[est1895]

Hi.  My hard drive is just about dead and I need to know if I should put Win7 or Win Xp Home agian on the new hard drive.  The sole reason for this decision is will FS2 SCP work fine with Win7?  If there have been issues, please list them. 

[-Norbert-]

I didn't have any problem what-so-ever with FS2 SCP on Win7 64bit.

[LHN91]

Other than a couple of issues revolving around UAC, as far as I know everything runs fine. I'm running it without issue on 64 Bit 7 Professional.

Just install to somewhere sensible like C:\Games\Freespace2, and if you run into any issue with FSO not being able to write pilot files or the launcher not saving it's settings, set them to run as administrator. Or alternatively, disable UAC.

[est1895]

What about if it's a 32bit system? Win7Pro maybe too expensive right now?

I do need to upgrade my system in the next six months.  The video card I currently have is a Asus 9800 GT 512mb.  What kind of AMD processor should I shoot for in my upcoming system?

[jr2]

What about if it's a 32bit system?

32-bit usually has even less compatibility problems than 64-bit.

[LHN91]

^Yeah. And Win7 Home Premium should also be fine. Now admittedly, if you're upgrading, and considering the steadily decreasing price of RAM, you'll probably end up running 64bit. And here in Ontario, the price of 64bit Home Premium is actually cheaper than 32bit.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't go with Bulldozer unless you're planning on doing a lot of media conversion or heavily threaded things. FSO relies heavily on single threaded perfomance, which bulldozer doesn't have. If your going AMD, go last gen. any phenom II quad or hex core is a pretty good value.

EDIT: And this is coming from someone who's a bit of an AMD fanboy. Bulldozer is great for what it's good at, but FSO and single threaded apps aren't one of the things it's good at. If you DO do a lot of multithreaded things, however, by all means get one.

EDIT 2 (I swear the last one): If you're looking at a 6 month delay here, wait and see. The entire processor landscape could change by then.

[LordPomposity]

My laptop runs 7 Home Premium, and my desktop runs 7 Business. No problems with either. Both are 64 bit, but as mentioned 32 bit almost always has fewer compatibility issues.

[jr2]

32-bit can only use 3.5 GB RAM; (on average; my 7 32-bit install only uses 2.75GB out of 4GB available) so if you have more than that and you want to use it, get 64-bit, which can handle all the RAM you can throw at it (at this current time, anyways).

[Herra Tohtori]

32-bit can only use 3.5 GB RAM; (on average; my 7 32-bit install only uses 2.75GB out of 4GB available) so if you have more than that and you want to use it, get 64-bit, which can handle all the RAM you can throw at it (at this current time, anyways).

It's not that simple.

32-bit systems can use exactly 4096 MB of memory address space (without physical address extension, which allows for more than 4 GB of memory addresses in certain 32-bit Windows operating systems).

The hardware requires some of that address space to function. The biggest chunk of memory is taken by the graphics card for obvious reasons. If the GPU takes 256 MB of memory, then there is 3840 MB of memory addresses left to utilize. Rest of the hardware also takes some memory addresses, but not nearly as much as the VRAM does; therefore the amount of video memory is the biggest factor that reduces the amount of addressed RAM for the applications to use.

If VRAM is 512 MB, there'll be about 3.5 GB of address space left.

If VRAM is 1 GB... well, you can see why it would become problematic to use a 32bit system as a high end gaming rig.

[jr2]

Just found this:

http://www.jensscheffler.de/using-gavotte-ramdisk-in-windows-7

Lets you use the rest of the RAM listed as unusable as a RAMDisk... working fine so far.  You have to force PAE on to use it (as seen in the instructions).

[KyadCK]

For any modern CPU it would just be easier to go with Win7 64-bit. There isn't a price difference that I've seen and it saves the ram headache.

As LHN91 said, avoid bulldozer for now. If you want AMD then a nice Phenom II x4/x6 will do fine. Again though, wait the 6 months and see what things are like then. 6 months is a long time in the tech world.

Also, FSO has zero problems for me on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (D:\Freespace2\)

[TwentyPercentCooler]

I've had zero problems with FSO on several different Win7 versions and rigs. Actually, I haven't really had any problems with Win7 at all, but that's another thread.

XP was great but it's time for it to die.

[The E]

Just found this:

http://www.jensscheffler.de/using-gavotte-ramdisk-in-windows-7

Lets you use the rest of the RAM listed as unusable as a RAMDisk... working fine so far.  You have to force PAE on to use it (as seen in the instructions).

Which is a pointless workaround, because the x64 and x86 editions cost exactly the same.

[karajorma]

Useful if you already have the x86 version installed and can't be bothered to reinstall/pay for the 64-bit version though.

[Mikes]

Same experience that others have here: Running FSO on Win7 (64bit) without any issues at all.

[est1895]

Will I need a Full Tower if I go 64bit?  What is the difference between home premium and professional?

I'm thinking of going with the Asus Sabertooth 990FX.  By the time I upgrade, this motherboard should be affordable. 

What are the new FM1 processors?

Any help would be greatly appreciated 

[Jeff Vader]

What is the difference between home premium and professional?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/products/compare

[Polpolion]

Will I need a Full Tower if I go 64bit?

depends solely on how much other hardware you have and how good you are at tetris.

[KyadCK]

Will I need a Full Tower if I go 64bit?  What is the difference between home premium and professional?

I'm thinking of going with the Asus Sabertooth 990FX.  By the time I upgrade, this motherboard should be affordable. 

What are the new FM1 processors?

Any help would be greatly appreciated 

No, all modern hardware is 64-bit capable, the size of the tower is dependent on the hardware. In the case of the sabertooth (being full ATX), a mid-tower will be fine.

The main difference is professional can join a domain, but check Jeff Vader's link.

The FM1 socket is AMD's new APU. Basically its a cpu and vid card on the same chip, but I would classify it for average users only because neither the cpu or gpu half is strong enough for any real gaming. I use it to build sub-$500 computers, and thats about where it belongs.

[rhettro]

I installed FS2 and FSO with no problems on my new Win7 64 bit laptop.  Runs like a dream.