Upgrade my PC before or after I install W7?

[d000hg]

I have a brand new PC that came with Vista. I plan to put W7 on, but I also would like to swap the graphics card and possibly add SSD alongside the existing HDD.

1)Would I be better making all these changes before booting it off the W7 disk, to avoid changing hardware once it's installed?

2)What's current thinking with W7 and a SSD/HDD setup? Windows on the SSD but swap-file elsewhere? Applications on the SSD, data on HDD? I will do development on the PC so should C++ source files go on SSD?

3)The PC has 4Gb RAM. Will W7 32bit still only access 3Gb? Not sure why a PC coming with Vista 32bit has 4Gb anyway, to be honest.


Thanks.

[pmeswani]

I have a brand new PC that came with Vista. I plan to put W7 on, but I also would like to swap the graphics card and possibly add SSD alongside the existing HDD.

1)Would I be better making all these changes before booting it off the W7 disk, to avoid changing hardware once it's installed?

2)What's current thinking with W7 and a SSD/HDD setup? Windows on the SSD but swap-file elsewhere? Applications on the SSD, data on HDD? I will do development on the PC so should C++ source files go on SSD?

3)The PC has 4Gb RAM. Will W7 32bit still only access 3Gb? Not sure why a PC coming with Vista 32bit has 4Gb anyway, to be honest.


Thanks.

1) Personally, I would. But I think you are allowed to make a number of changes before having to go through the re-activation process with Microsoft.

2) Windows 7 would probably treat the SSD drive as a normal SATA device. But I would put a small hard drive in for the swap file. Doing C++ work on the SSD should be ok, but I would always recommend doing regular backups though.

3) Yes, Windows 7 will only access 3GB. If you can, go 64-bit, unless your applications / drivers are anti-64-bit.

[The Wikir Man]

1)Would I be better making all these changes before booting it off the W7 disk, to avoid changing hardware once it's installed?

I would do the hardware and then software install, if it were me. Nothing like essentially a brand new piece of kit.

2)What's current thinking with W7 and a SSD/HDD setup? Windows on the SSD but swap-file elsewhere? Applications on the SSD, data on HDD? I will do development on the PC so should C++ source files go on SSD?

What do you hope to achieve from having an SSD? I have no idea what I would put anywhere, apart from having shed loads of disk space and partitioning it (or having separate drives) to split things into nice neat areas.

3)The PC has 4Gb RAM. Will W7 32bit still only access 3Gb? Not sure why a PC coming with Vista 32bit has 4Gb anyway, to be honest.

32bit will only access 3GB. I thought that Windows 7 came with both 64 and 32 bit versions (unless it's the upgrade that you get with a new PC that shipped with Vista). My W7 Ultimate had both versions in the box, I think.

[VectraMan]

1. Probably. Doesn't make a lot of difference I would have thought.
2. Pass
3. It's a myth that 32bit will only access 3GB. On my laptop I had Vista 32-bit accessing 3.8GB, but only after I shrunk the amount of RAM it wanted to use for graphics. Which is the main issue: the graphics RAM and system RAM have to fit into 4GB. 1GB graphics card = max 3GB system. 512MB graphics = max 3.5GB system.

But there's no reason I've found not to run 64-bit. So install that instead.

[d000hg]

What do you hope to achieve from having an SSD? I have no idea what I would put anywhere, apart from having shed loads of disk space and partitioning it (or having separate drives) to split things into nice neat areas.

Speed? SSDs are small but super quick. So any applications which are disk I/O bound will benefit... but I don't know what those are. But an app which requires loading 100Mb of stuff from disk at startup would do so much quicker for instance.

[d000hg]

But there's no reason I've found not to run 64-bit. So install that instead.

I have W7 ultimate 32/64 so I've the choice. I don't run any legacy apps so I'm probably ok. Though for 1 GB more RAM, is it worth it?

[The Wikir Man]

Speed? SSDs are small but super quick. So any applications which are disk I/O bound will benefit... but I don't know what those are. But an app which requires loading 100Mb of stuff from disk at startup would do so much quicker for instance.

So, what applications are you going to be using which requires lots of disk I/O, but not so much that you run the disk of knackering the SSD, which will have a limited number of writes available (and yes, I know that they now scatter the data so that you don't get hot spots...)

For example, if you were a database developer, then I would consider moving your temporary tablespace onto an SSD. I would also consider moving certain parts of the cache onto an SSD (and, IIRC, Oracle now does this in 11g).

I don't believe that an SSD can yet offer me enough of a performance boost to form any decent cost:benefit ratio, and so I haven't really looked into the practicalities of having one. Since you don't know what you are going to put there, or what benefits you are going to get (apart from "speed"), is this just a geeky gimmick that you are after?

It's a serious (rather than my usual facetious) question - assuming that this is for routine day-to-day tasks, why bother with an SSD?

[The Wikir Man]

I have W7 ultimate 32/64 so I've the choice. I don't run any legacy apps so I'm probably ok. Though for 1 GB more RAM, is it worth it?

Well, you may as well do it. If you were, for example, running a program that needed 100MB at startup, you'd be able to run a few more of them at the same time

Or create a virtual machine with that extra 1GB RAM and use it for torrenting / downloading porn / doing naughty things that you don't want to get in the way of your main computer.

[d000hg]

So, what applications are you going to be using which requires lots of disk I/O, but not so much that you run the disk of knackering the SSD, which will have a limited number of writes available (and yes, I know that they now scatter the data so that you don't get hot spots...)

This isn't much of an issue from my understanding unless you use a swap file on it. Loading apps is a read-only operation, code source files are one write a minute perhaps when working.

I don't believe that an SSD can yet offer me enough of a performance boost to form any decent cost:benefit ratio, and so I haven't really looked into the practicalities of having one. Since you don't know what you are going to put there, or what benefits you are going to get (apart from "speed"), is this just a geeky gimmick that you are after?

It's a serious (rather than my usual facetious) question - assuming that this is for routine day-to-day tasks, why bother with an SSD?

It's my dev PC on which I will work 8-12 hours a day. Why would speed not be an issue? Otherwise I could be using my old P4. I reckon a SSD would make my system more balanced, reducing the time the CPU is stalled waiting for the disk.

[Clippy]

I have a brand new PC that came with Vista. I plan to put W7 on, but I also would like to swap the graphics card and possibly add SSD alongside the existing HDD.

1)Would I be better making all these changes before booting it off the W7 disk, to avoid changing hardware once it's installed?

2)What's current thinking with W7 and a SSD/HDD setup? Windows on the SSD but swap-file elsewhere? Applications on the SSD, data on HDD? I will do development on the PC so should C++ source files go on SSD?

3)The PC has 4Gb RAM. Will W7 32bit still only access 3Gb? Not sure why a PC coming with Vista 32bit has 4Gb anyway, to be honest.


Thanks.

1) I would.

2) Personally, after reading a recent article questioning the perceived speed gains of SSD, I would question whether you are going to get any increased major benefits so I think it won't really make much difference how you configure the disks.

3) If you've got 64 bit Win7, go with that so you can use all of the RAM you have.