will an old pc benefit from upgrading to windows 8?

[talefrima]

Hi everyone,

I have an old computer running windows 7.
Will my computer benefit from upgrading to windows 8 or I better stay with 7?

Those are my specs if needed:
CPU- Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
Graphics card- Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850
Mother board- Asus P5E
Ram- 4 sticks of 1GB OCZ DDR2.

* My hardware is not compatible with windows 10 and I don't want to buy new hardware.

Thanks ahead!

 

[Herc08]

You are better staying with Windows 7. Windows 8 is a headache, and will only cause more frustration. You could add a SSD, but that would mean new hardware.

I have seen where computers are so slow because of the hard drive. Even after many wipes, the hard drive is still slow. However, buy getting a 80gb hard drive, it gave the laptop life again. So I would recommend getting a new hard drive (under $50) and throw it in there. I wouldn't recommend a SSD since the rest of the hardware is old, and you probably want to get a new a computer regardless.

 

[Dunlop0078]

I don't see any issue with win 7, if your computer is running slow and that OS has been installed for years you may see a benefit from just doing a clean reinstall win 7.

If you do want to upgrade I would skip win 8 which was horrible, win 8.1 was alright with something like start is back or classic shell. I see no reason your system would not be compatible with 10, my cousin has a much older much weaker single core Pentium 4 system running win 10 fine drivers dont even exist for it however the generic windows drivers got everything working just fine. Your system is well above the min requirements for win 10.

 

[King_V]

I am surprised that your system isn't compatible with Windows 10. I'm running Windows 10 Pro on an old Dell machine that has very similar specs.
Same CPU
Same amount of RAM and type (brand is probably different, but it's 4x1GB DDR2 of whatever came with the Dell)
Almost the same video card (mine is the one that came with the Dell, but it's an ATI Radeon HD 4870)

The only difference would perhaps be the motherboard/chipset - mine's the Dell OEM version of an nVidia 650i chipset.

I have read on some forums dedicated to this particular model Dell (XPS 630i) that going to an SSD definitely wakes the system up quite a bit, but haven't done so myself.

If you have another hard drive lying around, it might not hurt to pull out the existing hard drive from the system, put in the new one, then try to install Windows 10 and see if it works - if not, just wipe it and stick the old drive back in. But, I don't really know why your hardware wouldn't be compatible - you just may not be able to get updated drivers for some things (ie: you'll be stuck with the ATI/AMD video drivers that are included with Windows 10)

 

[talefrima]

Thanks you all for the fast replies!

I checked my cpu, graphics card and motherboard manufacture's website and they all don't have drivers for windows 10.
So you are all saying that it should work fine with windows 10 regardless the lack of drivers?

 

[Herc08]

It should work. CPU and motherboard shouldn't matter. As far as the GPU, you will be using the generic drivers, but if it works in Windows 7, in theory, it should work on 10.

 

[talefrima]

So the question now is will my computer benefit from windows 10 or should I stick with windows 7?

 

[Dunlop0078]

Windows should find the appropriate drivers automatically, like I said it found drivers for my cousins much older pc which only had xp drivers available from the mobo manufacturer. If not a lot of times win 8 drivers will work on win 10, did it many times with lots of different stuff when win 10 first came out.

 

[King_V]

Thanks you all for the fast replies!
So you are all saying that it should work fine with windows 10 regardless the lack of drivers?

Yes. If I am not mistaken, at least with the video drivers, they were actually originally made by AMD/ATI, but now windows includes them (the file names all reference ATI, etc). The only downside is no Catalyst Control Center or Crimson. Just the basics. But they work pretty well.

Additionally, going with Windows 10 will assure security updates, which are going to fall by the wayside for Windows 7 and 8.

I used to tend to put off OS upgrades, but in this case, I would recommend doing it.