Windows 7
It’s been over 6 years since I upgraded my computer from Windows 98 to Windows XP. Last night I finally upgraded my aging computer equipment and installed a clean copy of Windows 7 onto it. So far it’s been running very well and I’m actually excited to turn on my computer each time and learn more about it.
Knowing from previous experience that installing new operating systems on old equipment can lead to frustrating and time-consuming problems, the first thing I did was upgrade my hardware. This is what I ended up buying and installing:
- GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-UD4P AMD Motherboard
- AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz quad-core processor
- G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 SDRAM Dual Channel Memory
- EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit PCI-Express 2.0 graphics card
- CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750-watt Power Supply
What does all that mean?
Well, my old computer ran at 2.0 GHz (single-core), had 1 GB RAM, and 128 MB video memory. The new computer runs at 3.0 GHz (with 4 cores), has 4 GB of RAM, and 512 MB of video memory. It’s ready to handle whatever sweet graphics Diablo III throws at it!
The other neat thing is that I installed the 64-bit version of Windows 7. Most people today are running 32-bit Windows XP. The difference between 64 and 32 bit is that your computer can efficiently address more memory, meaning all the caps on the computer’s memory are pretty much removed for the foreseeable future. Windows XP can’t handle more than 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of disk space per partition. With a fully 64-bit operating system, I’m free to increase my RAM to an insane 16 GB and keep my 250 GB hard disk unpartitioned.
Now I can’t wait to try some graphics-intensive games!