Windows 7 SP1 vs Windows 10 for older hardware

[Troika]

I know that Windows 10 has tons of stuff that perpetually runs in the background, taking up unnecessary amounts of ram and causes random cpu usage spikes. Those are things that really are negligible on modern hardware, such as the Ryzen 7 2700X with 16GB of 3000mhz ram that's its paired with in my main rig but can be detrimental to older hardware that isn't as capable but still very usable, depending on the use case that is. I doubt anyone's still using a core 2 quad to render videos

Anyways, my main question is whether its worth going through the trouble of debloating windows 10 to limit how much it takes system resources or if its just better to continue to use windows 7 on older hardware and optimize that. I don't think DX12 will really give any significant performance gains over DX11, especially since the cpu's performance will be the primary limiting factor before the gpu starts becoming an issue. This is just a spare build that'll mainly be used for older games that don't work or have issues on windows 10.

System specs: (HP Compaq DC5800 MT w/upgrades)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650
Intel Q33 Express based motherboard
8GB (4x2GB) DDR2 800Mhz
EVGA Geforce GTX 670 FTW 2GB
120GB Mushkin Source
1TB Seagate Constellation ES.2
Corsair CX550 Bronze

[gbergeron]

2 minutes ago, Troika said:

I know that Windows 10 has tons of stuff that perpetually runs in the background, taking up unnecessary amounts of ram and causes random cpu usage spikes. Those are things that really are negligible on modern hardware, such as the Ryzen 7 2700X with 16GB of 3000mhz ram that's its paired with in my main rig but can be detrimental to older hardware that isn't as capable but still very usable, depending on the use case that is. I doubt anyone's still using a core 2 quad to render videos

Anyways, my main question is whether its worth going through the trouble of debloating windows 10 to limit how much it takes system resources or if its just better to continue to use windows 7 on older hardware and optimize that. I don't think DX12 will really give any significant performance gains over DX11, especially since the cpu's performance will be the primary limiting factor before the gpu starts becoming an issue. This is just a spare build that'll mainly be used for older games that don't work or have issues on windows 10.

System specs: (HP Compaq DC5800 MT w/upgrades)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650
Intel Q33 Express based motherboard
8GB (4x2GB) DDR2 800Mhz
EVGA Geforce GTX 670 FTW 2GB
120GB Mushkin Source
1TB Seagate Constellation ES.2
Corsair CX550 Bronze

- Don't even worry about DX12
- Win10 manages RAM and ressources better than Win 7 but most likely is not worth at all the trouble to upgrade

- If everyuthing runs good on Win 7, stay on Win7

 

 

[gbergeron]

If I had to install from scratch windows I would choose Win10 even for old hardware unless you have less than like 1-2GB RAM I think Win10 minimum ram requirement is 1GB

[Enderman]

Windows 10 does not take up unnecessary amounts of ram and also does not have CPU spikes.

Any issues with windows 10 you've hard about are from people that don't know how to clean install properly and have done upgrades, clones, resets, and other things that screw up the OS.

[Troika]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

Windows 10 does not take up unnecessary amounts of ram and also does not have CPU spikes.

Any issues with windows 10 you've hard about are from people that don't know how to clean install properly and have done upgrades, clones, resets, and other things that screw up the OS.

The issues I have are games that don't work at all on my main rig or games that are altogether broken, such as Hitman Contracts hanging on the opening movie, Quake III being broken in the menu and making everything unselectable because you can't see the menu at all, and Star Trek Voyager Elite Force refuses to install at all.

It does have cpu usage spikes and uses excess amounts of ram when you have very old hardware.

10 minutes ago, gbergeron said:

If I had to install from scratch windows I would choose Win10 even for old hardware unless you have less than like 1-2GB RAM I think Win10 minimum ram requirement is 1GB

My question is soley concerning if its worth debloating and optimizing windows 10 or use a debloated and optimized windows 7. I've been using windows 10 on my main rig since I upgraded to Ryzen in March this year and have been using it in a virtual box environment for about three years and the technical review for eight months when I was in tech school. I'm fine with using it on my main machine because it fixed some annoyances from windows 7, such as not having to sign into my NAS every time I log into my computer. I'd rather not install and format my SSD excessively. I've tried dual booting windows 7 and windows 10 before but they don't really like each other very much. Windows 7 works fine but whenever you choose to launch windows 10, it bricks the drive for some reason.

[Enderman]

4 minutes ago, Troika said:

The issues I have are games that don't work at all on my main rig or games that are altogether broken, such as Hitman Contracts hanging on the opening movie, Quake III being broken in the menu and making everything unselectable because you can't see the menu at all, and Star Trek Voyager Elite Force refuses to install at all.

It does have cpu usage spikes and uses excess amounts of ram when you have very old hardware.

 

My question is soley concerning if its worth debloating and optimizing windows 10 or use a debloated and optimized windows 7. I've been using windows 10 on my main rig since I upgraded to Ryzen in March this year and have been using it in a virtual box environment for about three years and the technical review for eight months when I was in tech school. I'm fine with using it on my main machine because it fixed some annoyances from windows 7, such as not having to sign into my NAS every time I log into my computer. I'd rather not install and format my SSD excessively. I've tried dual booting windows 7 and windows 10 before but they don't really like each other very much. Windows 7 works fine but whenever you choose to launch windows 10, it bricks the drive for some reason.

Are you saying you upgraded to ryzen without clean installing windows??

[Troika]

Just now, Enderman said:

Are you saying you upgraded to ryzen without clean installing windows??

No, it was a clean install. I have a manual file backup on my 8TB NAS and keep a standing system image on my rig on a single 4TB drive incase I need to rebuild by system for whatever reason.

[191x7]

I had Windows 10 running fine on a Core Duo T2500 (Dual-core 2GHz x86) with 2GB of DDR2 667, a 64GB SSD and a Mobility Radeon X1600.

And that was the old Win10 since I don't have that laptop since 2016. Modern Win10 runs better than that.

 

I'd install Win10 and run the older games from inside a virtual machine (with win XP or 7).

[ahuckphin]

For older hardware, I would recommend Windows 8.1 

[Troika]

39 minutes ago, quakeguy81 said:

Windows 7 end of life (EOL) is less than a year away if you're planning on switching.

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsforbusiness/end-of-windows-7-support

 

I'm not seeing the CPU spikes like that Youtuber is talking about.  I closed most everything non-essential in my system tray, opened task manager, and I'm sitting at 1-2% CPU usage after 1 minute.  Windows 10 is using 2.5 GB/16 GB of RAM with nothing open, so that's a thing.

I did all the scripts in powershell then the .bat file and installed the classic shell for the start menu. Ram usaged went down from 1.8GB/7.9GB to 1.1GB/7.9GB and cpu usage at idle dropped from 8% to 3%. What I find odd is that the core on the bottom left (core 4?) seems to be doing something, perhaps MSI Afterburner since I have 670 OC'd a bit. Other than that, there's small blips but not 10~25% spikes every now and then.

 

Also, cpu performance actually went up by 3.6% in Fire Strike. Its more than just run to run variance because run to run tests typically vary by less than 1% but its not a huge difference. I'll probably keep messing around with it, maybe reimage the machine with windows 7 and optimize it then see what the difference is from a performamce stand point. Something tells me that it'll basically be identical. 

[Settlerteo]

2 hours ago, Troika said:

System specs: (HP Compaq DC5800 MT w/upgrades)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650
Intel Q33 Express based motherboard
8GB (4x2GB) DDR2 800Mhz
EVGA Geforce GTX 670 FTW 2GB
120GB Mushkin Source
1TB Seagate Constellation ES.2
Corsair CX550 Bronze

In my opinion it's all about RAM. I loved windows 7(my favorite OS) but if RAM>=2 GB then use Windows 10. If RAM<2 GB then use Windows XP 32 bit or a Linus distro.
In any case you have a strong machine that can support easily windows 10 so i don't think there should be a question in the first place.

[Curious Pineapple]

I have Windows 10 on a C2Q and it runs fine, got it on a Centrino laptop with 2GB of memory and it works well with a rather large pagefile on the SSD.

[LogicalDrm]

Win10, or if its just going to be for internet and stuff like that, Ubuntu etc.