Upgrading XP

TheGrantFitz

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I will be upgrading two XP 64-bit OS's with 512 MB of RAM. Would Windows 8 be any faster on those machines?

Hopefully I will add RAM. :)
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro, iOS 7.1, Elementary OS
    Computer type
    Tablet
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Apple
    Memory
    1 GB
    Screen Resolution
    2048x1536
    Other Info
    iPad Air
I can say from personal experience, yes. The only con to this is graphics support. You might have lower than expected screen resolutions or incompatible/nonsupported drivers. You might also come across a certain requirement with the CPU for Windows 8, I can't think of it off the top of my head, but if the CPU spec isn't there, it's a no-go. It's a random thing, I think it's like PAE or some such. But seeing as the machines are both 64 bit, I bet that issue isn't there.

For overall performance, Windows 8 does real well with low system resource. I remember using a 32 bit Windows To Go drive on a similar machine and it ran real fine. Office, moderate IE browsing, and a couple other things; everything ran solid at about 300 MB of total use. Best of all, unlike with Windows 7, you can customize colors everywhere. With Windows 7 on said machine, it defaulted to a pasty blue color and awful graphics as the driver wasn't supported, but in 8, it's nicer to look at. Also, I natively installed Windows 8 on another xp era machine, works fine except for the Intel graphics chip won't ever have an updated driver, so it's just passible screen resolution for Windows 8 versus a working driver in 7 that 8 doesn't like. Overall between the two machines, it was like a breath of fresh air. It definitely puts another five years of use in old xp machines.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    ASUS
    CPU
    AMD FX 8320
    Motherboard
    Crosshair V Formula-Z
    Memory
    16 gig DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    ASUS R9 270
    Screen Resolution
    1440x900
    Hard Drives
    1 TB Seagate Barracuda (starting to hate Seagate)
    x2 3 TB Toshibas
    Windows 8.1 is installed on a SanDisk Ultra Plus 256 GB
    PSU
    OCZ 500 watt
    Case
    A current work in progres as I'll be building the physical case myself. It shall be fantastic.
    Cooling
    Arctic Cooler with 3 heatpipes
    Keyboard
    Logitech K750 wireless solar powered keyboard
    Mouse
    Microsoft Touch Mouse
    Browser
    Internet Explorer 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender, but I might go back on KIS 2014
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