Windows 7 Upgrade || 64bit/32bit

Being a mac guy, I haven't really explored this area of Windows much, but we are looking to do some upgrading at work. I feel like this is a dumb question, but can any Windows machine take the 64bit Windows 7 OS? Or does it need to have 64bit hardware. I assume it needs the hardware. Now from what I remember, 32bit OS's only can use 3gb of ram, but does it hurt anything to put in 4gb? I feel like these are dumb questions, but I haven't needed to explore this with my Mac.

Also I am worried about the performance of a 1.6ghz, 4gb ram computer running Windows 7. Should it be okay?

I also have a Windows XP Pro 64big install disc from Dell and want to install it onto a 32bit system. Will it work and install the 32bit system?

windows 64bit ram 32bit windows7 performance

asked Aug 10 '10 at 16:11

srmorris2
151●3●5●12

edited Aug 10 '10 at 16:35

2 Answers:

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64 bit operating systems requires a 64 bit compatible CPU (Central Processing Unit). such processors have been around for several years so there is a good chance your processor will support it. If you don't know if it is compatible you need to find the name of the processor and then look it up. The name can be found by running "dxdiag" in "run".

About the second question: No, it does not hurt to put in more ram than the system can "see" (in this case more than 3 GB), just be sure not to exceed the motherboard's maximum supported RAM.

Third question: 1.6 GHz seems a bit slow for Windows 7 but if it is a dual core processor I guess it will be okay.

answered Aug 10 '10 at 16:59

drblah
96●1●1●4

Its a Intel Core 2 Duo

(Aug 10 '10 at 17:00) srmorris2

It should be able to handle Windows 7 just fine. Still it is a bit slot, but it will handle basic tasks fine. I wouldn't want to do anything heavy on it though.

(Aug 10 '10 at 17:07) drblah

***http://windows.microsoft.com/systemrequirements***

Windows 7 system requirementsIf you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it takes:

•1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

•1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

•16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

•DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

answered Aug 10 '10 at 16:39

r0bErT4u
31.0k●513●672●938

I got that much, but how will performance be with bare minium requirement and attempting to also run Photoshop CS3

(Aug 10 '10 at 16:40) srmorris2

My old system runs Photoshop, Premiere, etc. just fine. It was upgraded to Windows 7, from Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

(Aug 10 '10 at 16:44) r0bErT4u

it should run just fine. You might have to put the graphics settings for Windows down, though.

(Aug 10 '10 at 16:51) DJ Reidak

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