W7 or XP

[NotYourHero]

Ok within the next week to 2 weeks, not even, I am building a new gaming rig.

2gb ram ddr2
Athlon II x4 620 2.6ghz
500gb HDD
ATI Radeon 4830
600w psu SLI ready.

Now, it has an 16gb max for 64 bit i think, but it only has 8 slots. I have never seen a 4gb chip in a store yet so I'm going to just max at 8gb. My pc is completely coming from Tiger direct except the video card. I do plan to get 4gb ram within the next few months. My question is, do you think I should get xp 32bit, or just go straight to w7 64bit. I've never used a 64bit system, so I don't know how it would run on 2gb ram, especially w7. I do know xp 64bit is horrible.

 

[SkittyOnWailord]

I don't know the answer to your question about the RAM but I can tell you that W7 Professional or Ultimate come with XP Mode. It pretty much lets you run XP on your W7 comp.

And what kind of games are you going to play? Those parts don't look very good for a "gaming rig".

 

[NotYourHero]

sorry it has 4 slots. My bad. Also its ony having 2gb ram for a few months and then I am putting in a second 2gb chip. I was wondering if anyone thinks I should just got 64bit W7 or 32bit xp till i get 4gb ram.

 

[poketoon]

Ive never had W7 before but im gonna say it's better. XP was good, Vista is crappy, but W7 might be awesome

 

[Kal-El]

Is this a computer where you've picked the parts yourself, or you've chosen from a prebuilt one?

Cos, really, unless you're paying a low-end price for that, you could do an awful lot better.

At any rate, legally you'll have to pay for both OS's, so there's no point getting XP and then going to Windows 7 (unless you get a free upgrade).

RAM has nothing to do with the 64-bit. 64-bit is your processor architecture, so it will run regardless of your RAM.

I think W7 is a bit less greedy than Vista, so I think 2 gigs should do you fine. But if you really want that as a gaming PC, you'll wanna be getting your 4 gigs of RAM ASAP.

Also, I'm fairly certain you can get 4 gig DDR2 sticks. Though, I'm fairly certain the CPU you're getting is an AM3 socket, which implies that your board is most likely DDR3. If your board does support DDR3, you might as well get some DDR3 RAM, too (especially since it will most likely drop in price in the future, so you can easily get extra sticks).