Which OS platform for my gaming PC?

[Vrakkie]

Hello,
I am in the final stage of building up my gaming pc. The hardware consists of the following:
Gigabyte SLI MOtherboard
MSI Gtx 660 graphics card x 2
12GB RAM
Bla bla bla

Question: I would like to make full use of the power of my machine capabilities so I need to install Windows 7 -64 Bit Operating system.
Problem/concern: Have a lot of brilliant Windows XP games and am just worried that the games will not run on the 64Bit platform
Any suggestions as what I must install? XP or Win 7 64 Bit

Being a game Freak can be frustrating
Thank you
Carlo

 

[darth pravus]

Windows 7 64 bit by far.

Pretty much any game will run on 7 that ran on xp but lots of games will suffer performance wise on XP nowadays and some wont even run.

 

[darth pravus]

Also xp 64 bit was awful and you will need a 64 bit os to use your 12gb ram.

Remember on 32 bit you only have 4gb of memory address space with includes GPU memory so those 2gb cards will have no memory left after your system has used it for Actual ram.

 

[iplikator3333]

Hello,
I am in the final stage of building up my gaming pc. The hardware consists of the following:
Gigabyte SLI MOtherboard
MSI Gtx 660 graphics card x 2
12GB RAM
Bla bla bla

Question: I would like to make full use of the power of my machine capabilities so I need to install Windows 7 -64 Bit Operating system.
Problem/concern: Have a lot of brilliant Windows XP games and am just worried that the games will not run on the 64Bit platform
Any suggestions as what I must install? XP or Win 7 64 Bit

Being a game Freak can be frustrating
Thank you
Carlo

Hi,
Google "Muli booting" or "dual booting"

 

[BuddiLuva]

First things first, some games for XP do not work on W7, despite what people say, I had that problem especially with Scarface: The World is Yours.

Best thing to do first is to install XP. THEN install windows 7 on another partition (NOTE: Installing Windows 7 and then XP after will cause it to only boot into XP)

So make sure XP is installed first. Do not use 64 bit XP but do use 64 bit for your Win7 installation.

 

[MajinCry]

Considering you have 12GB of RAM, what you could do is install Windows 7, then use a virtual machine for XP and your games. Saves time having to restart to change your OS.

 

[Vrakkie]

Best answer selected by Vrakkie.

 

[das_stig]

Normally I would say W7x64, but some games actually perform a tiny but better under W8x64. So down to the interface !