are disabling aero for performance reasons not for ram saving! (If people are concerned the P4 doesnt have enough ooompf)
> 
> With a "lite" install I'm sure 512MB would be fine too. Of course, running multiple apps will result in a lot of diskswapping, but no worse than Vista. I'd say, upgrade to Win7 on your friends machine WITHOUT any hardware upgrades. If the machine is "laggy" from HDD swaps/pagefile, then just drop in some more DDR.



aero doesnt need CPU power. it uses GPU power. runs fine for me on a HD3200 and on my mums 9550 - on a system with a weak CPU, enabling aero pushes it over to the GPU, saving CPU power. i find the GUI to lag a lot less with aero on, than off on mums rig.


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## lemonadesoda (Jun 18, 2009)

OK. I thought that was only with DX10. Aren't older cards doing Aero under software. Anyway, I could well be wrong on this.


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## Mussels (Jun 18, 2009)

aero is DX9 in vista, DX9 or DX10 in 7.

They do it in hardawre - and his x800 is certainly fast enough for aero.


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## ste2425 (Jun 18, 2009)

ive run 7 on my lappy its quite old now it has a mobile intel celeron at 2.5 an 752 meg of ram an 7 ran beautifully fast only problem was i couldnt do anything graphicly intensive as my video drivers were too old for even vista


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## Hayder_Master (Jun 18, 2009)

win7 is havy like vista , it is work with your system now right but better if you think about 1G ram cuz win7 need 500m-600m to be ready 100% mean this is the sheard memory win7 need


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