Dual booting XP and W7 64-bit worth it?

[Aerosol]

I got Windows 7 for the day when (haha, IF) I build my new PC. I did that...then found out that the cpu I already have is 64-bit. I had no idea before.

It's a stock HP dx2200mt that has a P4 @3.2ghz with an 8500GT and 2gb of ram in it. Right now I'm getting about 30%-45% speed in Sonic 4. Is it worth the trouble of dual-booting XP and W7 to try and squeeze some more speed out of Dolphins latest revisions? Or will the difference be marginal at best?

[Bart1975]

With that system I doubt 64bit is worth it.

[Aerosol]

Didn't think so. Thanks for the reply.

[Starscream]

You're still better off with Windows 7 64-Bit no matter what. There is no need to be running XP anymore and you "may" gain a few frames. You're looking weaker than the weak rig in my sig, but Win7 is worth it.

[Aerosol]

(01-06-2011, 10:27 AM)[SS] Starscream Wrote: You're still better off with Windows 7 64-Bit no matter what. There is no need to be running XP anymore and you "may" gain a few frames. You're looking weaker than the weak rig in my sig.

Why am I better off with W7 exactly? This might be a discussion for another thread but I don't do any social networking, so any features that make that easier are moot for me. Besides that...is it intrinsically faster/better than XP? why? I don't even have a widescreen monitor.

[Xtreme2damax]

Social networking has nothing to do with Windows 7, and having a widescreen monitor isn't a requirement for any operating system. The various under the hood changes are well worth it such as:

- Improved security

- Improved stability

- Improved performance

- Improved search function

- Aero gui that allows for smoother Windows animations, transition, additional features since it's accelerated by the gpu unlike the slow GDI interface that XP uses that puts additional load on the cpu (Dolphin is limited mostly by the CPU so accelerating the desktop interface with the gpu takes load off of the cpu)

- Superfetch learns what applications you use the most, caches them for quicker startup/launch.

Contrary to all the anti-Vista/7 hooplah, Windows Vista/7 are not memory hogs, unused ram is wasted ram and that ram is being "used" for something useful (Superfetch, Aero) to improve performance. Memory management on Vista/7 is actually far better than on XP and other operating systems, when an application needs the memory it will be released accordingly by the operating system.

Although this may not matter considering your specifications, but I believe I read that some are running Windows 7 on worse hardware than yours without any problems.

[Bart1975]

The only reason I installed win7 on my system was for 64bit goodness and DX10/11. I preferred XP for a long time. I disabled most of the new stuff on my system and installed classic explorer/start menu and am fairly happy with win 7 now.

[Xtreme2damax]

Oh god, why would you do that? The improvements in Windows 7 are what makes installing and using it worth it, why would you disable core features/enhancements and hinder the usability/functionality of the operating system? Your GPU is capable of handling aero just fine, just the cpu is not up to par at least for Dolphin.

I also don't believe Pentium 4's support 64-bit, maybe there was one that did. Have you verified if your processor supports EM64T? You can use CPU-Z to check, if not then you are only installing for DX10/DX11, and the DX10/DX11 plugin in Dolphin isn't that far developed yet and the DX9 plugin is recommended to use for now.

[Bart1975]

I dislike aero, gadgets, new explorer, etc. I wanted to make win 7 look and feel like XP as much as possible. Most of my games run just fine in dolphin.

[Squall Leonhart]

disabling DWM actually breaks acceleration for other parts of the os, besides eye candy.