Upgrading from xp to 7 but hardware upgrade also.

OK, I know i am going to have to buy a new motherboard and processor to upgrade to Widows 7 home. I am on windows xp media on a Intel Desktop Board D915GAV - motherboard - ATX - LGA775 Socket - i915G, 4 sticks of DDR PC2700 but showing 3.11 gb of ram.

What my question is what all can i save from my system to be able to not have to buy all new. Keeping the tower, power supply, memory (whichisnew).
What would be a motherboard processor combo that would let me use the memory i have, drives and tower.
With out spending a ton of money and has to be able to use my current SATA and IDE Drives, well at least 2 of them.

" "Edit" " I had purchased a new Windows 7 Home prem cd in 64 bit, is that the main screw up. Could It work with the Windows 7 Home Prem 32 bit ?? then not have to buy as much for hardware upgrade " " Should I have gotten the Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 32-bit - OEM CD ?

 

What a dilemma !

I also have a 5 year old motherboard/cpu combination ( MSI 785GM-E51 with AMD Athlon II X2 250 CPU) but fortunately for me, its 64 bit & can support upto 16 GB RAM.

I think you can install Win 7 32 bit with 64 bit license. I am not 100% sure so search for it.

 

Keyboard, mouse, speakers and monitor. That's it. Oh, and maybe printer.

You are not going to find a new motherboard that supports your antique, legacy plain ol' "DDR" RAM. And even if you could, it would throttle, or rather severely choke and bottleneck the system's performance.

Your drives are slow, and old. So while they may function, they should not be considered reliable enough to hold your valuable data. And again, their performance would also bottleneck performance.

64-bit is the way to go if you plan on upgrading. Only 64-bit Windows lets you use the full 4GB of RAM in 4GB systems, and only 64-bit Windows lets you fully utilize all the RAM in systems with more than 4GB installed.

Only full "retail" licenses come with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions allowing users to pick one OR the other (never both) to install. Since the OP said 32-bit OEM, I am assuming he bought 64-bit OEM.

My advice is to buy all new hardware that will support Windows 10. Install this 64-bit W7 on it, then upgrade for free to Windows 10 before July 29th (when the free upgrade offer expires).

Then, repurpose the tired old XP system as a music server, or NAS (network attached storage) device. Just be sure to block it's Internet access in the router so it does not become a threat to the rest of us. Or put Linux on it.

 

OK, going a different route and on a major budget crunch so I am looking at a DELL Desktop Computer GX780-Tower Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16 GHz) 4 GB DDR3 with a 500 GB HDD. Larger tower style.
Yeah it's older also but will buy me some time to work on and build a better one. I'm Not a gamer at all, just website work, some photo editing and video editing, cutting and converting vhs to digital.

Anyone had problems with the GX series? or the E8500 processors?

 

That processor is not a workhorse, but it should be reliable. The problem I see, or rather don't see is lots of RAM and a graphics card. I also don't see an OS. If this computer does not have a separate card, it is using integrated graphics. And that means part of that 4GB of system RAM will be stolen... err... "shared" and dedicated to graphics processing. 4GB is not a lot to start. If the OS is 32-bit, only about 3.2GB will be available (because of how hardware mapping is done in 32-bit systems) and if another chunk gets dedicated to graphics, RAM will be surely be a bottleneck, on top of the limited horsepower of integrated graphics. This will force the OS and CPU to frequently bang on the Page File on the slow hard drive - another bottleneck.

As noted above, a 64-bit OS will let you use the full 4GB, but integrated graphics will still slow you down. So I would bump it up to 8GB ASAP, then look at adding a graphics card, if there is not one already. Adding a card typically gets you a better GPU, but because cards come with their own graphics RAM, the previously stolen system RAM will be released back to the OS and CPU. So in effect, when you replace integrated graphics with a card, you get better graphics processing and a little bump in RAM too. All good.

The fact you are not a gamer is good, but understand video editing and conversion is also VERY demanding - in fact, often more demanding than serious gaming. This is why "workstation" graphics cards can be real budget busters.

Just remember that graphics cards (workstation or gaming) are often the most power hungry devices in our computer. You typically can add RAM and not worry about having enough power. But before adding/upgrading a graphics card, you MUST ensure your power supply can support it. It is often necessary to upgrade power when adding/upgrading a graphics card.