Should I install Windows 7?

[CK1]

Recently I blew up the Northbrigde chip on my old faithful Asus 965 motherboard and duly upgraded it to an Asus P35. Surprisingly Windows booted first time, installed a few new drivers by itself and has been pretty good since.

However I have just installed Fallout 3 and when I try to run the game it simply locks up the whole machine. No BSOD or reboots, it just locks up. I am assuming that as I installed this after the mobo swap and all previously installed games still work fine, i.e Crysis and Civ 4, that something went wrong with the install of Fallout 3 and I should rebuild the machine. I did uninstall the game and re-install it and apply the patches. I am using WinXP (32-bit).

I also recently bought an extra 2GB of RAM which brings the total to 4GB so I see the need to start using a 64-bit OS. I do not have Vista and am very likely to buy Windows 7 when it comes out. Should I install Windows 7 beta now and use this on my main PC for the next 8 months, or should I re-install XP? Does anyone know what the gaming performance and stability is like under Win7? Is there anything I need to consider in moving from a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit OS?

Any comments appreciated

[this_is_gav]

The simple answer is to dual-boot. Have a small XP install (15-20gb) and only install the programs you need on it, so you can fall back to it if something doesn't work on Windows 7. Redirect your My Documents and things to the where they are on the W7 install. Best of both worlds.

[dangel]

Win 7 is a beta - a good one but a beta nonetheless. Do some careful reading about the pitfalls (the mp3 corruption bugfix, the installer bugfix) before you start.
I'm using it full time at work (but then that's part of my job) and on my acer netbook though and i do rather like it
I'll probably leave Vista x64 on my main rig at home though.

[mdjmcnally]

At the moment seems to be getting good reports for Windows 7. Just remember though it is a beta product still so you may get quirks.

At the moment as long as you accept that you may get some issues, then as already suggested dual boot the machine with an XP and Windows 7.

That way you can try out Windows 7 but have the security of a working XP installation.

[CK1]

That's not a bad idea. I hadn't considered it that. All my data is on another HDD so there should be much problem switching betweent he two and sharing my data. It's been ages since I did a dual boot, should the older OS (ie XP) be installed first?

[CK1]

The simple answer is to dual-boot. Have a small XP install (15-20gb) and only install the programs you need on it, so you can fall back to it if something doesn't work on Windows 7. Redirect your My Documents and things to the where they are on the W7 install. Best of both worlds.

That's not a bad idea. I hadn't considered it that. All my data is on another HDD so there should be much problem switching betweent he two and sharing my data. It's been ages since I did a dual boot, should the older OS (ie XP) be installed first?

[shbris]

found windows 7 to be quite slow ...

[lodore]

found windows 7 to be quite slow ...

in benchmarks its faster than xp.
i found it pretty speedy.
remember it is only a beta.

[shbris]

i'll give a benchmark a go but just around desktop seems a bit slow, but i completely understand young drivers and beta os. gonna try it on mini 9 or wait for final before judging. nice though