XP to 7 upgrade performance

[DarkLord76865]

I have old PC with Windows XP Professional 32 bit. It was never good for gaming (only older games were OK, Minecraft first edition also), but it ran fine. Now I want to make use of it, mainly to browse web and maybe some Office or AutoCad (old version, requires very little resources) work. As there is so little that still works with Windows XP, I was thinking of doing a fresh Windows 7 32 bit Installation (processor is 32 bit). How much would that affect PC's performance for doing tasks above? I don't remember exact specs, but I remember it has 2 GB of RAM, 1TB of hdd storage, integrated graphics (doesn't matter as I won't need it for anything other than playing a video), and for processor, I am not sure. I remember it has single core, but 2 threads. It is I think 90 something nm Prescott architecture Intel Pentium (I think maybe Intel Pentium 4?). I know that processor is really the factor here, and I will check which one it is as soon as I get a chance (which won't be for a couple of weeks). What do you think? Had anyone tried anything similar? I know the hardware is really outdated, but I don't want to throw it away just yet. Regards

[Electronics Wizardy]

Have you looked into linux distros? That might be the better option here.

 

But if you have the hardware why not try win 7? I have some simmilar er ahardware and it works fairly well on both win 7 + xp, but xp is faster for sure.

[AbydosOne]

5 minutes ago, DarkLord76865 said:

It is I think 90 something nm Prescott architecture Intel Pentium

You're gonna have a bad time doing anything on the internet with a Pentium 4; it's way too slow (and inefficient). Given the age of the original system, there may also be drivers that don't exist for Win7.

 

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Have you looked into linux distros? That might be the better option here.

Second that.

[ProjectBox153]

Web browsing on a Prescott P4 is a bad idea. Those machines are just too slow for daily use these days. Windows 7 should run alright, but it'll definitely be slower, and it'll use more power than a more modern machine. However, they can still be useful for some things. I've got a machine with a 2.4GHz Northwood P4 that I've been using to play some older games and stuff. When I'm not doing that it's running Windows Server 2003 R2 as a NAS, and it's been excellent.