Windows 10: Best OS for really old PC

Intel Core 2 Duo E7400
NVIDIA GeForce 9400GT
3GB RAM

will be upgrading to 4GB but I'm not sure when
( Mobo only supports up to 4GB :/ )

NO OVERHAUL UPGRADE SUGGESTIONS PLEASE

32-bit or 64-bit?

:)

 

Best route to take with set of really old games?

Hi,

To further troubleshoot your concern with your PC’s performance, we suggest for you to contact your Device Manufacturer and Software Developers. They will be giving you information and details regarding the apps/programs that you installed in your PC. Also,
they need to check the compatibility and system requirements for the apps.

Have a great day!

 

Best route to take with set of really old games?

Hi guys. So I have a strange question. I have a mild gaming PC running Windows 10 Pro. I have a few old games such as Trackmania Sunrise and the original Crimson Skies. I had previously attempted to install Trackmania Sunrise on my current PC a while ago
but only ended up completely nuking Windows (system restore is the best thing ever). I created a Virtual Machine through Oracle VM VirtualBox running Windows XP but because GPU passthroughs kind of literally don't exist on Windows machines, the game would
refuse to run simply because of the lack of an actual GPU. I have even tried to install Windows XP on an external hard drive but that would also refuse to run because my machine is apparently too new (constant blue screens... stupid ACPI garbage). I would
rather not have to buy a cheap computer off of eBay. Is there anything else I can do? Thanks!

Here are my system specs in case it matters:

Intel Core i7-4790 @ 3.60 GHz

MSI GTX 970

2 TB Internal Seagate NAS HDD

8 GB Corsair Vengeance

USB 3.0 Netgear Wifi Adapter

 

I would go x64 just in case. How much RAM in that nVidia card? I take it's a discrete card (not integrated).

 

1GB. It's a dedicated one. Would the performance be noticeable between 32-bit and 64-bit systems?

 

Windows 10 will run on it just fine. That is not really old. It is still a pretty fast CPU, which 10 makes it even better.

 

64 bit is the now thing. 32-bit is still hanging around, because Microsoft is way far behind in just dumping that series of code and old apps.

I am running 10586 x64 just fine on a Dell Inspiron 537s with 4 GB RAM and a Seagate 1 TB Enterprise hard drive.

 

Are you going to be running any software that was written specifically to take advantage of a 64bit OS, most don't. The 32bit version is allot more compatible with available software and drivers. It will also be faster on your hardware. Most do not really need a 64bit OS they just think they do because that is what they have been told by the companies that want you to spend money on new hardware.

 

Or they wish to access more than 4GB of RAM. Or they needed to run 64 bit software. (That's rare, but I wanted to run an engineering program on my old laptop. It exists in a 32 bit version, but the vendor didn't really support that.)

 

I have a T7400 Core2Duo with 3GB RAM (the maximum). I'm running 64 bit but only because there are only 64 bit and not 32 bit drivers for my machine (a MacBook).

That is a pretty important consideration (in fact it was the only consideration for me).

Otherwise I'd probably have installed 32 bit as it takes a bit less disk space. I can't imagine the performance would be much different either way and in any case I don't (can't) play games on it that are much more demanding than solitaire...

 

Hi there
Actually for an OLD PC any decent Linux distro will run brilliantly on it --you can run loads of distros on really old hardware and with as little as 512K (yes Kb not Mb or Gb !!) of Ram.

I know this is a Windows Forum but looking at the question the OP posed my answer is perfectly valid.

W10 also appears to run OK too on older hardware but could have driver problems.

The other missing piece of info which the OP failed to provide is exactly what will the PC be used for. If Office etc then Windows, if merely surfing, emailing and multimedia then Linux is your best bet on limited hardware.

Cheers
jimbo

 

I have a somewhat similar spec PC that is used for internet access and some media playback. It might be an E7200, integrated Geforce 9300 on the motherboard and I did do a 2GB -> 4GB upgrade 18-24 months ago.

This PC has been used 95% of the time with Linux, and for 3-4 years with Linux Mint.

Performance was always adequate rather than impressive. However there was always a niggling issue with screen-tearing which I was not able to fully resolve until recently. 2GB -> 4GB and setting the BIOS to allocate the maximum possible RAM to the GPU was useful and resulted in the most improvement, and as a bonus overall system response seemed slightly sharper. However, Linux has recently included display managers designed to eliminate screen-tearing and they do work.

I can also say that after upgrading to Mint 17.3 I also noticed a general improvement in performance. So the upshot is, if there isn't a specific Windows program that you need I can recommend Mint 17.3. You might try a couple of editions:

• Mint 17.3 with MATE desktop (choose Compton in the display settings) should play nicely for a tear free media playback PC.
• Mint 17.3 with Cinnamon will perform well, but does not include the tear-free display mode. I actually prefer Cinnamon as a desktop - it's really nicely designed for classic mouse & keyboard setup.

On the 32bit vs 64bit argument, my feeling is 100% in favour of 64bit. If anything I think it's about time new OSs stopped supporting 32bit and forced everyone on to 64bit and ultimately push all applications to be 64bit natively as well.

are absolutely certain? is there a BIOS update you can do? and there are 8GB and 4GB single DIMM modules available if you're limited to a single pair of DIMM slots on the motherboard, although unfortunately the price of the 8GB single modules is usually ridiculous.

 

You can run about anything on that PC. I would not bother upgrading the RAM unless you absolutely need the x64.

 

64 bit OS's are backwards compatible. More software is being written to take advantage of the 64 bit addressing space.

 

You can play quite a few older games on that hardware. I run Age of Empires and Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam on my wife' old Latitude, It's only a 2Ghz C2D and 2GB RAM running 7 32bit. They play quite good actually.