• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Is PAE going to be enough for 6GB of RAM?

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

Careface

Member
Joined
Jul 4, 2004
Location
Auckland, New Zealand
I'm in the process of building an i7 rig with 6GB of RAM, and I'm wondering if using 32bit windows with PAE will be okay, or if I should buy a 64bit license instead?

For various reasons, I'd like to stick to XP, but I'm not even sure if you can still buy it these days lol (and I currently own 32bit SP2, hence why I'd like to keep it).. What do you think? It's been a good 6 years or so since my hardware has started to run into a wall with my OS, so I'm somewhat out of the loop!

Cheers :)
 
You shouldn't need XP at all anymore except for the rare exception where certain software just won't run even in compatibility mode. You are pretty safe going to 7 64bit.

If you are sure you still absolutely must have XP for certain software (usually games... lol... i can sympathize as all my fave games came out before XP was a gleam in Microsoft's eye), then do a dual-boot setup. Partition your drive in 2 partitions. Install XP on the first partition, once it is setup the way you want, install 7 on the 2nd partition. It will automatically pick up the fact that XP is already there and give you a boot menu to choose XP or 7.
 
My laptop has 8 GB of RAM so I run Win7-64. I have hit issues with some older (science-related) applications but if you get Pro you get XP Mode. Or, use Virtualbox.

If that doesn't work, then a dual boot would be my next option as THF suggests.
 
Thanks for the replies :) I was under the impression that Vista onwards somewhat destroyed compatibility with older things (Games etc, as THF rightly says! DOSBox ftw), but I wasn't aware of XP Mode under Win7.. a quick google shows it looks promising :) I was also somewhat worried about how SETI and Folding would run.

I don't know :( I suppose after all these years, I'm just used to a nice simple no-flashy-crap OS like win xp.. it does what I want it to do (up until now! :( ), and looks.. well, simple and clean :) I'm sure there will be some skins/themes out there I suppose :)

Cheers :)

EDIT: Well.. actually, apparently there aren't many XP themes out there for 7.. possibly owning to the fact that 7 removed a lot of the features that XP had (no classic start menu? Seriously?).. the search continues...
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the replies :) I was under the impression that Vista onwards somewhat destroyed compatibility with older things (Games etc, as THF rightly says! DOSBox ftw), but I wasn't aware of XP Mode under Win7.. a quick google shows it looks promising :) I was also somewhat worried about how SETI and Folding would run.

I don't know :( I suppose after all these years, I'm just used to a nice simple no-flashy-crap OS like win xp.. it does what I want it to do (up until now! :( ), and looks.. well, simple and clean :) I'm sure there will be some skins/themes out there I suppose :)

Cheers :)

EDIT: Well.. actually, apparently there aren't many XP themes out there for 7.. possibly owning to the fact that 7 removed a lot of the features that XP had (no classic start menu? Seriously?).. the search continues...

The is an add on that allows classic start menu but 7 is better overall IMHO.
 
XP mode in Win 7 is pretty much virtual-box with winxp sp3 installed.

Works for about 90-95% of software. However, when it comes to certain software (especially ones that require specific hardware calls to run like certain scientific programs or a good chunk of games), then it still won't get the job done.
 
Back