Well yeh i know that XP is for me like 3x beter for perfomance (and i have xp in pc - double boot). but Windows7 is soooo good for listening music, for working, i mean its just so comfortible, + windows7 is something new, xp is just booring
i dont know about drivers, i mean in xp i got like 60fps in windows7 i got 45fps - thats bad for otehr stronger games :/ Taht game takes 70mb of ram and ~65% of cpu. So everyone say - its not ram or cpu, its old driver's folt.
And by the way, you say that minimum is 1gb of ram, well im using home premium, and its optimized(running pretty well) and only taking about ~40-50% of ram. So it aint much and i really dont need 1gb of ram.
Seeing that have fairly old hardware, selecting which drivers to use may be a tough one. If you can't find newer drivers on nvidia's site (can't remember if they still support the 5 series with newer releases), you may be better off using the ones that Windows suggests itself, like mentioned in a previous post. However, if you're trying to run newer games, you'll probably be better using the newest drivers you can find from nvidia.
In terms of OS performance, you may actually be better off leaving Aero enabled, as long as your video ard can run it. Reason being, as long as Aero is running, the system is actually putting more of the processing burden on your GPU, which is putting less strain on the rest of your system. Sure Vista was probably a dog on that card, especially with 128mb of frame buffer, but 7 has been optimized, specifically in how it utilizes video ram as it needs to draw more & more windows, so it actually uses video memory more efficiently.
In terms of RAM, like you mentioned, you're only seeing 50% of it in use. You may see an increse in OS performance with more, but it would probably have to be a lot more than simply moving up to a ful 1GB (think 2GB+). Starting with Vista & continuing with 7, the OS will try to use as much RAM as possible to ensure maximum performance with the given system config. Unlike older OSes like XP, windows doesn't leave RAM unused & instead uses as much as it can to cache files. As the need arises to utilize RAM for actual programs, it will adjust the RAM as needed.
Of course, there's always a difference between what the OS "should" do with a given set of hardware specs as mentioned in reviews & various publications and what it "actually" does in real life.....mileage always seems to vary. In terms of general computing needs, if your system ran great on XP, it should run really well in 7.
If you're mostly happy with how it runs in 7, I say stick with it. You can always save & upgrade when money permits. I'm sure tweaks & patches/service packs will also help the OS run a bit better over time.
