Win 7 x64/x86 or Win8.1

[Marcvs]

Which of these 2 Is most efficient on a low end PC/VM.

Talking 2GB Ram, 1-2 CPU Cores

Regards

[jcgriff2]

Windows 7.

Dual core is a necessity.

If x86 - 2 GB RAM minimum.

If x64 - 4 GB RAM minimum.

Regards. . .

jcgriff2
MS MVP

[Marcvs]

Home Premium or Pro

[Stylin]

Home Premium or Pro

Premium should have less resource draw.

This seems to be the most relevant link I could find in less than a minute lol.

[Marcvs]

They basically cant agree.

As for 1vs 2 cores., All it runs is a Plex Media server and it never transcodes - was runnign prox64 on it with 512mb ram and it was pretty happy - just the updating library was a tad slow. I tried ubuntu server - but due to SMB it was using far more resources than windows.

[BobF64]

In theory, if you spend time configuring Windows there will be no difference between Home Premium and Pro.

Disable any non-essential core services and any others you dont need, uninstall the handful of unnecessary Windows features and both are pretty much identical if used in a home environment.

[Marcvs]

Im aware HP cant support joining a domain(which i run at home) - so i guess I will have to see how it holds up wiith SMB shares.

[BobF64]

Correct, cant join a domain, but you can access domain resources just fine.

If your HP username and password are the same as the domain one, I think it just authenticates and gives you access.
If not, you can always map the shares using different credentials.

[Marcvs]

I ended up going with Pro after testing - Home Premium didn't like transferring through the 10GBps virtual switch, was capping out at ~900Mbps, compared to premium that was going at ~4GBps [with iPerf testing] (I think its due to Hyper-V issues).

[jcgriff2]

They basically cant agree.

As for 1vs 2 cores., All it runs is a Plex Media server and it never transcodes - was runnign prox64 on it with 512mb ram and it was pretty happy - just the updating library was a tad slow. I tried ubuntu server - but due to SMB it was using far more resources than windows.

512 MB RAM?? Excessive paging activity must be rampant.

I'd believe that if it were <XP SP2!

I have 12 GB RAM now on a core i7 Windows 8.1 system and wish I had more at times.

Who knows - to each his own.

[Defenestration]

Bit late but I would've thought Win 8.1 would be more efficient due to MS optimising it to run on phones and tablets (which are inherently lower specced), although I don't have any comparisons to point to.

Win 8.1 also supports UASP, which allows much faster USB3 speeds (eg. SSD connected via USB might get transfer rate of 430MB/s read/write on Win 8.1 x64, while only 320MB/s on Win 7 x64)

[Marcvs]

It only basically has to send XML files out to clients pointing them to media

&Yes I have 24GB ram in my main PC and always want more.

As to win8 I tested that and with 4Gb ram and 2vCPUs (3GHz), it was chewing up far more than win7

Also everything is connected via sata.