taha fareed

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May 11, 2014
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18,510
Hello,
Windows 7 is going to end its support on Jan 2020, I was planning to upgrade the OS. I've two options, should I upgrade to win10 or 8.1 because of my PC old hardware I'm worried that if I upgrade to win 10 then I should face many issues like performance drop most probably drivers support.
My Pc specs are:
CPU: Core 2 Quad q8400
RAM: 6GB
MB: Asus PG41t-mlx
GPU: Gt 730 ddr5
I've searched on manufacture's site for drivers and there are no drivers for win10, But they have provided drivers for 8.1.
I've used win10 on my laptop, honestly my experience with win 10 was bad. previously my laptop had win 8.1 which was good, I had used win 10 more than 2 years on the laptop and downgraded to 8.1.
MY laptop specs are:
CPU: i3 dual core
IGPU: HD4000
RAM: 4GB
I've heard that on high rigs win 10 works like a charm, My PC specs are really low so I need some suggestion, should I upgrade to win 10 or carry on win 7 with good AV or should I upgrade to win 8.1 which will end it's support on 2023? In my opinion win 8.1 is lighter compared to 10.

My only use on the PC is, practice coding and play some games older than 2015.
 
Solution
Drivers - if you upgrade win 7 to 10, the install will use the win 7 drivers. You do this by running setup.exe on USB inside file exploder. You can do this to make your current Win 7 licence a WIn 10 licence as well
If you clean installed win 10 onto PC, different story. That would be where you might run into problems. It really depends on if win 10 installer has the chipset drivers, as its hit and miss as to whether the installer will boot. I normally suggest installing 7 first and then updating t0 10 again.

Should you do it?
Well, its going to be slow, but you knew that. I am probably wrong but I think "support" just means getting updates and whether Microsoft will help you if you ask them, that is pretty much how old versions of...
You will most certainly be able to upgrade. In my experience, having a quad core CPU with 8GB of memory (6 is barely enough today, but it will probably be fine for a while) is a good base for Win10. What is the most important, however, is to get an SSD for a system drive. Makes incredible difference. In fact, you will end up with overall much smoother performance than with Win7 if you get one. With mechanical drive, it will still be "OK", but nowhere near close to having an SSD.

No reason to go to 8.1 whatsoever.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
Drivers - if you upgrade win 7 to 10, the install will use the win 7 drivers. You do this by running setup.exe on USB inside file exploder. You can do this to make your current Win 7 licence a WIn 10 licence as well
If you clean installed win 10 onto PC, different story. That would be where you might run into problems. It really depends on if win 10 installer has the chipset drivers, as its hit and miss as to whether the installer will boot. I normally suggest installing 7 first and then updating t0 10 again.

Should you do it?
Well, its going to be slow, but you knew that. I am probably wrong but I think "support" just means getting updates and whether Microsoft will help you if you ask them, that is pretty much how old versions of win 10 are treated. If your PC works, I wouldn't upgrade at all unless you have to.

the laptop might have worked better with more ram, was it 64bit or 32bit?
 
Solution

taha fareed

Distinguished
May 11, 2014
24
0
18,510
You will most certainly be able to upgrade. In my experience, having a quad core CPU with 8GB of memory (6 is barely enough today, but it will probably be fine for a while) is a good base for Win10. What is the most important, however, is to get an SSD for a system drive. Makes incredible difference. In fact, you will end up with overall much smoother performance than with Win7 if you get one. With mechanical drive, it will still be "OK", but nowhere near close to having an SSD.

No reason to go to 8.1 whatsoever.
You mean getting win 8.1 is useless? I said about this option cuz of its support till 2023, That's all. Rightnow I'm out of budget for ssd, Soon I'll purchase one for new OS.